Embedding Workforce Health as a Strategic Business Priority
By Dr Julie Denning
What does it really mean to embed workforce health as a strategic business priority?
If you ask AI, or read most guidance, you will find a familiar list of actions:
- Board-level reporting
- Governance structures
- Wellbeing strategies
- Line manager training
- Better use of data.
On paper, it all sounds straightforward.
Yet despite significant investment in wellbeing initiatives, outcomes across UK workplaces remain inconsistent. A recurring theme I hear from employees is that programmes exist, but the benefits do not reach them in practice. Many organisations are doing the right things technically, but something is missing operationally.
Embedding workforce health is not about introducing more initiatives. It is about aligning intent, culture and day-to-day reality.
In my work, I have seen organisations with impressive wellbeing strategies described positively at senior level, while employees report very different lived experiences depending on their role, team or manager. This disconnect is not usually due to bad intent. More often, it reflects cultural tension, fragmented ownership and a lack of shared understanding about what workforce health is actually trying to achieve.
To make sense of this, it is helpful to challenge some common myths.
Myth 1: Reactive and proactive approaches are separate
There is a strong emphasis on being proactive, and rightly so. Early support and good work design improve outcomes. However, not everything can be predicted. Illness, injury and life events happen.
A strong workforce health strategy plans for this. It builds in the ability to respond quickly and flexibly when the unexpected occurs, with the aim of preventing people falling out of work unnecessarily. Reactive and proactive approaches are not opposites. They are interconnected parts of a resilient system.
Myth 2: Workforce health is all about leaders
Line managers play an important role, but they are under increasing pressure and often lack sufficient training or support. Expecting them to carry workforce health alone is unrealistic.
Effective strategies recognise shared responsibility. Employers create the conditions, culture and structures that support health. Employees also play a role in communicating needs, identifying job pressures and engaging in solutions. When strategies focus too narrowly on leadership, important system-wide factors are missed.
Myth 3: Prevention is everything
Prevention matters, but it has limits. Illness cannot always be avoided, and risk is experienced differently by different people. Two employees in the same environment can have very different health outcomes.
A more effective approach focuses on preventing people falling out of work due to ill health, rather than trying to prevent illness altogether. This requires attention to individual difference, job design, flexibility and how health and work interact over time.
Myth 4: Health and productivity are not linked
Health and productivity are inseparable. Poor health shows up first as presenteeism, then absence, and eventually attrition. Supportive adjustments, psychologically safe workplaces and good job design enable people to remain productive even when they are not at their best.
Organisations that collect and use workforce health data are far better placed to understand this relationship and act strategically, rather than relying on assumptions or anecdote.
Myth 5: Workforce health works in silos
Fragmented approaches undermine impact. If strategy, leadership behaviour, line management and employee experience are not aligned, initiatives lose credibility and return on investment is limited.
Workforce health works best when it is a shared organisational direction, supported by joined-up interventions and consistent behaviours. Culture is shaped by what organisations do repeatedly, not what they launch.
In summary, workforce health must be treated as a strategic business priority. Moving beyond checklists and into meaningful action requires deeper thinking about responsibility, design, data and culture.
At Working To Wellbeing, we specialise in helping organisations keep people in productive, sustainable work. We combine clinical expertise with practical workplace solutions to support good job design, early intervention, vocational rehabilitation and meaningful reporting. As a partner, we help employers reduce avoidable absence, strengthen organisational resilience and support people to sustain fulfilling working lives.
If you would like to explore how this could work in practice for your organisation, we would be pleased to talk. Please visit our Contact Page to get in touch.