You can have an incredible employee wellbeing strategy and a whole myriad of wellness initiatives in place but unless the employee has engaged with the very idea of taking care of themselves, it is money down the metaphorical toilet. More stuff on their endless to do list that they should probably “be seen to be doing”.

They believe that they are at work to work. To climb the ladder. To succeed. And there is no doubt a host of pressures surrounding them to do their very best at this – they might be the main bread winner in the family, need to move into a bigger house, fancy a swisher car, or are just damn right ambitious and seemingly hungry for it. And businesses LOVE those people. It’s what capitalism pivots upon. The ones that will pull out all the stops, any day of the week, no questions asked. Heavenly team member. When can we clone them?

And yet, these are the people we should be most worried about.

The people who are seemingly juggling it all. Leaning in. Our future leaders. These are the people who are most prone to breaking.

They are the ones who are quietly ignoring a persistent headache. Telling themselves it’s normal to wake up at 4am every day with an overwhelming wave of panic. Making excuses for the appalling food they fuel their bodies with because they don’t have time to cook. Wondering why they don’t just cancel that gym membership as they haven’t been since last January.

And they will tell you that they’re on top of their game!

The cost of not reversing these behaviours is at worst a host of chronic and terminal health conditions, at best, a slow road to burn out. Awful for the 61% of us who will at some point experience illness because of work related stress and seriously bad news for businesses who bear the enormous cost of absenteeism, reduced productivity and increased turnover.

Workplace wellbeing is a necessary response to our increasingly high-pressured world. For some time now we have all accepted that workers who are safe, healthy, satisfied and engaged at work will result in a more productive business. And corporate wellness is a trend which has mushroomed and is now worth £39 billion worldwide and is in double digit growth. But in our view, workplace wellbeing initiatives often lack impact because they aren’t holistic.

Employee productivity will not rise if you are only addressing the employee. You must address the whole person.

And you must not only educate but also lead from the front, put supports in place within the business and critically, teach people how to change their habits for good. Otherwise the best wellbeing training in the world will have a business impact for a few weeks tops and then taper off as even the strongest of willpower wanes.

Workplace wellbeing at its best begins by waking people up. Helping them realise that success in business and at home do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Welfy asks the difficult questions that cause people to reflect and pause. Guides them in recognising their own unique vulnerabilities and unhealthy behaviours. Only then, can they benefit from the host of tools, techniques and knowledge that we have to share to help make every day more productive, more creative, more healthy, not to mention more enjoyable.

We differ from other corporate wellbeing businesses because we go one step further, by making sure that true habit change takes place. By teaching the art of behaviour change and working with individuals to create bespoke plans, we ensure that the effects of our work endure. In other words, more bang for your buck.