A new report from CoEfficient is challenging common assumptions about workplace mental health, suggesting that the way work is designed and managed plays a far greater role than is often recognised.
The CoEfficient Workplace Report 2026, based on 4,375 survey responses across 77 organisations, found a consistent pattern: employee wellbeing is strongly shaped by the conditions in which people work. These include workload, leadership, team dynamics and alignment with organisational goals.
Rather than treating poor mental health at work as a question of personal resilience or access to support, the findings point to something more structural. Outcomes are influenced by how work is organised, prioritised and led.
Figure 1. The box plots show the spread of organisation-level scores on the three headline measures, highlighting the wide gap between lower- and higher-performing employers. Source: CoEfficient analysis of staff survey data, CoEfficient Workplace Report 2026.
The results are stark across three key areas. Just 27.2% of respondents reported favourable conditions for workload sustainability. Only 29.5% were positive about workplace mental health conditions. Staff retention was somewhat stronger, but still only 47.6% favourable overall.
One of the most striking findings is the scale of difference between organisations. The gap between top- and bottom-performing employers ranges from 48 to 60 percentage points across the headline measures.
That tells us something important. The quality of workplace experience is not fixed. Some organisations are creating conditions where people are far more likely to feel supported, sustainable and able to see a future.
The report also found that the strongest factors linked to better outcomes are organisational rather than individual.
For retention, the clearest relationship is with alignment between employees and the direction of the organisation. For workload sustainability, the strongest links are employee health and team working.
Taken together, this points to a simple but often overlooked message: if organisations want healthier, more sustainable workplaces, the answer is unlikely to sit in wellbeing initiatives around the edges. It sits in the fundamentals of how work is designed and experienced every day.
Figure 2. The lines track how headline scores change across tenure groups, showing a clear drop among employees with one to three years’ service. Source: CoEfficient analysis of staff survey data, CoEfficient Workplace Report 2026.
Another notable finding is how experience changes over time. The highest-risk group is not new joiners. It is employees in their first one to three years. Across multiple measures, this group reports lower scores than both newer recruits and longer-serving colleagues. This suggests a pressure point that emerges after onboarding. Early support fades, expectations meet reality, and people are still working out where they fit. Joining an organisation is one thing. Finding your place in it is something else entirely.
The report also examined organisations that measured and then re-measured over time. The results here are more mixed, but still instructive. On retention, a meaningful proportion of organisations improved, showing that better outcomes are possible. However, the data also shows that improvement is not automatic, and that gaps between different groups of employees do not simply close on their own.
Dr. Jonathan David, co-founder of CoEfficient and author of the report, said the aim was to bring clarity to an issue often discussed in broad terms: “We wanted to produce something genuinely useful — not just broad statements about wellbeing, but careful analysis people can trust. We’re proud that this report surfaces clear, credible insights into working life and gives organisations something meaningful to reflect on.”
John Hibbs, co-founder of CoEfficient, said the findings reflect a broader belief about how organisations improve: “This goes to the heart of why CoEfficient exists. We help organisations see more clearly what is happening beneath the surface, so they can make better decisions about culture, leadership and the design of work itself. Our focus is not just on highlighting issues, but on helping organisations turn insight into practical improvement.”
The report does not claim simple cause and effect. But its overall conclusion is clear. If workplace mental health is shaped by the quality of work itself, then improving outcomes depends less on additional support programmes alone and more on the fundamentals of how organisations operate.
For leaders, that presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The scale of variation between organisations shows that better outcomes are achievable. But only if organisations are willing to look closely at how work is designed, how teams function, and how leadership is experienced in practice.
Download the full report here: https://www.coefficient-solutions.com/workplacereport2026
Author: John Hibbs – Co-Founder, CoEfficient
Photo credit: StockCake
