The Critical Role of Wellbeing Ambassadors in Today's Workplace
Workplace wellbeing is sometimes seen as a nice-to-have perk rather than an essential component of organisational success. Yet despite widespread recognition of its importance, many organisations struggle to create lasting cultural shifts that embed wellbeing into their culture. This is why we work with leaders training them as Wellbeing Ambassadors. They become a powerful catalyst for sustainable change that transforms how teams approach health and performance.
What Exactly Is a Wellbeing Ambassador?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines an ambassador as "a person who represents, speaks for, or advertises a particular organisation, group of people, activity, or brand." This elegantly captures the essence of what a Wellbeing Ambassador does within your organisation.
Much like brand ambassadors in the commercial world, Wellbeing Ambassadors represent, use, and advocate for the "brand" of wellbeing and the evidence-based tools they've been trained to share. While traditional brand ambassadors might receive products in exchange for promotion, Wellbeing Ambassadors receive something arguably more valuable, training and support for their own wellbeing journey.
This arrangement yields three significant benefits:
Ambassadors experience improved personal wellbeing, which naturally enhances their performance. They themselves begin to thrive.
As thriving individuals, they positively influence colleagues through everyday workplace interactions.
Having experienced the benefits of wellbeing tools firsthand, they can authentically share these experiences with others, effectively promoting wellbeing practices and encouraging colleagues to try them.
The Business Case for Wellbeing Ambassadors
The imperative for workplace wellbeing initiatives has never been stronger. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), focusing on wellbeing is beneficial not only for retaining existing talent but also for attracting new employees as part of an organisation's value proposition.
Recent data continues to support this view. The CIPD's Health and Wellbeing at Work 2023 report highlights that organisations with comprehensive wellbeing strategies report higher productivity, stronger employee engagement, and reduced absenteeism. This builds on established research by Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener showing that greater wellbeing leads to improved success across numerous domains.
Yet despite this compelling evidence and increasing organisational investment in wellbeing initiatives, many companies encounter significant barriers to creating lasting change. These obstacles can manifest at individual, team, leadership, or organisational levels.
The problem isn't usually a lack of intention or resources, it's the challenge of creating sustainable cultural shifts that embed wellbeing into the organisation's fabric rather than treating it as a series of disconnected interventions or temporary fixes.
Transforming Culture Through Participation
This is precisely where Wellbeing Ambassadors make their most profound impact. They represent what organisational change experts call a "participative approach" to transformation. Rather than imposing change from above, this model encourages active involvement from people throughout the organisation in initiating, implementing, and maintaining new ways of working.
When individuals feel genuinely involved in the change process, their motivation typically increases due to heightened perceptions of control, support, and fairness. This stands in stark contrast to top-down directives that often generate resistance or perfunctory compliance.
Reviews of workplaces utilising Wellbeing Ambassadors have found them to be remarkably effective precisely because they introduce tools and ideas in ways that colleagues can relate to. As a result, people tend to maintain these practices well beyond initial training periods, not because they must, but because they want to.
This phenomenon aligns with core principles of behaviour change: when people recognise the relevance of new practices to their lives and experience tangible benefits, they develop intrinsic motivation to sustain these habits. The external push becomes an internal drive.
Beyond Mental Health First Aid
The concept of Wellbeing Ambassadors parallels the increasingly common practice of mental health first aid in workplaces, which focuses on training people to recognise and respond to mental health crises. While mental health first aid has proven effective in raising awareness and directing people to appropriate support, it primarily operates as a reactive measure.
Mental health first aiders are trained to assist colleagues who are at or approaching crisis point by connecting them with professional resources. This is undoubtedly valuable, but it represents only half of the equation. What organisations equally need, perhaps even more urgently, is a proactive, preventative approach to workplace wellbeing.
This is where Wellbeing Ambassadors become truly essential. Rather than waiting for problems to develop, they support colleagues in building wellbeing practices before reaching crisis points. They model and inspire regular activities that build resilience, enhance energy, and foster deeper engagement at work. In essence, they help create the conditions where mental health crises become less likely to occur in the first place.
Finding Your Organisation's Language
While I've defined the role of "ambassadors" in promoting "wellbeing," these specific terms aren't mandatory. What matters most is finding language that resonates within your particular organisational culture.
I've worked with clients whose teams better connect with alternative terms like Health Ambassadors, Thrive Ambassadors, or Strengths Ambassadors. Similarly, the "Ambassador" title has been successfully substituted with Champions, Leads, and even Wizards!
Regardless of terminology, the underlying principles remain consistent: these individuals gain deep understanding of proactive, evidence-based psychological tools that foster greater resilience, innovation, success, and engagement in the workplace. They then share these tools with colleagues in ways that feel authentic and accessible within your unique culture.
Creating Sustainable Impact
The true power of the Wellbeing Ambassador approach lies in its sustainability. Rather than relying on external consultants or temporary initiatives, it builds internal capability that becomes self-reinforcing over time. As ambassadors share their knowledge and colleagues experience benefits, momentum naturally builds.
This aligns with research showing that workplace wellbeing initiatives are most effective when they become embedded in daily operations rather than existing as separate programmes. When wellbeing practices become "just how we do things here," they transform from optional extras into cultural cornerstones.
Importantly, Wellbeing Ambassadors help bridge what Miller and Suff (2016) identified as the "stubborn implementation gap" between wellbeing knowledge and practice. Many organisations understand what supports wellbeing in theory but struggle to translate this understanding into consistent action. Ambassadors help close this gap by making wellbeing practices tangible, accessible, and relevant to colleagues' everyday experiences.
Taking the Next Step
Implementing a Wellbeing Ambassador programme requires thoughtful consideration of your organisation's unique needs, culture, and goals. While the principles outlined here provide a foundation, effective implementation demands customisation.
The investment required, primarily in training time and ongoing support, yields returns that extend far beyond conventional wellness programmes. By building internal capability and fostering genuine cultural change, Wellbeing Ambassadors help create organisations where people truly thrive rather than merely survive.
In an era where talent attraction, retention, and productivity are critical competitive advantages, this approach offers a sustainable path to organisational wellbeing that benefits both individuals and the bottom line.
References:
Cambridge University Press. Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ (2023).
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Health and wellbeing at work. (2023).
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Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Health and wellbeing at work. (2023).
Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions. At a tipping point? Workplace mental health and wellbeing. Deloitte LLP (2017) doi:10.1007/s11661-016-3340-y.
Blaug, R., Kenyon, A. & Lekhi, R. Stress at Work: A report prepared for the work foundation's principal partners. Work Found. 1–10 (2007).
Robinson, M., Tilford, S., Branney, P. & Kinsella, K. Championing mental health at work: Emerging practice from innovative projects in the UK. Health Promot. Int. 29, 583–595 (2014).
Xerox Corporation. Working well: A global survey of workforce wellbeing strategies. https://www.globalhealthyworkplace.org/casestudies/2016_Global_Wellbeing_Survey_Executive-Summary.pdf (2016).
Miller, J. & Suff, R. Addressing the stubborn implementation gap in practice. in Moving the employee well-being agenda forward 50 (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2016).
MHFA England. Summary of evaluations of Mental Health First Aid. (2017).