For a moment, it looked like Chief Wellbeing Officer might become the next must-have C-suite title. But it never really landed.
Too often the role was positioned as custodian of yoga classes and step challenges rather than a strategic owner of how work is designed and delivered. It rarely made it to the board, and in many organisations it became more symbolic than transformational.
The truth is, wellbeing was never the real end goal. It was a signal.
What organisations were really asking was: how do we build a system that does not burn people out while trying to perform?
That question points to the next evolution: Chief Human Sustainability Officer (CHSO).
Why this shift is happening
The problem is not that wellbeing does not matter. It is that it does not scale when treated as a programme instead of a performance system.
Wellbeing = programme
Human sustainability = operating model
It shifts the focus from how people feel to how the business functions. From apps and awareness weeks to infrastructure, accountability, and measurable performance impact.
The organisations that thrive over the next decade will treat human capacity the same way they treat capital: measured, managed, and renewed.
The data is clear
Deloitte’s 2024 Global Human Capital Trends report highlights a widening perception gap:
- Only 43% of workers say their organisation leaves them better off than when they started
- Only 41% of workers believe their organisation is advancing human sustainability, compared to 89% of executives who believe they are
That gap is a governance and reputational risk. When lived experience contradicts leadership messaging and understanding, culture becomes a liability.
Meanwhile, Gartner finds 69% of CEOs view sustainability as a growth opportunity. Many already track climate metrics. Human metrics are next.
If we can track Scope 1 and 2 emissions, why not burnout, skill erosion, and organisational drag?
What a Chief Human Sustainability Officer should do
A CHSO is not a rebadged HR lead but a new senior partner. They integrate people systems with business outcomes.
They hold accountability for how human energy, capability, and trust flow through the organisation and how those flows drive or drain performance.
Their remit includes:
- Risk governance: integrating psychosocial, psychological, and cognitive risk into enterprise risk
- Work design: ensuring workload, clarity, and autonomy are realistic and fit for purpose
- Capability balance sheet:measuring skill growth and employability as strategic assets
- Job quality:tracking fairness, stability, predictability, and reward
- Manager performance: building the behaviours that convert clarity and care into productivity.
- Human performance metrics: linking burnout, error rates, innovation cycles, and customer quality to P&L outcomes
This is operational performance in human form.
Who is already moving
- Deloitte has publicly advocated for CHSOs
- Aon has developed a Human Sustainability Index
- Unilever has integrated human sustainability into ESG reporting
- Healthcare shows what happens when wellbeing roles have operational authority: better safety, retention, and cost control
With people costs often representing 25% to 30% of total cost base, human sustainability is the most under-leveraged performance lever organisations have.
Human Sustainability is a profit-protection strategy
When organisations design for sustainable human performance, they gain resilience, adaptability, sharper thinking, faster recovery, and stronger results.
What leaders can do now
- Name it. Declare human sustainability a board-level risk and opportunity.
- Diagnose it. Use evidence-based diagnostics to map psychosocial and performance risk. (WellWise is at the cutting edge of this, ask us how we can help)
- Design it. Establish a CHSO or equivalent with authority over conditions, not campaigns.
- Measure it. Publish a human sustainability scorecard alongside climate and financial metrics.
Final thought
Workplace wellbeing did not fail. It evolved.
The companies that move first will win not because they are nicer, but because they are smarter. They will treat energy as a finite resource, culture as infrastructure, and human sustainability as foundation for long-term performance.
The rest will keep hiring Wellbeing Managers and wondering why their people still feel broken.
Penultimate Article of 2025
We are taking a break from 20th December – 18th January! So, next week will be our final article of the year.
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