Every August, National Wellness Month puts individual wellbeing on the agenda through conversations about hydration, movement and mindfulness. For HR leaders, the more pressing question is what rising absence and the impact of changing employment rights mean for the organisation.
CIPD’s 2025 Health and wellbeing at work report puts average sickness absence at 9.4 days per employee a year, the highest in over fifteen years. Mental ill health is now the leading cause of long-term absence and the second most common cause of short-term absence. Only half of organisations trying to reduce workplace stress think their efforts are actually working.
Rising absence is already putting pressure on HR teams. The challenge is that the legal context is changing too, increasing the importance of getting absence and capability decisions right from the outset.
The ERA raises the stakes for workplace wellbeing
There have already been significant changes impacting employers and frontline managers, such as the day one rights to SSP driving up the cost and risk of short-term absence.
This creates added pressure to already overstretched HR teams and managers as they navigate the impact on resourcing and the bottom line, and with the rising wellbeing and burnout crisis, this is only going to accelerate.
Then from January 2027, another significant reform in the Employment Rights Act will shorten the unfair dismissal qualifying period to six months. In the early period of employment, every capability process, absence conversation and performance decision is now a potential risk for an employment tribunal claim.
As qualifying periods shorten, organisations will need a more consistent, well-evidenced approach to probation processes, absence and capability decisions. For many, the biggest gap isn’t just policy and wellbeing initiatives but ensuring managers have the confidence to hold supportive conversations, recognise warning signs and apply processes consistently.
The organisations best placed for these changes won’t necessarily have the largest wellbeing budgets. They’ll be the ones whose managers are equipped to recognise issues early, have confident conversations and take consistent action before concerns escalate.
Wellbeing drivers organisations can control
The same CIPD report found that a quarter of employees say work negatively affects both their mental and physical health. Those employees are far less satisfied in their role, considerably more likely to quit (34% versus 14%), and less willing to go above and beyond.
The three biggest drivers of poor wellbeing in the workplace are poor relationships with colleagues, high workload, and line managers who don’t help people perform. All three are areas where organisations can make a meaningful difference. While many wellbeing challenges are deeply personal, organisations have significant influence over some of the biggest workplace drivers through manager capability, workload management and healthy team cultures.
Employee engagement at all-time low
UK employee engagement sits at 10%, among the lowest in Europe and well below the 20% global average, per Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report. Nearly half of UK workers report a lot of stress on any given day.
Manager engagement has fallen nine points since 2022, with the steepest single-year drop landing between 2024 and 2025. That decline comes just as managers are being asked to handle more complex employee relations conversations under greater legal scrutiny.
None of this happens in a vacuum, as People Management reports three-quarters of HR professionals now show symptoms of depression themselves.
HR teams are absorbing rising absence, more complex ER cases and tighter legal timelines, often without headcount or systems that have kept pace, on top of the day-to-day weight of sitting across from someone else’s crisis, whether that’s a dismissal, a grievance or a mental health disclosure.
The organisations making progress are treating wellbeing less as a standalone initiative and more as part of everyday management. That means giving managers the confidence to act early, supporting HR with consistent processes and making better use of employee relations data.
Making wellbeing part of everyday management
Wellbeing needs to be built into how performance, absence and ER cases are managed day-to-day, because that’s where the legal and commercial exposure actually lives.
In practice, that means:
- Equipping managers to recognise early signs of wellbeing concerns and handle absence, performance and sensitive conversations consistently.
- Using absence, ER and exit data together to identify recurring pressure points and intervene before problems become systemic.
- Reviewing policies and manager guidance against the shorter qualifying period so decisions remain fair, consistent and well documented.
- Extending support to HR and people managers directly, not just the employees they’re managing.
As absence rises and the ERA raises expectations around everyday people management, these foundations matter more than ever – and taking the next step to ensure your organisation has the right support in place is now critical.
Three steps to strengthen workplace wellbeing
- Audit whether your current probation, absence and capability processes would hold up to scrutiny applied to someone six months in, not two years in.
- To ensure managers are confident handling sensitive conversations, put regular refresher training in place, rather than assuming training delivered years ago still holds.
- Make sure the data already sitting in your HR systems – such as absence trends, exit interviews and ER cases – is being used to identify patterns, target interventions and support better decisions, rather than simply reporting what has already happened.
National Wellness Month is a useful reminder that wellbeing isn’t separate from employee relations, manager capability or organisational performance. As January 2027 approaches, now is the time to review whether your managers, processes and systems are ready for the increased scrutiny that comes with earlier employment rights.
Explore practical wellbeing guidance
If you’re reviewing how your organisation proactively manages absence, builds manager capability or enhances employee wellness, the right combination of employee relations expertise, employment law, digital learning and organisational development can help turn wellbeing from an annual campaign into part of everyday practice.
View our resources to support your organisation this National Wellness Month on our dedicated landing page.
