Measuring Wellbeing in the Workplace: A Practical Guide for HR Leaders

Most organisations now recognise that employee wellbeing matters. The more difficult question is how to measure it.

Employee wellbeing cannot be understood through a single survey score. It is shaped by workload, relationships, management, psychological safety, health, financial pressure, job security and the employee’s wider circumstances.

Measuring wellbeing in the workplace therefore requires more than asking employees whether they are happy.

A useful measurement approach should help leaders answer three questions:

1. What are employees experiencing?
2. What workplace conditions may be contributing to it?
3. What action should the organisation take?

The purpose is not to diagnose individual employees or track their emotions. It is to identify patterns, understand workplace risks and improve the conditions in which people work.

Why Should Employers Measure Workplace Wellbeing?

Without reliable information, workplace wellbeing decisions are often based on assumptions.

Leaders may believe that employees are coping because sickness absence is low. However, employees may be working while unwell, reducing their effort or planning to leave.

An annual engagement survey may show a reasonable overall score while hiding serious pressure within one department or employee group.

Regular wellbeing measurement can help organisations:

• Identify pressure before it becomes burnout
• Understand the causes of workplace stress
• Improve employee retention
• Support managers more effectively
• Evaluate wellbeing programmes
• Reduce absence and presenteeism
• Improve work design
• Direct resources towards the areas of greatest need
• Track whether organisational changes are working

The CIPD’s 2025 Health and Wellbeing at Work research found that average sickness absence among surveyed UK organisations had risen to 9.4 days per employee, the highest level reported in more than 15 years. It also found that many employers remained reactive, responding after employees became unwell rather than identifying risks earlier.

Good measurement can help organisations move from reacting to problems towards prevention.

What Does Employee Wellbeing Include?

Employee wellbeing is broader than mental health. A balanced measurement framework should consider several connected areas.

Psychological wellbeing

This includes stress, anxiety, emotional exhaustion, motivation and an employee’s ability to recover after periods of pressure.

Physical wellbeing

Physical health may be affected by working conditions, sedentary work, shift patterns, sleep, pain, workplace safety and access to rest.

Social wellbeing

Employees need respectful relationships, inclusion, trust and a sense of belonging. Conflict, isolation, bullying and discrimination can have a significant effect on wellbeing.

Financial wellbeing

Financial pressure can affect concentration, sleep and work performance. In the CIPD Good Work Index 2025, 31 per cent of surveyed employees said money worries had negatively affected their performance at work.

Workplace wellbeing

This includes workload, autonomy, role clarity, management support, recognition, career development and confidence in organisational leadership.

These areas should not be treated as separate boxes. An employee facing financial worries may struggle to sleep. Poor sleep may affect concentration. Reduced concentration may lead to mistakes, which may then increase pressure at work.

What Should Organisations Measure?

The strongest approach combines employee feedback with organisational data.

1. Employee Experience

Short pulse surveys can help organisations understand how employees currently feel about their work.

Useful areas to measure include:

• Workload manageability
• Energy and exhaustion
• Work-life balance
• Manager support
• Psychological safety
• Role clarity
• Recognition
• Autonomy
• Team relationships
• Access to support

Questions should be specific enough to guide action.

For example, asking “How is your wellbeing?” may produce a general score but little practical information.

A more useful question might be:

“During the past two weeks, how often have you felt able to complete your work within your normal working hours?”

This helps the organisation understand whether workload may be affecting wellbeing.

2. Psychosocial Risks

Psychosocial risks are aspects of work that can harm psychological health.

The UK Health and Safety Executive identifies six important areas:

1. Demands
2. Control
3. Support
4. Relationships
5. Role
6. Organisational change

The HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool uses 35 questions to assess employee perceptions across these six areas. It is designed to help employers identify causes of work-related stress and take appropriate action.

This approach is useful because it moves the conversation away from asking whether employees are resilient enough. Instead, it examines whether the organisation is managing workplace risks properly.

3. Organisational Outcomes

Employee feedback should be reviewed alongside business and workforce data.

Relevant measures may include:

• Sickness absence
• Employee turnover
• Voluntary resignations
• Overtime
• Unused annual leave
• Grievances
• Employee relations cases
• Occupational health referrals
• Errors and complaints
• Customer satisfaction
• Productivity trends
• Exit interview themes

These measures do not prove that poor wellbeing is the cause of a business problem. However, they can reveal patterns that need further investigation.

For example, high turnover and rising absence in one department may indicate problems with workload, management or team culture.

4. Manager Capability

Managers strongly influence the employee experience. Organisations should therefore measure whether managers feel equipped to support wellbeing.

Possible indicators include:

• Confidence in holding wellbeing conversations
• Ability to identify workplace stressors
• Knowledge of available support
• Confidence in discussing reasonable adjustments
• Frequency and quality of team check-ins
• Employee perceptions of manager support
• Manager workload and span of control

A manager may have completed a mental health training course but still lack the time or authority to make meaningful changes.

Training attendance alone should not be treated as proof of manager capability.

5. Access to and Use of Support

Organisations may also review how employees use wellbeing services.

This could include anonymous, aggregated information about:

• Counselling use
• Occupational health referrals
• Wellbeing platform engagement
• Coaching participation
• Self-help tool use
• Attendance at wellbeing sessions
• Common areas of support requested

Low usage does not always mean employees are well. It may indicate that the service is difficult to access, poorly communicated or not trusted.

Similarly, increased usage is not necessarily a negative result. It may mean employees feel safer asking for help earlier.

Leading and Lagging Indicators

A useful workplace wellbeing dashboard should include both leading and lagging indicators.

Leading indicators

Leading indicators may show that pressure is building before a serious outcome occurs.

Examples include:

• Rising workload scores
• Reduced energy
• Lower psychological safety
• Declining manager support
• Increased overtime
• Fewer breaks
• Reduced use of annual leave
• Growing uncertainty during organisational change

Lagging indicators

Lagging indicators show that a problem may already have affected employees or the organisation.

Examples include:

• Sickness absence
• Burnout-related leave
• Employee turnover
• Grievances
• Performance concerns
• Errors
• Customer complaints
• Long-term health cases

Both types of information are important. Waiting for absence or resignations means the organisation may be responding too late.

How Often Should Wellbeing Be Measured?

There is no single correct schedule.

An annual survey can provide a broad benchmark, but it may not identify changes quickly enough.

Short pulse surveys conducted monthly or quarterly can provide more timely information. These should be brief, relevant and linked to clear action.

Survey frequency should reflect the organisation’s circumstances. During major restructuring or rapid growth, more frequent check-ins may be appropriate. During stable periods, quarterly measurement may be enough.

Organisations should avoid surveying employees so often that participation becomes a burden.

The most important principle is this: do not collect data more frequently than the organisation can review and act on it.

Protecting Privacy and Building Trust

Wellbeing data can be sensitive.

Employees may be reluctant to answer honestly if they believe their manager can identify their responses or that the information could affect promotion, performance reviews or job security.

In the UK, information about a person’s health may be special category data under data protection law. Employers need to identify an appropriate lawful basis and a separate condition for processing special category information before collecting it. The ICO also advises employers to consider necessity, proportionality, transparency, purpose limitation and whether a data protection impact assessment is required.

Good practice includes:

• Explaining why information is being collected
• Being clear about who can access it
• Reporting results in aggregate
• Setting minimum group sizes
• Avoiding unnecessary personal information
• Limiting how long data is retained
• Preventing wellbeing data from being used for performance management
• Giving employees clear privacy information
• Completing appropriate data protection assessments
• Using secure systems

The HSE’s free Stress Indicator Tool requires at least ten responses to help protect anonymity. Smaller organisations are encouraged to use discussion-based tools rather than producing reports that could make individuals identifiable.

Trust is not created simply by describing a survey as anonymous. Organisations must ensure that results cannot be traced back to individuals through small teams, demographic combinations or open-text comments.

Common Mistakes When Measuring Wellbeing

Measuring happiness instead of working conditions

Employees do not need to feel happy every day. Measurement should focus on whether work is healthy, manageable and supportive.

Collecting data without acting

When employees repeatedly complete surveys but see no change, participation and trust usually decline.

Comparing teams without context

A team going through a major project may report greater pressure than another team. Scores need to be understood alongside workload, staffing and organisational events.

Ranking individual employees

Wellbeing data should not be used to label employees as engaged, resilient, stressed or high risk.

Treating service use as the only measure

The number of counselling sessions booked does not show whether the workplace itself is improving.

Focusing only on averages

An acceptable company-wide result may hide poor experiences within a particular department, location or employee group.

Measuring too many things

A dashboard with dozens of measures can create confusion. Leaders should focus on indicators linked to clear decisions and actions.

Turning Wellbeing Data Into Action

Measurement has value only when it leads to improvement.

A simple process can include:

1. Identify the issue
2. Explore the workplace causes
3. Agree specific action
4. Assign responsibility
5. Communicate the plan
6. Review progress
7. Measure again

For example, a survey may show that employees feel exhausted.

The organisation should not immediately assume that employees need resilience training.

Further analysis may reveal excessive meetings, unclear priorities, staff shortages or frequent out-of-hours requests.

The response should address those causes.

The World Health Organization recommends organisational interventions that assess and then reduce or remove workplace risks to mental health. ISO 45003 also provides a framework for identifying, assessing and managing psychosocial risks as part of occupational health and safety.

What Should a Workplace Wellbeing Dashboard Include?

A clear executive dashboard might include:

• Overall wellbeing trend
• Workload pressure
• Employee energy
• Psychological safety
• Manager support
• Role clarity
• Sickness absence
• Voluntary turnover
• Overtime or excessive working hours
• Access to support
• Progress against agreed actions

Results should be presented as trends rather than isolated scores.

Leaders need to know whether an indicator is improving, declining or remaining stable, and what action is being taken.

At MySafeWellbeing, we believe workplace wellbeing measurement should help organisations understand patterns without compromising individual privacy.

By combining confidential employee feedback, workforce trends, manager insights and access to appropriate support, employers can identify emerging concerns and respond before they develop into absence, disengagement or burnout.

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