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What if the most powerful thing a leader can do for their organisation isn’t to push harder for performance, but to prioritise wellbeing, starting with their own?

For too long, workplace wellbeing has been relegated to the sidelines of corporate strategy—often reduced to wellness apps, employee assistance programmes, or lunchtime yoga. While these initiatives can be helpful, they often amount to what Anthea Ong, Founder and Chairperson of Workwell Leaders (WWL), calls “wellbeing theatre.

The playbook, WorkWell Leaders Impact Roadmap, revealed that leadership wellbeing is business-critical, and is 56 times more impactful than individual stress management programmes.

Leader wellbeing emerged as one of the six drivers in a study identifying the most influential drivers of both organisational wellbeing and performance.

The consortium backing the initiative includes Temasek Holdings, UK’s Mindful Business Charter (MBC), WorkWell Leaders and Mindful Business Singapore. 

At the third WorkWell Leaders Awards on April 24, Prof Chua and Professor Au Wing Lok, CEO of the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI), jointly took home the Wellbeing CEO Award.

In a video screened at WWL’s awards night, PM Wong called on leaders to set a positive tone in building better workplaces.

Are leaders seeing employee well-being as an investment for business growth or merely a sunken cost, albeit well-intentioned?

WorkWell Leaders’ Chairperson Anthea Indira Ong introduces a paradigm shift in how organisations should view workplace mental health in this thought-provoking commentary in Straits Times.