Follow us on LinkedInWell-being has always been one of my favourite topics to talk about at work, and not because it sounds nice or because it earns polite nods in leadership meetings.
I care about well-being because, when you get it right, the impact it has on people and performance is extraordinary.
It is one of the most powerful levers a business can pull, and yet it is still so often misunderstood, underestimated, or treated as optional.
I’m the People Director at Vagabond Wines, and I’ve spent most of my career in hospitality.
Over the years, I’ve become more and more convinced that well-being is not a “nice to have” or a soft HR concept. When it’s done properly, it creates meaning, drives performance, and builds organizations people actually want to be part of.
The fifteen-minute job that changed everything
To explain why I feel so strongly about this, I need to start with a job I once had for fifteen minutes.
I genuinely think I might be in the Guinness Book of Records for it. I didn’t get fired, just to be clear. I quit.
This was back when I was at university, interviewing for a job at an American diner. The interview itself went brilliantly. At the end, the manager asked if I had any questions.
For reasons I still don’t fully understand, I asked him, “Why should I work for you?”
Looking back, that was an incredibly bold question for an eighteen-year-old who was about to wipe tables for a living. But instead of taking offence, he smiled and told me it was a great question.
He explained that he lived by three values as a leader:
- The first was respect. Everyone would be treated the same, regardless of their role, and would feel part of something bigger.
- The second was development. Everyone would be trained constantly, encouraged to learn, and supported to grow, even if that learning had nothing to do with the job.
- The third was an open-door policy. Any problem, anything at all, you could come and speak to him.
I was completely sold. I thought he sounded inspirational. I couldn’t wait to start.
That moment showed me something incredibly powerful: how quickly someone can buy into a vision based purely on how a leader talks about people.
What happened next is why that story has stayed with me for so many years. Within fifteen minutes of starting the job, every single value he had described collapsed.
He spoke disrespectfully to his team, dismissed responsibility for supporting people, and couldn’t be bothered to train me. His words didn’t match his behaviour, and it was immediately obvious.
So I left.
That experience shaped how I think about leadership. It taught me that values are meaningless unless they are lived, and that well-being starts with how leaders behave, not what they say.
Crina Pupaza
The constant tension between people and performance
One of the biggest challenges in HR and leadership is balance. Too often, caring about people is positioned as being in conflict with caring about results.
Businesses are about money, productivity, and outcomes, and talking about people can be seen as a distraction from that.
I don’t believe that’s true.
At the same time, I don’t believe the answer is to swing completely into a “people-only” mindset either. If work becomes all about comfort, constant praise, and surface-level perks, it loses meaning.
People don’t want to be patronized. They want to feel proud of what they do.
But if we focus only on targets, metrics, and relentless delivery, people burn out. High-performing teams often don’t last because they’re exhausted, disengaged, or simply leave. Sustainable performance lives in the middle ground.
Teresa Garanhel
Learning from Satya Nadella’s leadership at Microsoft
One of the best examples of this balance is Satya Nadella’s leadership at Microsoft.
When he took over in 2014, Microsoft was in real trouble. Apple was outperforming them, innovation had stalled, internal conflict was rife, staff turnover was high, and the business was losing its way.
Nadella could have come in hard and forced performance through pressure. Instead, he took a more human-centred approach while still being clear about expectations.
He shifted the culture from “know it all” to “learn it all”. He created space for mistakes, creativity, and individuality. He took the pressure off people feeling like they had to be perfect all the time and encouraged them to try.
That shift built confidence, changed how leaders showed up, and transformed how teams worked together. Staff turnover dropped, creativity flourished, and Microsoft tripled its market cap in a short period of time.
That didn’t happen in spite of a people-first approach. It happened because of it.
What underpins all of this is meaning.
When people feel they are part of something bigger, performance follows. The data is clear. Strong employer brands hire up to twice as fast. 75% of people now research an employer before applying. Organizations that get this right see a 28% reduction in turnover.
And none of that requires massive spending. It comes from how leaders speak to people, how they listen, and how they behave.
What frustrates me is that leaders already know this. 70% of executives believe well-being drives performance, but only 16% believe their organizations act on it. That gap between belief and action is enormous.
How hospitality was forced to change
In hospitality, COVID forced this conversation whether we were ready or not.
I’ve worked in the industry for twenty-five years, and before the pandemic it was brutal. Long hours were a badge of honour. Well-being wasn’t discussed. You turned up, worked hard, stayed late, and got on with it.
COVID changed that. People started questioning why they were doing what they were doing. Meaning became central. It stopped being just about money and started being about purpose.
Businesses that genuinely give people that sense of purpose report a 21% increase in profitability. Again, not because they’re spending more, but because leaders are showing up differently.
Rebuilding belonging at Vagabond Wines
When I joined Vagabond, the business was struggling. There were around seventy people, staff turnover was at 168%, nearly half of new starters left within ninety days, and our Net Promoter Score was in the early 30s.
For the first two months, I didn’t roll out grand initiatives. I just spoke to people. I listened. Sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes for hours. People were angry about how they’d been treated and how leaders spoke to them.
So we focused on communication. We worked with managers on listening, on making people feel heard, and on helping them understand they were part of something bigger. That hospitality is fun, varied, and something you can enjoy.
It took time. Nearly two years. But five years on, staff turnover is 28%, ninety-day turnover is below 10%, and our Net Promoter Score is 96.
We didn’t achieve that by throwing money at the problem. We achieved it by changing mindsets.
We also changed accountability. Managers are now bonused on retention, turnover, and absence. If someone is struggling, the first question is no longer “what do we do about them?” but “what conversation have you had?”
Managers are just as responsible for well-being as HR. That balance of guidance and advocacy sits with them every day.
Sabrinthia Donnelly
The power of human connection at work
At its core, all of this comes back to human connection.
We don’t do enough of it at work. We give feedback and praise, but we rarely have conversations simply to understand someone as a person. To know why they do what they do.
Meaning is different for everyone. For some people, it really is just about getting paid, and that’s okay. Understanding that is part of respecting people.
For me, meaning is something I actively work on. Every morning, walking across London Bridge to work, I ask myself what it all means. I wrestle with it so I can help others do the same.
That brings me back to my fifteen-minute job.
That manager said all the right things, but his behaviour told a very different story. Leadership isn’t about saying the right words. It’s about living them.
Your words are gospel. People are always watching whether you mean what you say.
A simple challenge for leaders
My challenge to leaders is simple: audit your culture. Ask where you’re choosing performance over people, and whether leaning into belonging might actually improve results.
My dad, who was a global HR director in the eighties, always told me, “Always make the tea.” He was known for it because leadership, at its heart, is about treating people like human beings.
This isn’t complicated. It isn’t flashy. But you will never beat the foundations of human connection.
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