According to a new report from the CIPD, Growing the health and well-being agenda: From first steps to full potential, the average cost of absence now stands at £554 per employee per year. It also reveals that:

• Fewer than one in ten (8%) of UK organisations currently have a standalone well-being strategy that supports the wider organisational strategy.
• The majority of employers are more reactive than proactive in their approach to well-being (61%).
• Almost two-fifths of employees (38%) are under excessive pressure at work at least once a week.
• 43% say that long hours working is the norm for their organisation (to a great or moderate extent).
• Well-being is taken into account in business decisions only to a little extent, or not at all, in the majority (57%) of cases.
• Less than two-fifths of organisations monitor the cost of employee absence.  

To date, many organisations’ well-being efforts have tended to consist of one-off initiatives that aren’t joined up, and therefore often fail to have a long-term impact in the workplace. To address this, the CIPD recommends that a proactive employee well-being programme - based on the foundations of good people management, leadership and culture - should be at the core of how an organisation fulfils its mission and carries out its operations.