Do firms focused on healthy work perform better commercially?
A portfolio of 100 companies with the highest scores for wellbeing outperforms the market, confirming the message of a key report from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey
Prioritising employee health isn’t just a social imperative – it’s good for business according to new research published by McKinsey, which examined a ‘Wellbeing 100’ portfolio made up of 100 companies with the highest scores for employee wellbeing on the job-seeking website Indeed.
This portfolio of wellbeing leaders outperformed major market indexes – including the Standard & Poor 500, Nasdaq composite, and Russell 3000 – between 2021 and 2024, confirming that investing in employee health can substantially increase economic returns.
The McKinsey analysis was based on a study by researchers at the University of Oxford (Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Micah Kaats, and George Ward, ‘Workplace wellbeing and firm performance’, Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford working paper number 2304, July 2024). It follows on the heels of a collaboration between the McKinsey Health Institute and the World Economic Forum which set out to quantify the financial effect of investing in health at work.
Range of benefits
According to their joint report, Thriving Workplaces: How Employers can Improve Productivity and Change Lives, enhanced employee health and wellbeing could generate up to US $11.7 trillion in global economic value as well as other benefits such as productivity gains, reduced absenteeism, lower healthcare costs, better adaptation to ESG and regulatory pressures, and heightened employee engagement and retention.
The report sets out six ‘evergreen principles’ for employers seeking to address workforce health in a positive way, underscoring the message that wellbeing in the workplace is not just an add-on but critical to commercial success.
Read more in-depth coverage and analysis of the joint World Economic Forum-McKinsey report in our Innovation Zone, which provides premium content for WORKTECH Academy members and partners.
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Read the full report, Thriving Workplaces: How Employers can Improve Productivity and Change Lives, here.
