Workplace wellbeing and flourishing: eight factors for SMB leaders
Firstly, a small point but an important distinction. We prefer the phrase workplace wellbeing to wellbeing, because it helps leaders focus on the part they can influence. Around nine out of ten of the things that shape a person's mental health sit outside the workplace altogether. That does not let leaders off the hook. It tells them where their leverage is.
We offer up eight key factors to consider.
Positivity. Positive thinking, positive language, positive mental attitude and positive emotions all contribute to a positive atmosphere and a higher performing environment. A business leader has their colleagues with them for a small part of the day and creating an environment in which people can perform and succeed matters enormously.
Engagement with the work itself. Having good work to do is important to people. Work, and the role they perform, might be a relief from what is going on elsewhere in their lives. Having work that carries some meaning has a real positive impact and when leaders then recognise a colleague there is a felt sense of accomplishment.
Relationships. Some sort of social relationship, some respect for each other, good relationships. Ultimately it leads to trust, because you are properly taking care of one another. The test is whether the interest is real. Asking someone what they are up to at the weekend is a throwaway line in most workplaces and people can tell the difference between the line and the interest.
Meaning. Work has to have some meaning to the individual and that meaning needs to be aligned to the bigger picture of the business employing them. When someone sees that they are contributing beyond the tasks in their role, and can connect that to something larger, their workplace wellbeing improves.
Accomplishment. Where you, the leader, emphasise recognition.
Mastery. Where people grow personally and develop the skills, capabilities and desire to keep improving at something that matters to them and to the organisation.
Autonomy. Personal growth through self-directed development with people clear on their roles and responsibilities and encouraged to make their own decisions.
Purpose. A purpose provides light and a direction for many. Inspiring belief means a lot to us, it is our purpose, and it came from one of our own colleagues.
Taken together, the leader has a PERMA MAP: a framework to guide themselves and others towards a workplace where people care deeply about each other.
What poor wellbeing actually looks like
Bad wellbeing is close to an oxymoron so it is worth being precise about what leaders are looking at when things are going wrong.
Start with pressure, which is badly understood. Pressure is a good thing. Too little of it is boredom, and boredom is its own form of poor wellbeing. Too much of it becomes strain, and strain sustained for long enough burns people out. The pressure curve has been well researched for decades. The right targets and the right throughput in an organisation can lead to good wellbeing rather than working against it.
The reason so many managers get this wrong is that nobody has ever shown them how to get it right. Two-thirds of UK businesses do no training at all, and the large majority of people moving into management roles arrive with none. They are highly task focused and have no frameworks to help them engage a team, so the pressure in their part of the business is set by instinct.
The results are visible in the data. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report put global employee engagement at 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, at an estimated cost of $10 trillion to the world economy. Manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% in a single year, which matters because managers are the people setting the conditions for everyone else. The UK sits at around 10%. In the employee engagement work we do with clients, a score above 70 is world class, and very few businesses get near it.
Poor leadership further down an organisation is often condoned, because most leaders do not want the difficult conversation. That has consequences for retention as well as for wellbeing, since the large majority of people who leave an organisation are leaving their manager.
What good looks like in a small business
None of this needs a budget or a programme name. At QuoLux™ there are five of us and the practices are ordinary.
We finish every week with an ABC, so we live what we ask our clients to go away and do. Everybody has a voice, everybody is listened to and is visibly seen to be listened to. Everybody's accomplishments are recognised. Because it falls at the end of the week we also hear what people are heading off to do with their weekend.
We have values and we live them in every meeting, starting each one with living the values. The directors hold regular one-to-ones with each member of the team on exactly that basis.
People feel supported and they have flexibility. If someone needs to drop the children off, work from home or disappear in the middle of the day, it is not questioned. The work gets picked up and no customer is ever let down.
The hygiene factors are covered too: good working conditions, light offices, tea and coffee and fruit, the right kit and resources for people working at home, all paid for by the business. Health insurance was raised by the team and we put it in place, and it means something to people that the business responded. If people need something, they ask and they get it.
Customers are our number one priority and one of our values is personal touch. First and foremost we look after our own, because people in a good place are the ones who look after clients well.
Why most wellbeing initiatives fail
A wellbeing strategy is a change initiative and most change initiatives fail. The commonly cited figure is that around three-quarters of change programmes do not deliver what they set out to deliver and some recent estimates put it higher still.
So a wellbeing initiative that goes nowhere is rarely a wellbeing problem. It is a leadership of change problem. It was not thought through properly, it was not launched well, the communication was not there and nobody relentlessly followed it through. The frameworks and the evidence exist, from the Engage for Success reports onwards, and there is plenty of evidence that organisations which sort out their culture improve engagement, recruitment, retention and results.
Meanwhile a great deal of money goes into leadership development that does not have the desired ROI. There is some encouragement in the government's small-medium business plan, which names developing leadership skills as one of its five key recommendations. It is a point we have been making for a long time.
The leader's own wellbeing
In an SMB the person at the top has a disproportionate effect. They set the culture and the shadow they cast reaches every part of the business. Leadership and culture are two sides of the same coin and you cannot cut a coin in half.
That makes the owner-manager's own wellbeing part of the same question rather than a separate one. Around 91% of the leaders who come on our programmes tell us they have felt imposter syndrome, which is an internal pressure they are usually carrying alone. Networking is everywhere, but very little of it is a safe enough place to open up with peers. At QuoLux™, we create a safe and confidential environment where people can speak and share what they want to share to obtain the support and direction that they may need to move forward
There is a harder problem underneath it though. Most owner-managers are not looking for leadership development, because they do not think of themselves as leaders. It is difficult to know what to look for when you do not know that you need it.
The leaders who do address it start with themselves, with self-assessment and emotional intelligence and it is reflected in the small daily choices.
From wellbeing to flourishing
Workplace wellbeing is where a leader starts. Flourishing is where this is heading and the two are often confused.
Flourishing is what happens when people have the growth mindset, the skills and the conditions to deliver what the business needs, and to develop themselves while doing it. It brings throughput and productivity along with it rather than trading against them. An engaged workforce who want to come in and do good work, in a business that understands where its value is created, produces more.
The evolution most SMBs need is not a new idea. It is putting in place what has been known to work for twenty-five plus years, and educating leaders so that they can do it.
Interested in developing your own leadership and the culture of your business? Take a look at LEAD™, our programme for SMB owner-managers and senior leaders. Our next programme starts on 5th and 6th November.
This blog is drawn from an interview between Victoria Petkovic-Short, Managing Director of APT Marketing & PR, and Stewart Barnes, CEO of QuoLux™, conducted as part of Victoria's MBA project. Look out for her White Paper on Workplace Wellbeing, coming in late 2026.
Read more about MAP in Drive by Daniel Pink.
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