Your wellbeing strategy might have a manager problem

According to a recent Gallup report, just 22% of managers are currently engaged at work — down significantly from the "manager engagement premium" we've long relied on, where managers consistently outpaced their teams on engagement metrics. Today, managers are sitting at roughly the same engagement levels as the people they lead.

At the same time, 45% of managers report feeling stressed every single day. With that stress comes a ripple effect: our latest Science of Reward research shows only 29% of employees say they receive regular recognition from their manager, despite 88% finding it meaningful.

The data tells a story that's hard to ignore. When managers are disengaged and stretched, recognition drops, team wellbeing suffers, and your strategy stalls.

Tracey Paxton, Clinical Director here at Perkbox, talks about wellbeing as a reservoir: not fixed, it's constantly being filled and drained.

Big life events can crack the dam, but so can the quieter, daily pressures of work, like poor communication, lack of support, and feeling undervalued. Over time, these slowly drain away the reservoir without anyone noticing. 

Crucially, managers influence whether their team's reservoir stays topped up. When they're checking in, recognising effort, and creating space for honest conversations, they're actively replenishing the people around them. 

But when they’re so focused on topping up their team’s reservoirs, they can forget to look after their own. That’s the part that often gets overlooked: many managers are running low and don't even realise it.

There's a psychological phenomenon called emotional contagion — the tendency to mirror the emotional states of the people around us. Research consistently shows that employees mirror their managers more than any other colleague, because of the inherent power and influence that relationship carries.

And it works in reverse, too. A stressed, reactive manager who never switches off creates teams who feel they can't either - but a manager who intentionally creates space, celebrates wins, makes time for meaningful check ins and models healthy boundaries spreads that too.

The manager isn't just a delivery mechanism for your wellbeing strategy. They're the environment in which it either thrives or quietly dies.

The mistake most organisations make is treating managers as the solution to their wellbeing problem, without first treating managers as part of it.

Managers are being squeezed from both sides: pressure from their teams and pressure from above. They’re often operating in a reactive headspace with limited time for planning, let alone culture-building.

Asking them to embed a wellbeing strategy on top of that, without proper support or change, is asking for a behaviour shift without removing the barriers to it.

The organisations getting this right are doing three things differently:

They're understanding blockers first. Before rolling out any initiative, they're asking managers what's actually getting in their way. Without that insight, solutions are at risk of being well-intentioned but unworkable.

They're involving managers early. Rather than presenting wellbeing as something being done to managers, they're bringing them into the design process. Managers who help shape an initiative are far more likely to deliver it well and own it.

They're making it feel natural, not additional. The goal is to embed small, intentional behaviours into what managers already do: a genuine check-in at the start of a one-to-one, a moment of recognition at the end of a tough week and ending difficult conversations on a constructive note.

We went deeper into the manager wellbeing gap in a session with Perkbox's Head of Talent and Employee Development and our Clinical Director. Watch the on-demand session here.