People Strategy in an Age of Evidence-Based Wellbeing

Stop the Wellbeing Theatre: Why the Future of People Strategy should be grounded on “Evidence-Based Wellbeing”

Organisations invest billions in wellbeing – yet still fail at burnout, turnover, and declining productivity. The problem isn’t intent. It’s missing data, missing diagnosis, missing feedback and missing strategy. It’s time for a new approach.

The Trillion-Dollar Problem Nobody Is Actually Solving

The World Health Organisation estimates that depression and anxiety alone cost the global economy approximately one trillion US dollars per year in lost productivity. Twelve billion working days are lost annually – not because of a shortage of wellness apps or too few yoga classes, but because organisations treat the mental health of their workforce like a marketing problem instead of a strategic discipline.

The numbers are sobering. Employees with untreated mental health challenges show 23% lower productivity. 55% of leaders struggle with inadequate stress management. And yet, most organisations measure the success of their wellbeing initiatives by tracking seminar participation rates – classic vanity metrics that look impressive on paper but say nothing about actual impact. For CHROs and business executives whose value creation depends fundamentally on human capital – that is, organisations with highly skilled, highly compensated talent – this is not merely an HR issue. It is a strategic risk at board level.

The Wellbeing Gap: Why Common Approaches Fail

Gartner’s research on CHRO priorities for 2026 puts it bluntly: CHROs are under massive pressure to deliver ambitious growth targets while simultaneously driving cost efficiency. 53% of CEOs name growth as their top priority; 77% are pursuing cost-reduction measures in parallel. This means leaders must walk a tightrope between growth and efficiency – and their workforce is expected to bear this balancing act.

At the same time, Gartner reports that 64% of CHROs say their leaders lack the mindset to guide people through continuous change. Culture is eroding. Engagement is declining. And what do most organisations do? They purchase another engagement survey tool, launch a mindfulness programme, and hope for the best.The real problem has four dimensions. First, surface-level metrics: organisations track participation rates instead of psychological resilience. Second, reactive approaches: symptoms are treated rather than systemic root causes within organisational culture. Third, lack of strategic alignment: wellbeing initiatives operate in isolation from business goals like retention, innovation, and productivity. And fourth, insufficient data: the data from a single organisation is not enough to understand employee subgroups across the most relevant dimensions.

Evidence-Based Wellbeing – A Strategic Lever

This is where we step in – and where we define a new category. Not “Corporate Wellness.” Not “Employee Engagement.” But Evidence-Based Wellbeing: the disciplined, data-driven science of organisational health.

Our Point of View: Wellbeing is neither a cost centre nor a “nice-to-have.” Wellbeing is the strategic lever for sustainable performance in knowledge-intensive organisations. But only when it is grounded in evidence – not assumptions, not best practices borrowed from other contexts, and not superficial surveys.

The Problem We Solve: Organisations invest in wellbeing without knowing the actual drivers and risks within their specific workforce. They treat symptoms instead of causes. They cannot prove the ROI of their people initiatives. And they have no benchmark to understand where they stand relative to their peers.

What Makes Us Different: Worklife.Digital combines its deep psychological diagnostics based on the Worklife Quotient (WL-Q) with People Data Collaboration on the Tapir platform. This means you don’t just receive a snapshot of your organisation – you get a systemic analysis with highly segmented benchmarking, root-cause analysis, and strategic recommendations, powered by the collective intelligence of a growing data network.

What the Worklife Quotient Reveals

The WL-Q is built on validated psychological research and doesn’t simply measure “satisfaction.” It measures functional psychological wellbeing and resilience at both individual and organisational levels. It analyses how leadership styles, company culture, and workload impact mental health – and delivers concrete, actionable recommendations.

The insights from WL-Q assessments to date are illuminating. On the strengths side, personal growth (87% positive), curiosity (82%), and boundary management (77–85%) emerge as key protective factors. Organisations that enable personal growth and cultivate curiosity demonstrably build more resilient, more innovative teams.

On the risk side, the data reveals critical areas for action: stress management sits at a functional level for only 55% of respondents. Social acceptance (52%) and social integration (65%) point to deficits in inclusion and belonging. And the issue of attachment – the quality of authentic emotional connections in the workplace – also sits at just 65%.

These findings tell a story that no simple engagement survey in the world can tell: individual resilience may often be present, but the organisational framework – culture, leadership, social fabric – systematically undermines it.

The Evidence Is Compelling: Wellbeing Drives Profitability

This isn’t just theory. Research from Oxford University’s “Workplace Wellbeing and Firm Performance” study (2024), analysing data from approximately one million employee surveys across 1,782 publicly listed US companies, provides powerful evidence. Companies with higher levels of employee wellbeing report higher gross profits and greater returns on assets. Wellbeing levels are predictive of not only current but also future firm performance. And perhaps most striking: a one-point increase in average employee happiness is associated with a 1 to 1.2 percentage point increase in return on assets and an increase of approximately $1.4 to $2.3 billion in profits.

The multiplier effect works through six channels: productivity (happier workers are more focused and efficient), performance (reduced absenteeism and presenteeism), recruitment (attracting top talent), retention (preserving institutional knowledge), relationships (better collaboration), and creativity (more risk-taking and innovation). This is not a peripheral concern – it is a powerful engine for financial success.

The Collaboration Effect: Why a Single Organisation Isn’t Enough

This is where the Tapir platform comes into play. Because the greatest limitation of existing wellbeing diagnostics is the isolated perspective. The data from a single organisation cannot tell you whether a finding is company-specific or reflects an industry-wide pattern. Without comparative data, diagnostic precision is lost.

Our data product “Evidence-Based Wellbeing” solves this problem through People Data Collaboration. This means highly segmented benchmarking across the most relevant dimensions, decision trees that make causal chains visible and identify leverage points, the ability to learn from outliers – organisations or subgroups with outstanding results – and co-creation with peers to collectively unlock wellbeing data network effects.

All of this with 100% GDPR compliance. Data sovereignty remains with the participating organisations.

The Business Case: From Hidden Costs to Measurable Impact

For organisations with high human capital intensity – wherever highly skilled, highly compensated knowledge workers make the difference – the business case is clear. The WHO and Deloitte estimate the ROI of highly effective wellbeing programmes at 4:1 to 5:1. For every dollar invested, four to five dollars come back through higher productivity, lower absenteeism, and reduced turnover.

But the true value goes beyond direct ROI. Evidence-Based Wellbeing makes it possible to identify hidden costs before they lead to expensive departures. It makes it possible to cultivate a culture of curiosity and personal growth that drives innovation. And it makes it possible to prove the ROI of people and culture initiatives with hard data for the first time – a capability that becomes a strategic differentiator in times when CFOs question every budget line.

Who Is Evidence-Based Wellbeing For?

This data product is not for organisations looking for another survey tool. It is not for companies that treat wellbeing as an employer branding exercise – It is not for everyone.

It is for CHROs, HR strategy leaders, and business executives who understand that one of the greatest untapped value-creation reserves in their organisation lies in the psychological health and resilience of their workforce. Who are ready to shift from assumptions to evidence. And who have the ambition to define a level of human excellence together with their peers. Whether we can achieve the same impact for your organisation, we honestly don’t know yet. That depends on your context, your willingness to diagnose deeply rather than measure superficially, and your ambition to practise wellbeing as a strategic discipline.

What we do know: the organisations that today make the leap from wellbeing theatre to Evidence-Based Wellbeing will be the ones that in three years’ time retain talent, drive innovation, and possess the resilience to navigate the next disruption. Are you ready to treat wellbeing as what it truly is — a strategic core competency? Then you are invited to our “Evidence-based Wellbeing” data product. Get in touch!

Tapir — in partnership with Worklife.Digital — offers Evidence-Based Wellbeing as a data product: deep psychological diagnostics based on the Worklife Quotient (WL-Q), combined with People Data Collaboration for highly segmented benchmarking and strategic recommendations. Available for organisations in the EU, Switzerland, UK, USA, and Japan. 100% GDPR-compliant.