A board does not decline workplace-health spending because it disagrees that people matter. It declines because the paper in front of it does not answer the questions a board is obliged to ask: what is the exposure, what are we required to do, what changed last time, and how would we know if this worked.
Those are answerable. Not with a benchmark, and not with an engagement score, but with a record of what you knew, when you knew it, what you did about it and what happened next. This page sets out what goes in that record, what the law actually requires, and the things measurement cannot tell you, which matter just as much when the questions get hard.
Four questions, in roughly this order. A proposal that answers all four is a decision paper. One that answers the first and skips the rest is an appeal to values, and boards decline those politely and repeatedly.
Question four is the one that fails proposals, and it fails them at the second meeting rather than the first. A programme that cannot say in advance what would count as it not working is difficult to fund twice.
Less specific than most people expect, and harder to satisfy with a purchase than most people hope. Two provisions carry the weight.
The general duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 covers health and welfare at work, so far as is reasonably practicable, and is not confined to physical safety. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to employees, and psychosocial risk is not carved out of that.
What the requirement does not do is tell you how, and that cuts both ways.
This is a description of where the duties come from, not advice about your own position. Whether a duty applies, and what satisfying it looks like for your organisation, is a question for your legal and health-and-safety advisers. ISO 45003 is guidance and is not certifiable; following it is neither a requirement nor a defence.
The useful research question is not whether wellbeing matters. It is which features of work predict harm, because those are the ones an employer can change, and they are the ones a board can be asked to fund.
The job demands-resources tradition is the workhorse here: strain rises when the demands of a job outrun the resources available to meet them, and resources include control, support, clarity and fair treatment as well as headcount. It is useful to a board because every term in it is something an organisation decides rather than something a workforce is.
The HSE Management Standards put that into six areas an assessment is expected to cover, and they are a reasonable spine for a board paper.
Two things follow that are worth saying out loud in the paper. The first is that these are properties of jobs, so the interventions are changes to work rather than services bought for people. The second is that they are measurable with published instruments rather than invented ones, which is what makes a before-and-after comparison mean anything.
One paper, four parts, in the order the questions were asked. The failure mode is a deck that is mostly context; the useful version is mostly record.
The current picture of the workforce, the date it was taken, the method, and the parts where you are relying on judgement rather than evidence. Say which is which. A board reads an unhedged claim as either naive or sales, and neither helps you.
The duties, the assessment requirement, and the guidance you are being measured against. Short. This section exists so that nobody in the room is deciding whether workplace health is optional.
The specific changes, the owner of each, the date, and the cost set against what is already being spent. Most organisations are already funding a good deal of this through insured benefits nobody uses, and a line comparing the two is more persuasive than a new ask.
The measure, the cadence, the comparison you will make, and the result that would tell you to stop. Include what you will not be able to attribute. Volunteering the limits of your own evidence is the thing that makes the rest of it credible.
A named owner with the authority to change something, a group that reviews the data on a stated cycle, and a decision log. Governance is the part that survives a reorganisation, and it is usually the part missing when a programme quietly stops.
This is the record the Alltoogether platform is built to produce: measurement with its limits stated, dated evidence, sourced comparisons only, and nothing below five people.
Put this section in the paper. It is the one that gets the programme funded a second time, because a board that has been oversold once will discount everything that follows.
Five limits, all of them real.
If a supplier offers you individual-level insight, prediction, or a sector benchmark drawn from their own client base, ask what the sample is and what the confidence interval is. Ask us the same question. The answers are the fastest way to tell a measurement programme from something that only looks like one.
Assessing risk is. The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to employees, and psychosocial risk is not excluded from that. What is not prescribed is the method, the instrument or the frequency, so how you assess it is a judgement, and whether your judgement is sufficient is a question for your own advisers.
Not on its own. The Court of Appeal in Intel v Daw was explicit that a counselling service is not a panacea by which an employer discharges its duty in all cases. An EAP is a support route. It is not an assessment, and it is not a record of what you knew and what you did.
Only loosely, and it is usually the weakest part of a board paper. The published national figures come from a household survey with no employer in it, and the industry classification is chosen by the respondent. It is context. The comparison that carries weight is your own organisation against its own baseline.
Then you know, and knowing is the position the law and the case law both treat as better than not knowing, provided you act on it. The risk that is worth worrying about is a programme that surfaces a problem and produces no decision, which is why the governance and the decision log matter more than the instrument.
This page is general information about making an evidence-based case for workplace health, for people who have to justify it to a board or an executive group. It is not legal advice, not health and safety advice, and not a statement about what any particular organisation is required to do. Whether a duty applies to you, and what discharging it looks like, depends on your circumstances and is a question for your own legal and health-and-safety advisers. Alltoogether is an appointed representative of Sante Partners Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
| legislation.gov.uk | Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, s.2 Supports: that the general duty on an employer covers health and welfare at work, so far as is reasonably practicable, and is not limited to physical safety Published or updated: 1974, as amended. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: the statutory duty is qualified by what is reasonably practicable, which is decided on the facts of a case and not by any general standard. |
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| legislation.gov.uk | Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, reg. 3 Supports: that a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to employees' health is a legal requirement, which is the hook the measurement argument hangs on Published or updated: 1999, as amended. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: the regulation requires a risk assessment. It does not prescribe an instrument, a frequency, or any particular method of measuring. |
| Health and Safety Executive | Management Standards for work-related stress Supports: the six areas of work design that a psychosocial assessment is expected to cover Published or updated: current guidance. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: guidance, not legislation. HSE states it does not expect an employer to meet all six standards. |
| International Organization for Standardization | ISO 45003:2021, psychological health and safety at work Supports: that there is an international guidance standard for managing psychosocial risk, which a board can be pointed at Published or updated: 2021. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: guidance, and not certifiable in the way ISO 45001 is. Following it is not a legal requirement and not a defence. |
| Court of Appeal | Hatton v Sutherland [2002] EWCA Civ 76 Supports: that what an employer knew, or ought to have known, is central to whether a duty was breached, which is why a record of what you knew and when has value beyond the wellbeing programme Published or updated: 2002. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: one authority in a line of cases, and later qualified. See Daw below. |
| Court of Appeal | Intel Corporation (UK) Ltd v Daw [2007] EWCA Civ 70 Supports: that providing a counselling service is not by itself a discharge of the duty, which is the reason a board should ask what changed rather than what was bought Published or updated: 2007. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: decided on its own facts. It does not make counselling irrelevant, only insufficient on its own. |
| Office for National Statistics | Sickness absence in the UK labour market, 2025 edition Supports: that national absence context exists and is published, for a board that asks how the organisation compares Published or updated: released 1 May 2026. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: a household survey with no employer in it, and industry is self-defined by the respondent. It is national context and not a benchmark for any organisation, which is the point made on this page. |
| Alltoogether | How this page was written Supports: the structure of the argument and the decision to quote no statistic Published or updated: rebuilt 16 August 2026. Retrieved: 16 August 2026. Limitation: this page is about how to make a case, not a source of figures. Where a number would be persuasive it is a number about your own organisation, and this page cannot supply it. |
The Strategy Audit works through what you currently know about your workforce, what you are required to assess, and which parts of that a board would push back on. It is a structured review with an output you can take to a meeting, not a sales call with a document attached.
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