Impact in Wellbeing event '26: key lessons

We brought HR professionals and wellbeing leads together in the heart of Antwerp for our Impact in Wellbeing event. An afternoon around one central question: how do you make the impact of mental wellbeing concrete and measurable? Three sessions, three angles, and a lot of exchange between organizations. You will find the key insights below.

Return on prevention: what prevention really delivers

David Verwimp of IDEWE brought figures on the return on investments in wellbeing. The central message: doing nothing costs a lot of money, and even small investments already deliver demonstrable results.

Based on research with 37 Belgian employers, IDEWE sees clear links between wellbeing investments and engagement and dropout. Employers who invest in psychosocial support score better on satisfaction, work engagement, intention to stay and lower dropout. An investment of around €100 per person per year already makes a measurable difference. Ergonomics also delivers tangible results: musculoskeletal complaints quickly cost organizations thousands of euros per employee per year in care and absenteeism costs. At one retail client, around 1.6 million euros in avoidable costs was saved over eight years by investing consistently in ergonomics policy.

The message for HR: figures make wellbeing something you can discuss at the board table, and that starts with measuring.

Read the white paper on the studies here.

Panel discussion: What works in practice

In a panel discussion on wellbeing at work, Inge Janssen (HR Staff Officer Flanders, CM), Vincent Van Dam (Talent Business Partner Wellbeing & Engagement, Imec) and Amelie Caes (HR Project Coordinator, Sweco) shared how they approach wellbeing policy in their organizations.

How they put it into practice certainly differs, but four shared pieces of advice came up for HR teams that want to work on wellbeing.

Four pieces of advice

Work with focus. Two or three themes a year at most. Better to work with quality and focus than on scattered efforts that each get a little attention.

Build a clear framework. Take time for structure, a well-founded model and clear responsibilities. Work in layers: crisis intervention for those who need it urgently, support for the 'middle group', and further growth for those who are already doing well.

Listen to your employees. Wellbeing only works when it matches what your team needs. Actively ask for their feedback before you decide, and involve them in what you roll out.

Work on buy-in from management. Wellbeing has to be a strategic choice, not a nice-to-have. That calls for ownership as high up in the organization as possible.

Workshop: measuring wellbeing that counts

After the content session, HR professionals from different organizations got to work themselves. The focus stayed close to the central message of the masterclass: defining challenges, setting measurable goals and looking at how to measure potential impact well.

In smaller groups there were lively discussions about which KPIs are relevant for each context, which solutions turn out to be workable, and how to measure impact concretely without having to wait for 5-year surveys. It became clear how solutions that seem obvious in one organization just do not work in another.

What many participants also took away were concrete approaches from peers facing the same questions.

Would you like to use the workshop materials yourself? Send your request here and we will send them to you.

What's next?

Do you find it hard to make a solid case for the impact of your wellbeing policy at the board table? We are happy to think with you about an approach that brings figures and human support together. Book a conversation using the button below.