The evolving wellbeing landscape — prevention

Wellbeing is now seen as a significant differentiator in the labour market. The World Economic Forum (WEF) in its Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that 64% of employers identified supporting employee health and wellbeing as the top priority for attracting talent between 2025-2030. We’ve reached a point where wellbeing is widely seen as a lever for growth and talent attraction, not simply as an employee benefit.

Business heads lead by example

That top-level commitment is increasingly visible in leaders’ own behaviours. More business leaders are publicly prioritising their own wellbeing, effectively giving both permission and encouragement for colleagues to do the same. Within the banking sector, for example, Bank Workers Charity has delivered almost 500 wellbeing-themed webinars over the last three years, and it is now common practice for business heads to introduce these sessions by sharing their own experiences of issues such as financial strain, mental health, bereavement or imposter syndrome. When CEOs and senior leaders talk openly about their own wellbeing journeys, they help to normalise help-seeking and embed wellbeing into everyday culture rather than confining it to HR-led initiatives.

The recognition that business leaders have a key wellbeing role isn’t new, but it has become more formalised since we last published.

This sentiment is increasingly echoed across the sector. Our charity was asked by another bank to contribute a webinar on the impact of money worries on employee wellbeing and performance. The content was for inclusion in leadership curricula, equipping future leaders to recognise and respond to the early signs of distress. This trend reflects a broader acceptance that wellbeing is now a core leadership capability, not an optional add-on.

Given that employee wellbeing will remain a business priority for the foreseeable future, it is timely to take stock of what has shifted since our last report. We will examine which wellbeing trends have accelerated, which have faded, and which nascent themes have now become established. We will also explore the new wellbeing priorities that are only just beginning to surface in UK businesses.

Mutually reinforcing wellbeing trends

The most significant development since the last report is the convergence of several distinct wellbeing strands. Whilst already evident in 2024, they have gained greater momentum, because they’re mutually reinforcing. Firstly, there has been a decisive shift towards prevention in health and wellbeing. Alongside this, personalisation has grown, technology has taken on an expanding role, and the emphasis on data and measurement has sharpened.

Each of these developments matters in its own right – together they are reshaping how organisations design and deliver wellbeing support. However, the shift towards prevention is, in our view, the most consequential, aligning with wider moves in public health and with emerging evidence that proactive, preventative investment in wellbeing yields better outcomes and stronger returns than reactive, crisis-driven interventions.

1. The move to prevention

Historically, organisational wellbeing has been largely reactive. EAPs, for many years the centrepiece of the employer wellbeing offer, were primarily there to support employees already experiencing problems – mental health concerns, relationship difficulties, money worries or legal issues.

Since the pandemic, however, the landscape has begun to change. Many large employers have recognised the importance of early intervention. In the banking sector, wellbeing leads now talk explicitly about prevention – addressing wellbeing issues before they become critical, and of encouraging healthy behaviours that prevent problems arising in the first place. The three new case studies in the Innovative wellbeing initiatives in the banking sector section of this report all exemplify this important shift.

Banks focus on prevention

UK banks’ wellbeing provision increasingly focuses on preventing problems becoming acute. We now see a growing mix of programmes and tools designed either to promote healthy behaviours or to identify emerging risks early. Typical examples include access to:

• Fitness, meditation and health-tracking apps
• Line-manager training to recognise and address stress
• Nutritional education to support healthier habits

Money worries – still the most significant employee wellbeing concern – are being addressed through financial education and budgeting seminars, and in some banks individual guidance on money management is in place. Access to same-day GP appointments has become commonplace, and health screenings are steadily becoming more widespread. Taken together, these resources help build health and resilience and reduce the likelihood that employees will go on to experience more serious wellbeing problems.

Why the shift to prevention? There is no single explanation, but the most obvious is that it benefits everyone. Wellbeing teams in large organisations now have a far more nuanced understanding of what drives wellbeing, and proactive interventions can have long-term, pre-emptive impact, whilst reaching large numbers of employees. For their part, employees have become more protective of their wellbeing and are more willing to take steps to build and preserve it. As a result, they are showing greater interest in employer wellbeing offers.

The costs of ill health

Health problems are also harder to treat, for both clinicians and patients, once they become entrenched, and they are invariably more costly: for employees in terms of their quality of life, and for businesses in terms of sickness absence. Rising private medical insurance premiums are another factor pushing employers towards early intervention. In 2025 businesses were facing significant price hikes averaging around 20% that were driven by inflation, NHS backlogs and rising claims. From every perspective, prevention makes sound financial as well as human sense.

There are also wider societal and political forces at play as the UK is facing a national health crisis.

Long and short-term sickness absence is at unprecedented levels. In 2025, average absence levels increased to 9.4 days per employee per year, compared with 5.8 days in 2022. Ill-health-driven economic inactivity has become a major national concern, in response to which the government commissioned the Keep Britain Working Review. This places prevention at the heart of its recommendations to businesses, as it seeks to reverse these trends.

A bank perspective

Among banks, NatWest Group, HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group all give primacy to early-intervention in their wellbeing strategies.

Alan Mochrie, wellbeing lead for NatWest, summed up the rationale for making the shift to early-intervention. “Our “Prevention is better than the cure” strategy has become the backbone of wellbeing at NatWest. By making wellbeing simple, proactive and built into everyday journeys, we’re helping people stay well rather than only stepping in when problems surface. It’s building a healthier culture, stronger engagement and a wellbeing offer that genuinely works for colleagues and the business.”

Over the last couple of years, higher-quality wellbeing data, the personalisation of wellbeing and digital wellbeing tools have made it much easier for businesses to transition from reactive to preventative support. Together they allow for earlier risk detection, more individually relevant interventions and lower-friction access to help. Each of these developments merits closer examination.

2. Wellbeing becomes more data-driven

Over the last two years we’ve seen wellbeing in the banking sector become increasingly data-driven. More banks are using data diagnostically to pinpoint and address health challenges in specific business areas. They are drawing on aggregated data from EAP usage, sickness absence records, employee surveys, and on occasions wellbeing apps, to understand patterns of illness across the business and then creating interventions to address the needs identified.

One wellbeing lead said that data has become central to everything they do, from identifying future wellbeing needs to measuring the effectiveness of wellbeing programmes. But it’s about more than that.

Site-based wellbeing

Another wellbeing lead explained how data had helped shape a site-based approach to wellbeing delivery. Data collection tends to be more manageable at site-level where wellbeing services can be co-ordinated easily with the help of facilities teams.

This localised approach also fosters a stronger wellbeing culture on site. Large locations, for example, can roll out comprehensive health assessments and other major wellbeing initiatives more efficiently, while also generating insights that feel directly relevant to both employees and the business. The resulting information feels more meaningful because it’s local; it relates to the people based there and reflects their workplace context.

Predictive analytics is the future

The growing sophistication of wellbeing analytics clearly signals the direction of travel. As analytics capabilities advance, data will play an increasingly central role in embedding a culture of prevention within workplace wellbeing.

3. The role of wellbeing tech

Wellbeing tech is also becoming a major driver and facilitator of prevention-focused wellbeing strategies.

The data generated by these devices can help people make better informed choices about their day-to-day wellbeing, from sleep and activity levels to stress and heart health. Where it’s possible to combine this with organisational data from the likes of Occupational Health, EAP’s and staff surveys it opens the door to predictive analytics and the kind of targeted workplace health interventions we’ve already touched on.

Wellbeing self-management

Access through work to a combination of digital tools, specialist health expertise and practical advice on lifestyle change is already a reality in some businesses and is becoming more widespread. Done well, it gives employees much of what they need to manage their wellbeing effectively and lead healthier lives – the ultimate goal of businesses in funding workplace wellbeing. Serendipitously, this also aligns with what employees say they want. Elevate’s research with 1.2k UK workers found that a clear majority now want to be proactive in managing their health rather than dealing with symptoms when they arise. This appetite is growing.

Wellbeing tech as an enabler

Digital wellbeing in the workplace has moved far beyond generic apps and wearables that support mental health or physical wellbeing in broad terms. A rapidly expanding ecosystem of niche tools now offers tailored support, including:

• Women’s health, fertility and parenthood
• Metabolic health and emotional regulation via biofeedback
• Managing fitness levels
• Monitoring health indicators such as heart rate, blood pressure and other cardiovascular markers

Used consistently, these resources can support more effective self-management of health and wellbeing by offering real-time feedback, reinforcing healthy behaviours and helping to surface problems before they become acute. Their ease of use reduces some of the friction that so often derails good intentions, especially for time-poor employees juggling work and caring responsibilities. And with hybrid working now a settled feature of the employment landscape, the role of digital technology as a convenient facilitator of personal health management is only likely to grow.

A good example of the innovative use of wellbeing tech can be seen in the Innovative wellbeing initiatives section of this report, where GoJoe’s digital wellness platform sits at the heart of NatWest’s highly successful activity challenge.

4. Personalised wellbeing

A final trend, and one that will be pivotal to prevention in future is the personalisation of wellbeing. Of the four mutually reinforcing trends touched on so far, it is the one that has developed least over the last two years and in wellbeing circles, it remains more discussed than delivered. Yet personalisation is already a clear preference — and increasingly an expectation among employees — not least because in many areas of life, they have become accustomed to tailored services and recommendations.

Personalisation as an employee expectation

Most employers have now moved away from a purely one-size-fits-all approach to wellbeing, as evidenced by the number of wellbeing programmes targeting specific demographics such as women, carers and neurodiverse employees. Many businesses are also introducing choice-based wellbeing delivery that offer life-stage programmes supporting issues like financial wellbeing or menopause. However, most employers are still in transition. Personalisation is emerging as an employee expectation and a direction of travel in wellbeing, but it is not yet the default in most organisations. Many still offer a standard bundle of benefits and light-touch signposting, rather than tailored support that is shaped by employee data and preferences. For now, few employees experience personalised support in practice.

But with AI now making it possible to unify all internal data sources at speed and scale, more sophisticated forms of personalisation are very close. Indeed, one bank wellbeing lead said they saw this kind of data unification as the most imminent practical application of AI in the wellbeing space. The success of preventative approaches hinges on personalisation becoming the norm in wellbeing delivery. And that seems increasingly likely with so many CEO’s viewing it as central to their wellbeing plans.