How to Tell If Your Employee Wellbeing Programme Is Working
Attendance is not impact. A plain-English guide for HR leaders on how to measure an employee wellbeing programme, without overclaiming.
You have launched an employee wellbeing programme. People came to the first session, and the feedback form said "really useful". Six months later, someone in finance asks: is it working?
It is a fair question, and a hard one. How people feel at work is shaped by workload, managers, pay, health and life outside the office, so no single programme can take all the credit or all the blame. But "it is hard to measure" is not a reason to measure nothing.
This guide gives you a simple, realistic way to measure wellbeing and judge an employee mental health programme, plus the questions to ask any provider, including us.
Start with what you want to change
Before you look at any numbers, write down in one sentence what the programme is for. "Improve wellbeing" is too broad to test. These are easier to check:
- Give managers practical tools to notice and respond to stress in their teams.
- Help a high-pressure team recover between busy periods.
- Give people a regular, low-effort way to pause during the working week.
A clear purpose tells you which signals matter. If a programme is meant to build a habit, judge it on whether the habit continues, not only on whether people enjoyed the first session.
Look at four layers, not one number
No single figure tells the whole story. Look at these four together:
- Participation. Sign-ups, attendance, and who comes back for later sessions. This shows whether the programme is easy to reach and appealing. It does not show whether it helped.
- Experience. Short feedback after each session, with space for comments. This shows what felt useful, relevant or off-putting. It does not show whether anything changed afterwards.
- Behaviour. Do people keep practising, use the tools, or change how meetings run? This shows whether learning is carrying into work.
- Organisation. Pulse surveys, sickness absence, staff turnover and stress risk assessments. This shows whether the wider picture is moving. It cannot prove the programme caused the change.
The fourth layer matters most to leadership, and it is the easiest to over-read. Absence and turnover can change for many reasons. Treat these figures as background for a conversation, not as proof that a programme works.
Use tools that already exist
In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) publishes free resources for checking stress at work, including a Stress Indicator Tool built around its six Management Standards: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change.
Employers also have a legal duty to protect workers from work-related stress by assessing the risk and acting on it. A wellbeing programme sits alongside that duty. It does not replace it.
What about an EAP?
Many employers already offer an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), a confidential helpline and short-term support. The same four layers apply. An EAP is often reported mainly by how many people use it, which tells you the service is available but not whether people are better off. If you are weighing EAP alternatives, or adding something alongside an EAP, ask for the same clear measures from every provider. Our article on what employee mental health programmes can add beyond the helpline goes into this further.
Agree a baseline and a plan before you start
Whatever you buy, agree these four things in advance:
- What you will ask people before and after. Three or four short questions, asked the same way each time, are more useful than one long survey.
- What the provider will share with you. Anonymous, combined feedback is reasonable. Individual information should stay confidential.
- When you will review. A short review at the end of the programme, and another a few months later, tells you far more than a single snapshot.
- What a good result and a poor result would each look like. Deciding this early keeps the review fair.
Be careful with certainty
Treat any provider who promises exact percentage improvements with caution, even in a sales deck. Research on workplace mindfulness and wellbeing programmes is still developing, and results depend a lot on how a programme is designed, delivered and supported by the organisation around it. A good partner will tell you what they can reasonably expect and what is outside their control.
What we do at Akanista
We work with teams through facilitated sessions and six-week programmes, and we are happy to agree a simple way of gathering feedback with you before we start. We would rather help you build a clear, realistic picture than a glossy one.
If you are still choosing a provider, our buyer’s guide to corporate mindfulness workshops may help, and our guide to preventing workplace burnout covers the wider picture.
Talk to us about a programme for your team →
Frequently asked questions
How do you measure the success of an employee wellbeing programme?
Look at participation, experience, behaviour and organisation-wide indicators together, and agree what you are trying to change before you begin. No single figure is enough.
Can you measure the ROI of employee mental health programmes?
It is difficult, because many things affect wellbeing and retention at once. A more reliable approach is to track a small set of consistent measures over time and be open about what they can and cannot show.
How long before a wellbeing programme shows results?
It depends on the goal. Feedback on a session is immediate, while changes in habits and team culture usually take weeks or months of reinforcement.
Is an EAP enough on its own?
For some organisations it is a useful safety net. It is worth checking how people use it and what else they need, such as practical tools for managers and regular chances to pause and reset. Our team programmes are designed to work alongside an EAP, not replace it.
