What Deloitte’s Latest Findings Reveal About Workplace Wellbeing
Updated: 7 days ago
Since 2017, Deloitte has asked UK employers the same question every few years: what does poor mental health cost, and what's the return on addressing it. This year's report, the fourth in the series, based on a survey of over 3,000 working adults and a review of 26 independent studies, puts that return at £4.70 for every £1 invested in employee mental health.
The significance of the £4.70 figure is its consistency. Across multiple reports over nearly a decade, the core finding holds: mental health support that is well‑designed and well‑delivered consistently generates a positive return.
The Cost Employers Are Already Carrying
The return is best understood in the context of what it offsets. This year, 63% of employees reported at least one core characteristic of burnout; persistent exhaustion, a sense of detachment from their work, or a decline in how they are performing. Sixteen percent said they intend to leave their job within the year; 11% already had in the past twelve months, and 59% of those attributed the decision, at least in part, to their own mental health and wellbeing.
Read together, these figures describe costs employers are already absorbing: in absence, in turnover and in the quieter cost of people who stay but disengage. The £4.70 return is not about introducing new spending so much as highlighting spending that's already occurring, largely unmanaged, and offers a more deliberate way to direct it.
Where Expectation Has Outpaced Provision
The research highlights a widening gap between expectation and experience. Thirty‑five percent of employees now expect some form of mental health or wellbeing support, yet only 26% think that what is offered is adequate. That gap is often invisible until it becomes costly; it appears in exit interviews, in short‑notice absence, and in teams that have quietly disengaged long before it the organisation notices.
Closing this gap is, in effect, what Deloitte’s return reflects: not simply whether support exists, but whether employees experience that support as meaningful.
What Employers Can Do In Practice
Deloitte's recommendations centre on three principles:
Leadership needs to be visibly engaged. Mental health support works best when leaders are seen to prioritise it, not when it sits quietly in HR policy.
Identify pressure points. Organisations should be actively identifying which parts of the business, and which groups of employees, are under the most strain.
Offer a range of support, not a single fix. A varied workforce has varied needs, and single‑intervention approaches rarely serve everyone.
Where Nutrition Strengthens The Foundation
Deloitte’s model focuses on outcomes; burnout, disengagement and declining performance without examining the physiological foundations that shape them. Energy, focus and resilience under pressure are influenced daily by how people eat, sleep and recover, and when teams are running on empty, the patterns that drive cost such as short‑notice absence, reduced capacity and quiet disengagement follow.
Nutrition addresses this foundation directly. It cannot fix poor workload design, and it works best alongside a culture that prioritises mental health, but it offers something uniquely practical: it is a lever individuals can act on immediately, with benefits that build over time.
Within a broader wellbeing strategy, nutrition is one of the more direct mechanisms through which returns like Deloitte’s £4.70 are realised, not just reported.
For employers considering where to direct their wellbeing budget, that is exactly the conversation we would welcome.
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