Samuel Lathey: Whose job is wellbeing anyway?

When employees are stressed about personal issues, their performance at work suffers. Supporting wellbeing should be a company-wide effort, yet it often falls to HR with managers left under-equipped.

This is a missed opportunity: managers are closest to their teams and play a key role in their happiness and productivity. Here are a few practical steps to integrate wellbeing responsibilities into the managerial role, building a resilient and high-performing workforce.

Help managers understand the ‘managerial wellbeing gap’ 

Our research on financial inclusion, The Inclusion Edition, highlights a significant divide between managers and non-managers.

Non-managers are:

• 3x more likely to worry about money daily
• 8x less likely to discuss financial stress with their employer
• 2x less likely to take time off due to financial stress

It’s very easy for managers to overlook this disparity and fail to recognise financial stress among their teams. Managers need to overcome this gap in lived experience and recognise that team members are likely to face wellbeing challenges at different times. Ultimately, this means that wellbeing support needs to be built into managers’ processes to ensure that team members feel supported and able to access what they need when they need it.

Train managers on the organisation’s wellbeing offering

Managers need to feel confident guiding their teams to use your wellbeing resources. If they aren’t, they’re unlikely to mention these tools and support, resulting in low employee engagement. And if they don’t feel confident, they’re also much less likely to proactively open wellbeing conversations which are essential to employees’ feeling that support is available.

Equip managers with training tailored to your wellbeing programmes. This ensures they have the knowledge, confidence and tools to effectively promote and encourage the use of these resources.

The best vendors will have programmes in place that specifically target managers. These should be more in-depth than training for employees, cover more use cases and help managers support employees to get up and running.

Give managers confidence in having wellbeing conversations

Many managers struggle to recognise wellbeing issues or start conversations about them. As discussed above, our own research shows managers are more likely to seek support themselves which may widen an empathy gap with their teams.

Managers need practical tools and language to open these conversations, such as simply asking, “How are you doing?” and allowing employees to share freely. More formal training on initiating and navigating wellbeing discussions can also be valuable.

Ultimately, if managers feel confident in their own ability to open conservations, they are much more likely to ‘lean in’ – both in having conversations but also spotting the signs of poor wellbeing.

Measure wellbeing metrics across the organisation

The saying that “what gets measured, gets managed” applies to wellbeing. If metrics like absenteeism due to mental or financial stress aren’t tracked, it’s harder to make a case for embedding wellbeing into everyday management practices.

Track relevant KPIs, including stress and anxiety levels via pulse surveys, to build buy-in for prioritising wellbeing at all levels of the organisation. Of course, it’s not just about tracking them, but helping leaders across the business understand how these affect performance. And then, it’s about having clear actions that can be taken to address any wellbeing issues at the strategic level. Unless wellbeing is a focus at the strategic level, it’s difficult to get managerial buy-in across the whole organisation because, ultimately, managers have their own managers – and they need to prioritise wellbeing too.

Embed the link between wellbeing and performance at all levels

It’s critical that the organisation understands wellbeing directly impacts performance. Senior leaders should understand this but also managers as, ultimately, managers are responsible for team performance.

For example, our own research found a significant number of employees are distracted at work due to financial stress, which can lead to more mistakes made, reduced productivity and ultimately a form of presenteeism.

Half (50%) of UK employees report being distracted at work due to money worries – no small number. But it’s higher among specific groups: 58% of single-income households report being distracted, alongside 64% of 35-44 year olds.

It’s important that managers and organisations understand how different groups experience poor wellbeing so that support can be targeted.

Build a culture of openness to tackle financial stigma

Despite progress, financial stigma still exists, particularly for certain groups. For example, 57% of men with money worries have spoken to their employer, compared to just 19% of women.

Create a culture where employees feel safe discussing financial issues. Sharing stories from senior leaders about their financial journeys or hosting events at key times like Talk Money Week can normalise these conversations and encourage openness.

But it’s also important to ‘lean in’ to existing support structures in the workplace as these can be an excellent way to normalise the conversation. For example, there may already be mental health champions who are supporting staff: managers can signpost individuals to these mental health champions where they feel they’d benefit from support.

Conclusion

Line managers have the most direct impact on employee wellbeing. Equipping them with knowledge, confidence and resources is critical if we want employee wellbeing to be a focus at all levels and for support to result in an increase in both individual happiness and performance.

However, wellbeing must be embedded throughout the organisation – not just within HR. When wellbeing becomes a shared responsibility at the strategic level, it gains the momentum needed to drive meaningful change at all levels.