When quality professionals gathered to explore how culture shapes wellbeing during change, their questions revealed the real challenges facing organisations today. Here's what they asked—and what they need to know.
Following our recent webinar on culture, wellbeing, for the Change Management Institute and the Chartered Quality Institute professionals from across the globe—from Nigeria to Norway, the Philippines to and change Botswana—asked questions that cut to the heart of what makes organisational change so difficult. Their questions weren't theoretical. They were urgent, practical, and rooted in the messy reality of trying to implement quality improvements while people struggle with overwhelm, resistance, and burnout.
Here are the questions they asked, the answers that emerged, and what everyone can do about it.
This question gets at something fundamental: wellbeing isn't a universal concept that means the same thing everywhere. It's shaped by the culture we work within.
The Answer
Peter Emms explained: "Culture influences how organizations frame what contributes to health and wellbeing. Organizations will frame wellbeing based on their values and purpose—they see wellbeing as the outcome from their values and the direction the organization is moving towards."
In other words, organisations naturally define wellbeing in terms of what they already value. A high-performance sales culture might define wellbeing as having the energy and drive to hit targets. A healthcare organisation might frame it around resilience in the face of patient suffering. A creative agency might see it as having the psychological freedom to take risks and innovate.
The problem? These definitions can be self-reinforcing and blind to what's missing.
Louise Ebrey added a crucial practical dimension: "Culture affects how we measure wellbeing. She gave her personal example of having to tick a 'mental health' box when she was bereaved, rather than having a bereavement category."
This seemingly small choice—a form design decision—revealed something profound about how that organisation understood (or failed to understand) employee experience. By only offering mental health categories like "stress" or "depression," the system couldn't recognise bereavement as its own distinct experience requiring different support.
As Louise Ebrey put it: "As quality professionals, we can help people understand that if you're not measuring it right, you don't understand how to change and improve."
From the discussions, participants suggested practical metrics for tracking wellbeing:
One participant noted the importance of granularity: "There's also type of sickness, isn't there? Like, what are people declaring? Is it mental or physical health? Because I think we got better at declaring mental health over the last five years, and less stigma with it."
This question exposes a fundamental flaw in how organisations plan change: we plan for workload hours, but not for human capacity.
The Answer
Louise Ebrey challenged the premise: "There's an issue with language—when we say 'giving 100%' we don't mean give every last drop you have; we mean give 100% of the capacity available, taking into account that people need to eat, sleep, clothe themselves, and get to work."
This linguistic confusion matters. When leaders ask for "110%" or expect people to "give their all," they're often unaware they're literally asking for something unsustainable.
But here's the business case for building in wellbeing considerations from the start:
Louise continued: "By taking wellbeing into account early, it probably isn't extra cost, because this is where things fail—people can't take it on board, so they shut down, don't engage, don't embrace the new change. Maybe they don't get involved early enough because they haven't got the capacity, and then we roll out something that isn't useful to them. By understanding what we're really asking people to do upfront and thinking about it, you probably reduce costs and get higher results."
The failure costs of ignoring wellbeing are enormous:
Peter Emms added important context: "Mental health isn't always embedded in leadership's opinions of what drives success. Society has become more aware of mental health over the past 10 years, but it's not as easily embedded into business leaders' mindsets yet."
This is generational. Leaders who came up in an era when mental health wasn't discussed may genuinely not understand its impact on business outcomes. Younger workers entering the workforce have been talking about mental health since school. This gap creates tension and misunderstanding.
This question reflects a common concern: What do you do when you can see someone struggling, but you're not their manager, not HR, and not sure it's your place to say something?
The Answer
Peter Emms offered clear guidance: "The initial positive step is to make it okay to be challenged or going through a mental health issue, to be stressed or overly stressed. Don't act like it's strange. Look at how they could be supported, either by you directly or identify who should have that conversation."
The key is to normalise the conversation. You don't need to be a therapist or have all the answers. You just need to open the door.
Peter continued: "Ask if they're alright, if they want to talk about something, or if there's an issue that needs support. If you can start to build those connections and help create a conversation to support somebody, that's a good first step. Do it in private and with respect—it's still a vulnerable situation."
Three critical points:
Peter added: "Identify who in your organization has leadership over mental health and mention it to them confidentially. Confidentiality is very key."
Building the right communication network is challenging. As Peter Emms noted: "It's very difficult to build the right network sometimes of communication to get those personal messages to the people who can provide the help. You might talk to your colleagues about personal issues and mental health issues, but the people who can really possibly support that might be management and leadership, and who's going to talk to them? Your friend isn't necessarily going to want to have to go and talk to your manager about it behind your back or even with your consent. It's a tricky kind of communication network to build."
The discussion revealed another layer: different levels of wellbeing require different interventions. As one participant noted: "There's different levels of wellbeing, isn't there? From the start of where things get tricky, to crisis point. So where are you going to see that show up? And where are you going to capture it? Because you don't want to be capturing the crisis points, you want to be seeing the earlier signs."
This is particularly challenging in remote or hybrid work environments. The ability to read subtle cues diminishes dramatically when you're not physically present. As Louise Ebrey observed: "I think it's easier to hide them. You can't pick up on the vibe of the room. It's even things like the body language. You can see me to here, but am I fidgeting underneath? Am I, you know, all of that kind of thing."
Another participant added: "It's that point where it's like, do I fit? You can't necessarily see how what you're saying has landed when so many people are off screen or saying nothing. You don't get those kind of small, micro responses, the nods, the smiles, the body language. And so that sense of like, do I fit? Can be amplified."
As Louise Ebrey emphasised throughout the webinar: "It's about listening to people and listening to their problems."
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply notice someone is struggling and let them know you see them. As one participant beautifully put it: "Sometimes you just want to give someone a big hug or the equivalent that's appropriate in your workplace."
This might be the most common frustration quality professionals face: Why won't people just do what we're asking them to do?
The Answer
Louise Ebrey's response reframes the entire question:
"It's about listening to them and relating changes back to their problems. She gave the example of rolling out new laptops—the organization talked about Windows XP not being supported and parts being expensive to ship from China. Nobody cares about that."
Stop for a moment and really absorb that. Your carefully constructed business case, your technical justification, your cost-benefit analysis—nobody cares about that.
Louise continued: "What they care about is: Is it lighter because I travel on the train with it? Does it connect to the internet faster? Can I run programs I couldn't before? Does it have a touchscreen for easier use on the train? Does it enable me to do my job and solve my problems?"
People don't resist change because they're difficult or change-averse. They resist when:
The solution is engagement, not communication:
"The key is to understand what problems people have and relate back to how the change solves them. Get representatives involved really early—you might be able to incorporate something people really want easily, or take out expensive stuff nobody will use."
This isn't just nicer. It's more effective and often cheaper.
Louise's advice: "Listen and involve people as early and as much as possible. Sit down with them over a cup of tea, go to where they are, watch their job, ask what their problems are."
An insight that emerged powerfully from the discussions was how the cultural spaces model helps explain leadership behaviour during change—particularly around the current debate over remote versus office work.
One participant observed: "I thought the container space, in a way, is a good sort of analogy of part of the problem that people have as leaders. They're worried about controlling the situation, and they're trying to bring that more into a contained space where it's easier to somehow feel that you can manage something when you see people."
This reframed a critical issue: The container space is giving leadership more security, and gives them a sense of psychological safety, regardless of what it does for everybody else.
The discussion revealed that different personality types feel happier in different spaces: "Some people are very happy to interact with their team, whereas other people were quite happy being at home, just getting on with the job. So you've got different personality types. Some people who have a huge need for certainty are very happy in a container, whereas others..."
But here's the crucial question that emerged: Are leadership concerns actually valid?
As one participant put it: "It's alright for leadership to have their concerns, but how valid are they? You'd need to investigate. Lack of collaboration—people might be talking to each other on teams, and they don't know about that, or talking via phone calls. The impact on productivity—I think if you hold people back into the office, it might well have a negative impact on productivity, because they're going to have to commute. And at the moment, a lot of people use that commuting time for work, and there's a lot more work going on, a lot longer hours are being worked, and it's quite productive."
The recommendation: "You need to really understand what the records of their concerns are and look at how you can deal with them in a way that would satisfy the questions that the staff have got, who are going to be impacted by this, and that they're reassured that there is a genuine reason why they're coming back into the office. It's not just something that world leaders want control and they can't have it, so it's a control freak type thing."
Another participant shared: "We had senior management change where I work, who only don't like the working from home culture, and I feel like it's purely driven by their personal experience or feelings, rather than industry norms."
The trade-off discussion revealed another layer: Organizations need to consider external market conditions. In one insurance company facing a sale of part of their business, instead of forcing people back to the office three days a week, "all leaders have a KPI on retaining talent." The choice of whether to mandate office presence or maintain flexibility depends on whether you're in an employee-centric or employer-centric market.
Looking across these questions and discussions, a pattern emerges: wellbeing and quality work are inseparable. You cannot deliver excellent quality outcomes when people are overwhelmed, burned out, or psychologically unsafe. You cannot successfully implement change when you ignore human capacity and treat people as infinitely elastic resources.
The good news? The skills quality and change professionals already have—measurement, systems thinking, root cause analysis, stakeholder engagement—apply directly to wellbeing challenges. The challenge is recognising that these skills matter as much for human outcomes as they do for process efficiency or product quality.
For business leaders, the opportunity is clear: organisations that genuinely prioritise wellbeing alongside performance don't just retain talent better—they innovate faster, adapt more effectively, and deliver higher quality outcomes. This isn't soft—it's strategic advantage.
As one participant reflected: "We are people. We are built for connection and belonging, and we are driven more than just by our careers. We're living and breathing our work every day. So especially in this change environment that we're in, if we're asking people to come along with us on a journey, we have to also show up and be present and go on the journey with them also."
The questions quality professionals asked weren't really about techniques or tools. They were about how to honour the full complexity of human experience while still delivering excellent work. That's the challenge—and the opportunity—for all of us.
Louise Ebrey and Peter Emms work with quality and change professionals to navigate the intersection of culture, wellbeing, and change. Whether you're facing resistance to a quality initiative, concerned about team wellbeing during a major transformation, or simply want to explore how to make your quality work more human-centred, they can help
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These questions and insights came from quality and change professionals attending webinars on "How Culture Shapes Wellbeing in Times of Change" hosted by the Chartered Quality Institute in October 2025. The recording and slides are available for CQI members on the CQI Learning Hub.
