Employee wellbeing framework: how to build one in 5 steps

More than a third of UK organisations, 37%, say their approach to employee wellbeing is much more reactive than proactive. They act when someone goes off sick or a team burns out. Then they move on to the next problem, and the cycle repeats.

Waiting is getting expensive. Sickness absence has reached 9.4 days per employee a year, up from 7.8 in 2023. And work-related stress, depression, or anxiety accounted for 22.1 million lost working days in Great Britain in 2024/25.

Most businesses already do something for wellbeing. There's an employee assistance programme (EAP), a mental health first aider, maybe a wellbeing day. The trouble is that these pieces often sit apart. It's often hard to say which ones get used, who owns them, or whether they're aimed at the right problem.

An employee wellbeing framework joins them up. Here's what a framework is, what goes in it, and how to build yours in five steps.

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What is an employee wellbeing framework?

An employee wellbeing framework is the structure behind your wellbeing support: the areas you'll focus on, the goals you'll set, who owns each one, and how you'll measure progress.

The framework sits alongside two other documents, and the three are easy to mix up:

• Framework: the structure. Your wellbeing areas, priorities, owners, and measures. It changes slowly.
• Strategy: your plan for the next year or two inside that structure, including which priorities come first and what you'll spend.
• Policy: the written document employees read, setting out what support exists and how to get it. Our guide to writing a staff wellbeing policy covers that part.

Strategies are becoming standard. 57% of UK organisations now have a standalone wellbeing strategy, up from 44% in 2020. A framework keeps that strategy from turning into a list of disconnected initiatives.

What should an employee wellbeing framework include?

A strong employee wellbeing framework usually covers mental health, physical health, financial wellbeing, and social connection, plus the quality of the work itself, because workload and management shape wellbeing as much as any benefit.

There's no single official model. The CIPD uses eight dimensions of health and wellbeing: values and principles, mental health, good work, collective and social relationships, personal growth, physical health, good lifestyle choices, and financial wellbeing.

Eight is a lot to run. Many employers group them into five pillars:

• Mental health: counselling, therapy, an EAP, and managers who can have a supportive conversation
• Physical health: health checks, movement, sleep, nutrition, and musculoskeletal support
• Financial wellbeing: financial coaching, pension education, and help with money worries
• Connection and growth: social time, learning, and development
• Good work: manageable workloads, a say in how work gets done, and clear roles

For the good work pillar, you don't need to start from scratch. HSE's Management Standards cover six areas of work design: demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change.

Each pillar then needs the same four things: a goal, some support, an owner, and a measure. The five steps below fill them in.

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How do you assess employee wellbeing before you build a framework?

Start with three sources: an anonymous employee survey, the absence and turnover data you already hold, and a stress risk assessment, which UK employers have a legal duty to carry out.

Run a short, anonymous survey that asks about each pillar, plus one open question about what would help most. Pair it with one-to-one conversations. Our guide to running a wellbeing one-to-one gives managers a simple structure.

Then pull the numbers you already have: absence days and reasons, staff turnover, EAP usage, and anonymised private medical insurance (PMI) claim categories if you have them. Your absence rate is a good baseline:

• Absence rate = days lost to absence ÷ total working days available × 100
• For example, 100 employees working 225 days each gives 22,500 available days. If 450 days were lost, your absence rate is 2%.

Absence only tells part of the story, because people also come to work unwell. Our guide to absenteeism and presenteeism explains how to spot both.

Finally, check your stress risk assessment. Employers have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. That's not optional. If you have five or more workers, you must write it down. The Management Standards give that assessment a ready-made structure.

How do you set wellbeing priorities and goals?

Pick two or three priorities where your assessment shows the biggest need, then set a measurable goal for each, so the framework focuses your effort and budget instead of spreading them thinly.

Let the evidence choose. If mental health comes up in your survey and your absence data, it's a strong candidate. You wouldn't be alone: mental ill health is the most common cause of long-term absence, named in the top three by 41% of UK organisations.

Then make each goal specific, measurable, and dated. For example:

• Bring the short-term absence rate down from 3% to 2.5% within 12 months
• Train every line manager in supportive conversations by the end of June
• Get half of employees using at least one health benefit each quarter

Keep the list short. Two goals that get attention beat ten that nobody tracks.

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How do you turn a wellbeing framework into support people actually use?

Match each priority to specific support, from benefits to manager training to changes in how work is organised, then make that support easy to find when someone needs it.

Map support to your pillars. Mental health might mean therapy and manager training. Physical health might mean health checks and musculoskeletal support. Good work might mean a workload review or flexible working. If you offer a benefits allowance, our guide to designing a flexible benefits programme covers how to set one up.

Support only helps if people use it. This is where Heka fits. Heka is an employee benefits platform that brings your existing benefits and thousands of new options into one place. They span mental health, physical health, finance, fertility, menopause, nutrition, and learning. Heka's AI analyses how people use their benefits and signposts the right support when they need it.

On Heka, 93% of users use their benefits every quarter, and over 80% of usage is for preventative health.

For HR, Heka's live data shows what people actually use. That means you can see which pillars of your framework are getting traction, and which need a nudge.

Who should own an employee wellbeing framework?

Senior leaders should sponsor the framework, HR should run it day to day, and line managers should carry it into every team, because managers are often the first to notice when someone's struggling.

Leadership backing is growing. That's good news. 74% of HR decision-makers agree employee wellbeing is on senior leaders' agendas, up from 61% in 2020. Give each pillar a named owner too, so a goal never belongs to everyone and therefore no one.

Line managers are the gap. Only 29% of organisations train managers to support mental health. Where they do, 73% say managers are confident having sensitive conversations, compared with 57% where they don't. Manager training is a practical way to make a framework real.

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How do you turn a wellbeing framework into support people actually use?

Match each priority to specific support, from benefits to manager training to changes in how work is organised, then make that support easy to find when someone needs it.

Map support to your pillars. Mental health might mean therapy and manager training. Physical health might mean health checks and musculoskeletal support. Good work might mean a workload review or flexible working. If you offer a benefits allowance, our guide to designing a flexible benefits programme covers how to set one up.

Support only helps if people use it. This is where Heka fits. Heka is an employee benefits platform that brings your existing benefits and thousands of new options into one place. They span mental health, physical health, finance, fertility, menopause, nutrition, and learning. Heka's AI analyses how people use their benefits and signposts the right support when they need it.

On Heka, 93% of users use their benefits every quarter, and over 80% of usage is for preventative health.

For HR, Heka's live data shows what people actually use. That means you can see which pillars of your framework are getting traction, and which need a nudge.

Who should own an employee wellbeing framework?

Senior leaders should sponsor the framework, HR should run it day to day, and line managers should carry it into every team, because managers are often the first to notice when someone's struggling.

Leadership backing is growing. That's good news. 74% of HR decision-makers agree employee wellbeing is on senior leaders' agendas, up from 61% in 2020. Give each pillar a named owner too, so a goal never belongs to everyone and therefore no one.

Line managers are the gap. Only 29% of organisations train managers to support mental health. Where they do, 73% say managers are confident having sensitive conversations, compared with 57% where they don't. Manager training is a practical way to make a framework real.

How do you know if your employee wellbeing framework is working?

Track a small set of measures for each pillar, review them every quarter with the framework's owners, and refresh the whole framework once a year with a new survey and fresh absence data.

Effort and impact don't always line up. 64% of organisations take steps to identify or reduce stress, but only 50% think those efforts are effective. Regular reviews are how you find out which group you're in. This checklist keeps them simple:

The times in the table are rough guides. Retention is worth tracking too: take the number of employees at the end of a period, subtract new starters, divide by the number at the start, and multiply by 100. For more measures, see our guide to employee wellbeing metrics, and for the finance case, how to measure the ROI of a wellbeing programme.

One caveat: a framework can't fix how work is designed. In the CIPD's 2023 survey, heavy workloads were the most common cause of stress-related absence, named by 67% of organisations reporting it. If workload is the problem, benefits alone are unlikely to solve it. So keep good work in the framework, with real changes to workload and management behind it. Then your benefits add support on top of a healthy job.

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Where to start

A wellbeing framework swaps reacting for planning. That matters while 37% of UK organisations still describe their approach to wellbeing as much more reactive than proactive. Assess where you are, pick two or three priorities, match support to them, give each one an owner, and review the numbers every quarter. Do that and you'll see problems coming before absence and turnover figures make them obvious.

Heka gives every employee the right benefit, at the right time, and shows you what your people actually use. See how Heka works, or book a demo to see how it could support your framework.

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Frequently asked questions

Is an employee wellbeing framework a legal requirement in the UK?

There's no UK law that requires a wellbeing framework by name. Employers do have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. Anyone with five or more workers must write that assessment down. A framework is a practical place to record how you meet that duty, and how you go further.

What are the pillars of employee wellbeing?

There's no single official list of pillars. The CIPD uses eight dimensions of health and wellbeing, from mental and physical health to good work and financial wellbeing. Many employers simplify these into four or five pillars, so the framework stays easy to run. A common set is mental health, physical health, financial wellbeing, connection and growth, and good work.

How long does it take to build an employee wellbeing framework?

A first version can come together in around a month: a couple of weeks to run a survey and pull absence data, then a few working sessions to agree priorities, goals, owners, and measures. Treat it as a living document. Much of the value comes from the quarterly reviews and annual refresh, so start simple and improve it as data comes in.

Does a small business need an employee wellbeing framework?

A small business doesn't need a long document, but the same structure still helps: know your people's biggest needs, pick a couple of priorities, decide who owns them, and check progress. For a team of 20, that might fit on one page. With five or more workers, you also need a written stress risk assessment, which can sit alongside it.

How often should you review an employee wellbeing framework?

Review your measures every quarter with the people who own each pillar. Then refresh the whole framework once a year with a new survey and fresh absence data. Don't wait for the annual review after a big change, such as a restructure, a merger, or a shift in working patterns, because those changes can move wellbeing quickly.