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By Anthea Ong, Chairperson and Founder of WorkWell Leaders, former Nominated of Parliament, Singapore

It’s time to prioritise mental health in the workplace. As it stands, many employers globally have taken steps to invest in workplace wellbeing. In APAC alone, investment in wellbeing has risen by 27% since 2020, with 50% of APAC employers allocating 4% of their overall company and benefits funding to wellbeing.

Despite these efforts, employee wellbeing is deteriorating. Recent data indicates that 38% of workers are at risk of mental health issues, with over 60% already suffering from burnout. An Ipsos survey this year found that 45% of people across 31 countries cited mental health as a top health concern, surpassing concerns about cancer, obesity and stress.

Intuitively, Board members and CEOs understand that corporate culture and employee wellbeing differentiate an organisation, its financial performance, the customer experience, recruitment and retention of top talent. According to McKinsey,  improving global employee wellbeing could create up to $11.7 trillion in economic value. With employee wellbeing showing no signs of an uplift, it begs the question, are leaders seeing employee wellbeing as an investment for business growth or merely a sunken cost, albeit well-intentioned?

Going beyond band-aids

Workplace wellbeing programmes have largely centred on individual support mechanisms; think counselling services, peer support networks, stress management training, yoga/mindfulness practices, and flexible work arrangements (a residual development from the pandemic restrictions).

While these initiatives are well-meaning, they still appear to be falling short of what employees truly need.  A groundbreaking study in the UK involving 46,000 employees revealed that these individual support interventions show no significant impact on overall mental wellbeing outcomes (William J. Fleming, University of Oxford, Jan 2024).

Focus on wellbeing programmes that support individuals, while essential as a baseline, have to date run in the background of organisations as a vertical offering. They only address the symptoms not the causes, do not impact the overall workplace environment and have limited take-up by employees.

There needs to be a change of approach with a focus on organisation-wide transformation of culture including leadership and manager skills and behaviours, workload and work design, team collaboration and creating a sense of belonging. This begins with leaders.

OTIS Asia , the elevator company, has taken strides to prioritise wellbeing through top-down engagement by leadership and bottom-up initiatives from teams. Middle managers in OTIS underwent robust training programmes to foster inclusivity and leaders initiated “Meet the people” sessions to break down and create a thriving “speak-up” culture. “When leaders boldly and publicly commit to their team’s wellbeing, it creates accountability and helps build trust,” said Stephane de Montlivault, President, Asia Pacific of Otis. “It also sends an important message that mental wellbeing is not a taboo subject and can be discussed openly.”

Addressing employee wellbeing as a horizontal business strategy impacts key touchpoints of the everyday employee experience. Singapore’s largest mobile network operator, Singtel, has a host of programmes to support the wellbeing of every employee holistically, from mental to physical to family and financial needs.  “Our employee programmes are designed to cultivate a strong sense of belonging among our people, to empower them to take on impactful work, while supporting their professional and personal growth and promoting diversity. We strongly believe that by creating such a positive environment, our employees can bring their best selves to work to not just contribute to the business, but the communities we support,” said Ng Tian Chong, CEO of Singtel Singapore.

At its core, a positive work environment is one that creates psychological safety in the workplace. Project Aristotle, a seminal study by Google, concluded that psychological safety, more than anything else, is critical to making a team work. The two-year project concluded that the most successful leaders were the ones who understood and influenced group norms that promoted a sense of trust. To be sure, this was not achieved by authoritative, single-minded visionaries, but rather those who fostered open communication, embraced individuality, and encouraged risk-taking within a culture of acceptance.

Wellbeing as a business risk

Beyond the evident benefits to business performance, there are significant risks tied to neglecting employee wellbeing. With increasing regulations, such as ISO standards 45003 and 45004 focusing on psychological health and safety at work, stakeholders now view employee wellbeing as a critical business risk.

The World Economic Forum’s Mental Health at the Workplace Initiative aims to improve the holistic health and well-being of employees, their families and society at large, by leveraging the workplace setting to promote preventative health. 

We collaborate with leaders across the public and private sectors, academia and civil society to increase awareness, share leading global insights and bolster the case for increased investment in workforce wellbeing.

In recognition not only of the performance upsides but real risks associated with poor worker wellbeing,   WorkWell Leaders, a collective of over 75 CEOs in Singapore, is focused on making workplace wellbeing a strategic priority for sustainable growth. It is also leading a coalition of partners to carry out an assessment of wellbeing programmes on business performance and risk. The results of the study will be published in 2025.

Ticking the box on employee wellbeing will soon not be an option, so let’s stop viewing it as an expense but rather a cross-functional business imperative for our employees to foster growth and the sustainability of our businesses.

Article was published by the World Economic Forum. Read at: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/prioritizing-employee-wellbeing-good-for-business/