Research published this April found that 43% of UK companies have no formal health and wellbeing strategy. Another 18% think their benefits are the strategy. Only just over half have something written down and regularly updated.
Meanwhile, sickness absence hit a 15-year high in 2025, mental ill-health is the leading driver, and the Employment Rights Act 2025 strengthens employer duty of care on psychological risk to match the rigour of physical hazards.
The standard response is a maturity assessment. Score the organisation, identify gaps, recommend actions. It’s useful, but it isn’t a strategy. It’s a diagnostic tool dressed as one, and the sector has been measuring maturity while health outcomes deteriorate.
A strategy that actually runs has four things a maturity score doesn’t. It is evidence-based, built on real workforce data rather than a self-reported questionnaire. It is legally grounded, directly evidencing HSWA, MHSWR, Equality Act, ERA 2025 and ISO 45003. It is continuously executed, not annually reviewed. And it has named governance: someone’s job to run it, measure it, and prove it’s working.
For most employers, the obstacle isn’t belief. Most HR Directors already know their organisation doesn’t have this. The obstacle is time, resource, and the absence of anyone to build it with. Consultancies diagnose. Brokers quote at renewal. Wellbeing platforms run campaigns. Nobody owns the strategy that sits above all of them.
In 2026, that’s changing. The organisations that will look unbeatable in three years aren’t the ones with the best EAP. They’re the ones with a formal, running wellbeing and people strategy, and a partner infrastructure that makes it live.
Alltoogether. The infrastructure your people strategy runs on. alltoogether.com/wellbeing-strategy
