Your Wellbeing Strategy Is Working.

14 Oct

So Why Don’t Your People Feel It?

There is something quietly uncomfortable about one of the headline findings from Epassi UK’s Great Employee Benefits Study 2026.

82% of employers believe they provide dedicated support for employee wellbeing.

Yet only 67% of employees say they actually feel supported.

That is a 15-percentage point gap between intention and experience.

And that gap matters.

Because most organisations are not ignoring wellbeing. Quite the opposite. They are investing in employee assistance programmes, wellbeing platforms, health assessments, counselling, fitness benefits, coaching, mental health support, flexible benefits and resilience programmes.

The support is there. The question is whether people feel it.

At MOCO, that distinction is everything.

Because wellbeing is not measured by what sits in a benefits portal. It is measured by what an employee experiences on an ordinary Tuesday when life is difficult.

Provision is not the same as support

An organisation can offer an excellent EAP and still have an employee who feels completely alone.

It can provide a meditation app while someone is carrying an impossible workload.
It can promote resilience while people feel unable to challenge unrealistic expectations.
It can encourage conversations about mental health while employees quietly worry that being honest will affect how they are perceived.

None of that necessarily means the benefit itself is poor. It means wellbeing cannot be understood simply by counting what has been provided.

The organisation may be measuring provision.

The employee is describing experience.

Those are two very different things.

The research makes that gap visible

The same study found that 74% of employers say they encourage employees to be physically active, yet only 53% of employees say they experience that encouragement.

Meanwhile, 75% of employees say fitness benefits matter when choosing an employer, but only 41% currently have access to them.

Perhaps even more tellingly, almost half of UK employees are not using all the benefits available to them. That should make organisations curious. Not defensive. Because the response does not necessarily need to be, “We need more benefits.”

It might be:

Why are people not using the support we already provide?
Do they know it exists?
Does it feel relevant to their lives?
Do they have enough time or energy to access it?
Do they trust it?
Does the culture around them reinforce the same message the benefit is supposed to send?

Because there is very little point telling employees to prioritise wellbeing if the working environment makes doing so feel impossible.

This is actually good news

That might sound counterintuitive. A wellbeing gap does not sound particularly positive. But there is something encouraging hidden inside these figures.

Employers already care. 82% believe they are providing dedicated support.

That means the intention is there.
Budgets are being allocated.
Leaders are talking about wellbeing.
Organisations understand that supporting people matters.
We are not starting from zero.

The opportunity now is to make that investment land more effectively.

To move from:

“Look at everything we offer.”

to:

“How does it actually feel to work here?”

That is a far more powerful conversation.

Start with the cause, not only the symptom

For years, workplace wellbeing has often centred on helping employees cope better.

Stress management.
Mindfulness.
Resilience.
Exercise.
Sleep.

Those things can all be useful.

But sometimes there is a more important question:

What is causing the stress in the first place?

If the answer is excessive workload, poor job design, constant organisational change, lack of autonomy, inadequate resources, an unsafe management culture or impossible expectations, then teaching somebody breathing techniques can only take us so far.

You cannot yoga your way out of an unsustainable workload.
You cannot meditate your way around a manager you are frightened to challenge.
You cannot build resilience indefinitely against working conditions that are continually wearing people down.

Supporting people to cope matters.

Creating conditions that do not constantly require coping matters too.

And the best wellbeing strategies understand the difference.

People are telling us that the wider experience of work matters

One of the most striking findings in the research was about money.

67% of UK employees said they were more likely to commit to their work when their employer invested in wellbeing rather than simply increasing salary.

Among Gen Z employees, that rose to 72%. And 37% said they would be prepared to trade some salary for better benefits.

That does not mean pay suddenly stops mattering. Fair pay is fundamental. But it does suggest that employees increasingly judge an organisation by the entire experience of working there.

Does work fit into my life?
Do I feel valued?
Do I trust my manager?
Does my employer seem to care about me as a person rather than simply as a unit of productivity?
What happens when something in my life changes?

That last question is where MOCO becomes particularly interested.

Because life does change

People have babies.
They lose parents.
They become carers.
They receive diagnoses.
They experience pregnancy loss.
Relationships end.
Children need more support.
Employees return after months away.

And suddenly someone who has always been confident and capable can find themselves navigating an entirely different life.

The organisation may already have a policy for that moment. What the person often needs is help living through it.

That is the gap MOCO was created to sit within.

Most organisations have a policy for when life happens. MOCO supports the person living through it.

A bereavement policy can provide leave.

It cannot tell someone how to regain confidence when they return.

A maternity policy can protect someone's role.

It cannot help them work out what ambition looks like after their life has fundamentally changed.

A sickness policy can support absence.

It cannot always help someone navigate the fear and uncertainty that comes with returning after illness.

A carer's policy can offer flexibility.

It cannot remove the emotional load of suddenly being responsible for somebody else.

That is why wellbeing cannot stop at provision.

AI is making the human piece even more important

The research also reveals another fascinating gap.

73% of employers believe AI will improve employee wellbeing.

Only 53% of employees agree.

Again, the difference is not necessarily about whether either side is right.

It is about perspective.

Employers can see efficiency.

Less administration.
Faster access to information.
Reduced repetitive work.

Employees may see something else.

Will the time saved simply lead to higher expectations?
Will I now be expected to produce more?
Will my role still exist?
Will the things I know still be valuable?
Do I still matter here?

That final question may become one of the most important workplace questions of the next decade. Technology may be able to do more. But people will still need to feel that their contribution matters. And the irony is that the more sophisticated AI becomes, the more valuable our uniquely human capabilities may become.

Judgement.
Creativity.
Empathy.
Curiosity.
Relationships.
Trust.
Connection.

But those qualities do not appear automatically because a business needs them.

They need the right conditions.

It is difficult to be creative when you are exhausted.
It is difficult to show empathy when you are overloaded.
It is difficult to collaborate when there is no trust.
It is difficult to think clearly when every day feels like survival.

If organisations want the best of what humans can bring to work, then human wellbeing cannot be an afterthought.

Managers sit right in the middle of this

Benefits matter. But employees often experience an organisation through their manager.

You can have the best wellbeing platform in the world, but if somebody feels unable to tell their manager that they are struggling, the platform cannot fix that.

A supportive manager can make a policy feel human.
A poor one can make an excellent policy almost meaningless.

This is why the answer cannot simply be more benefits.

It is also about building environments where people can actually use them.

Where taking the wellbeing day does not create guilt.
Where flexible working does not quietly damage career progression.
Where asking for help is not seen as lack of resilience.
Where managers know how to listen without feeling they have to solve everything.

And where there are appropriate places to signpost people when a situation needs more than a supportive conversation.

Perhaps the question needs to change

Instead of asking employees:

“Do you know what wellbeing benefits we offer?”

we might ask:

“What makes it easier for you to do your best work here?”

And then:

“What gets in the way?”

Are workloads realistic?
Do people have enough autonomy?
Are managers equipped to support them?
Can employees speak honestly?
Do people feel respected?
Do benefits reflect the lives employees are actually living?
Do people returning from major life events feel supported after the formal leave has ended?

And crucially:

Are we prepared to act on what they tell us?

Because listening without change simply creates another survey.

Organisations do not necessarily need to spend more

This may be the most hopeful part.

Closing the wellbeing gap does not automatically mean doubling the wellbeing budget.

Sometimes it means making existing support easier to find.
Sometimes it means simplifying.
Sometimes it means training managers.
Sometimes it means listening more carefully.
Sometimes it means stopping something that is making work unnecessarily difficult.
And sometimes it means investing in more targeted support at the moments when employees are most likely to need it.

That is where transitional coaching can be so powerful.

Not another generic benefit for everybody.

A specific intervention at a specific point in someone's working life.

The right support, at the right moment.

This is where investment can become experience

There is already enormous goodwill behind workplace wellbeing.

Businesses are spending money.
Leaders are paying attention.
People teams are building programmes with genuine intention.

The next stage is making sure employees actually feel the benefit of that investment.

Because the gap between “we provide support” and “I feel supported” is not simply a wellbeing problem.

It is an opportunity.

An opportunity to listen better.
To personalise support.
To build manager confidence.
To make benefits more accessible.
To create healthier working conditions.
And to support people through the moments in life when generic wellbeing provision simply is not enough.

That is something to feel optimistic about.

Because employers do not need to begin caring.

They already do.

Now the challenge is making sure employees can actually feel it.

And that may be one of the most important shifts in workplace wellbeing yet.

The future of wellbeing is not about offering more.

It is about making support more human, more relevant and more felt.

At MOCO, that is exactly the kind of change we want to be part of.

Chloe Mouser