Workplace Wellbeing Initiative
This Initiative brings together top thinkers and doers who will offer thought-leadership for a new vision of impact for wellness at work in the global community. The initiative offers inspiration and resources for amplifying the power of wellness at and through work worldwide. The Workplace Wellbeing Initiative advances workplace wellbeing as a strategic driver of human sustainability, organizational resilience, and long-term performance across the globe. We provide a shared framework and common language so organizations can move from fragmented, perk-based wellbeing efforts toward something more intentional, systemic, and human-first.
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Key Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is workplace wellbeing?
Workplace wellbeing is the overall state of how people experience work, shaped by the conditions, systems, and relationships within an organization. It shows up both at the individual level — how people feel and function day to day — and at the organizational level — how work is designed and led. At its core, it reflects how well an organization supports people’s health, dignity, and capacity to thrive and perform over time.
Question 2: Why does workplace wellbeing matter?
Workplace wellbeing directly shapes both human and business outcomes. When conditions are poor — heavy workloads, low autonomy, lack of support, unsafe environments — the result is burnout, disengagement, turnover, and lost productivity, all at real cost to organizations and economies worldwide. Wellbeing isn’t a peripheral benefit; it’s a core driver of human sustainability, organizational resilience, and long-term performance. For a fuller picture of the research and data behind this, see our full Workplace Wellbeing Framework. Link to Framework: https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Workplace-Wellbeing-Initiative-Strategic-Framework_Sept-2026.pdf
Question 3: Is workplace wellbeing just about individual habits and self-care?
No. While personal habits play a role, wellbeing is significantly shaped by organizational structures, systems, and culture. This includes leadership behaviors, workload, psychological safety, autonomy, flexibility, belonging, recognition, and employee perceptions of organizational support. Organizations must protect people from harm and actively promote engagement, connection, purpose, and sustainable performance through the way they design work, lead people, and build culture.
Question 4: What are the pillars of workplace wellbeing?
The Workplace Wellbeing Strategic Framework identifies eight pillars that shape workforce wellbeing and influence business outcomes: leadership and culture, connection and belonging, safety and environment, work design and capacity, health and capability, purpose and agency, financial wellbeing, and personal growth and opportunity. Together they cover the full range of conditions an organization needs to address to genuinely support its people. Link to Strategic Framework: https://globalwellnessinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Workplace-Wellbeing-Initiative-Strategic-Framework_Sept-2026.pdf
Question 5: What is the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative’s mission?
The Workplace Wellbeing Initiative is dedicated to advancing workplace wellbeing as a strategic driver of human sustainability, organizational resilience, and long-term performance across the globe. We provide a shared framework and common language so organizations can move from fragmented, perk-based wellbeing efforts toward something more intentional, systemic, and human-first.
Initiative Leadership
Initiative Chair
Author, Speaker, Researcher, Jessica Grossmeier Consulting, United States
Jessica Grossmeier, PhD, MPH, is an organizational strategist, award-winning researcher, speaker, and author of two books: Reimagining Workplace Well-being and Well At Work. For more than 30 years she has studied what drives sustainable human performance and helped organizations demonstrate the value of investing in the conditions that make it possible. She helps leaders identify those conditions and design them into new ways of working, for the benefit of people and the organization. Recognized as one of the most influential women leaders in health promotion by the American Journal of Health Promotion, Jessica serves as a Senior Fellow for the Health Enhancement Research Organization, Chairs the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative of the Global Wellness Institute, and serves on several advisory boards. Jessica has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed articles and holds doctoral and master’s degrees in public health, specializing in community health education. Learn more at: JessicaGrossmeier.com.
Vice-Chair
Enterprise Operations Executive | Strategy & Transformation Leader | Founder, Esencia Solutions
Ellenit Serrano is an enterprise operations executive, strategist, and wellbeing advisor working at the intersection of organizational performance and human sustainability. Over more than two decades at American Express and Mastercard, Ellenit led global operations, transformation, and strategic initiatives, developing a deep understanding of how operating models, leadership, culture, and work design shape both business results and the people who deliver them. Alongside her corporate career, Ellenit spent more than a decade studying and teaching the human side of performance. Certified in yoga, meditation, happiness, and wellbeing, she combines these disciplines with her experience leading within complex global organizations. These two paths came together in Esencia Solutions, the business and wellbeing advisory firm she founded around a simple premise: sustainable performance requires us to understand and design for both human and organizational systems. Offering signature programs, Ellenit helps create the conditions where people and performance reinforce one another rather than compete. Ellenit also serves as Vice Chair of the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative. Learn more at: www.esenciasolutions.com.
Initiative Members
Meet the renowned thought leaders in this field who are collaborating to educate and evolve wellness in this area of global importance.
Initiative Resources
View the research, trends, whitepapers, infographics and more from this Initiative, as well as a curated list of third party resources.
