How To Create Wellbeing Programmes That Inspire Individual & Organisational Change With Stephen Robinson

To start off, could you give a brief overview of your background and how it led to the creation of Stay Well?

Stay Well has been going since 2019, so we’re about six years in and now entering our seventh year. The journey has been immense.

We started with a subscription-based, software-as-a-service model, offering online workshops and training to individuals, workplaces, and organisations. Alongside that, we’ve always delivered face-to-face sessions because it’s vital to see people’s reactions, understand what resonates, what doesn’t, and whether people are truly absorbing and applying what they’re learning.

Over time, we evolved. We ran large awareness events and campaigns, but what became clear was the need for strategy and consistency. When it comes to wellbeing, people need something constant—something they can rely on and return to regularly.

We began working more closely with collectives over longer periods and with professionals such as coaches, therapists, practitioners, psychologists, and psychotherapists. What we recognised was that there’s a huge amount of noise in the wellbeing space. Individuals struggle to understand what will genuinely benefit them, especially since everyone is at different stages, with different needs, triggers, and life experiences.

That also creates challenges for professionals, our Stay Well collective members included, when it comes to reaching the right people, whether that’s for workshops or one-to-one programmes. So we had to step back and think more holistically, and most importantly, make things simpler for people to understand.

When we looked at the statistics over the last six years, it became clear that although there’s a lot of fantastic work happening, workplace wellbeing outcomes are actually getting worse year on year. If that’s the case, then something clearly isn’t right.

We’ve always focused on prevention, but we had to ask: what’s missing? A big part of it is understanding. Another is stigma—despite all the awareness work, it still exists. Around 91% of people don’t want to go through workplace channels when it comes to wellbeing, particularly if things are moving towards crisis or time off work.

So people need to be educated about alternatives and it needs to be simple. That’s where the core Stay Well question came from, which we tested repeatedly through focus groups, presentations, and collective sessions: What keeps you well?

Rather than segmenting mental and physical health, Stay Well takes a holistic approach. For generations we’ve been conditioned to focus on the physical. Asking “what keeps you well?” helps people respond more openly. It doesn’t immediately push them into talking about mental health, which many still find difficult. Instead, it opens the door.

What we’ve found is that the real gap is emotional wellbeing and emotional intelligence. That’s the missing middle. It’s about self-awareness, self-checking, trusting intuition, and recognising how you’re feeling in the moment.

We explain this through a very simple methodology: negative thoughts lead to negative feelings, which lead to negative actions. Where we focus our mind is where we tend to be pulled. So the question becomes: how do we reverse that? How do we help people focus on staying well?

Our mission is to help one million people learn how to stay well. That can’t be achieved through a single course. What we’re doing is planting seeds—introducing a methodology and a mapping process that activates a personal journey of understanding what serves someone and what doesn’t.

The key thing is that we’re not telling people what to do or what not to do. People go through their own experiences, but the Stay Well process adds another layer of reflection. It helps them understand how they feel about what they’re doing and what they actually get from it.

For example, many people answer the question by saying they go to the gym, cycling, or walking. These aren’t wrong answers. They’re vehicles for staying well. But the deeper layer is understanding why those things help and what they give you emotionally.

That’s the foundation of our learning: helping people identify and acknowledge what truly keeps them well.

What do you believe makes an effective mental health training programme? What characteristics are essential?

Effective mental health training has to help people understand their feelings and triggers, and crucially, to sit with those feelings rather than suppress them. Suppression is one of the worst things we can do.

It’s about learning how to deal with thoughts and feelings, not pushing them into a box. Trauma-informed approaches are becoming more common now, which is vital. For a long time, trauma was only associated with PTSD, but there are many different forms of trauma that affect people differently. Understanding triggers and the why behind how someone feels is incredibly important.

When you look at the evolution of mental health approaches from counselling and therapy to CBT you see different strengths. CBT doesn’t work for everyone, but it does stimulate action. Talking alone can help stabilise someone, but stability isn’t the same as wellness. Recovery requires action.

Through working closely with people land learning from many lived experiences, we’ve seen that recovery is about moving beyond stability to genuinely being well—and acknowledging that.

We also studied the 12-step recovery model used in addiction support. The first step surrender is deeply spiritual, and that entire journey is more spiritual than many people expect. What stands out is that recovery is never done alone. Peer support, one-to-one support, and community all play a role.

Across everything we’ve studied, one core principle stands out: personal responsibility. People have to take responsibility for their own wellbeing to create action. Without that, you stay stuck.

That’s what we aim to introduce earlier in workplaces—helping people move up the scale towards wellness, not just away from crisis.

Mental Health First Aid training has its place, but it’s outward-facing. It teaches people to spot signs in others, not how to manage their own wellbeing. Sometimes people struggling themselves take on those roles, which can be risky. Selection and support really matter.

Our approach is grounded in research, focus groups, and academic collaboration, including our work with the University of Central Lancashire. Their research into social prescribing echoed our findings: people need progression. Training can’t just stop. There has to be an ongoing journey, with signposting to activities, professionals, and communities.

That’s what Stay Well aims to provide - A simple starting point that opens up a longer, personalised journey.

What is your perspective on wellbeing washing, and how can organisations avoid it?

There are two sides to this. HR will always have a degree of box-ticking because policies and procedures are necessary. That isn’t going away.

The real issue is that organisations need a different approach to people. Everyone says they want a positive, preventative culture, but many don’t know how to implement it.

Absenteeism alone, around £91 billion in the UK, is staggering. Tick-box exercises won’t change that. When you factor in staff churn, retraining costs, workload pressures, and morale, the true cost of reactive wellbeing becomes clear.

Most organisations are reactive. They rely on employee assistance programmes, occupational health, wellbeing champions, and mental health awareness days. Engagement is often low, and EAPs are only sustainable when usage stays limited.

These services are necessary, but they won’t change the statistics without interventions further up the line before issues escalate.

One major gap is recovery pathways. People return to work mentally stable, but not well. In physical health, stability is followed by rehabilitation. Mental health should be no different.

That’s why we developed Stay Well Ambassadors and Stay Well Meetups to create positive, consistent communities within organisations. Culture doesn’t change overnight, but consistency matters.

Ambassadors give people options before issues escalate to managers. They signpost to community resources, activities, and support beyond internal systems. This also protects managers, who often overstep boundaries out of care.

Line managers aren’t wellbeing experts, and they’re rarely trained to handle these conversations. The focus often becomes “what can the company do for you?” rather than “how can you help yourself move forward?”

We need to return responsibility to the individual, supported by clear pathways.

You recently completed a Stay Well Ambassador day with AXA. Can you share how that could be a potential blueprint for moving beyond wellbeing washing?

With AXA, we started by independently assessing how well the workforce actually was. That matters because internal reporting often carries bias.

We trained Stay Well Ambassadors within the organisation and built awareness through campaigns, pop-ups, and interactive Stay Well sessions. These short workshops spark engagement and curiosity.

What we’ve seen is that ambassadors play a key role in encouraging people into one-to-one check-ins. Many people don’t know why they’d see a financial coach, grief coach, or mindset coach until they try it. Even a 30-minute session can shift perspective.

Workshops open the door, but one-to-ones create real depth. With AXA and others like McDonald’s, we’re now seeing the importance of regular check-ins supported by consistent training and visible Stay Well presence with walls, sessions, ambassadors, and community-led initiatives.

This creates living, internal communities where people take responsibility, support one another, and stay engaged.

Are there any interesting mental health trends you’re seeing that might inform Stawell’s strategy going forward, or that you see emerging on the horizon as part of your own learning journey?

I think there’s a lot of work to be done around neurodiversity. More people are entering the workplace already diagnosed, and more existing employees are receiving diagnoses. If this isn’t handled properly, it can create real problems and there’s a catch-22.

On one hand, individuals may not want to disclose their neurodiversity because they worry it could affect how fairly they’re assessed for a role. I understand that completely. On the other hand, if an employer doesn’t know, they may place someone in a role that simply isn’t fit for purpose. That’s when things become very difficult. People end up on an emotional rollercoaster when it’s not working, despite their best efforts.

Reasonable adjustments are important, of course, but a lot of this comes down to getting the right role and understanding where someone is best placed. I think that has to change from both sides.

People with neurodiversity often have fantastic skills. They think differently, and that’s a positive. Organisations shouldn’t be passive about this; they should actively embrace it. That requires a different mindset when employing people.

It’s a difficult situation, but there’s more of this coming. It’s not going away, so employers have to adapt. I’m really interested in how organisations respond to this growing wave of neurodiverse talent. This isn’t a negative thing because conditions like ADHD can be a real strength. It just comes down to being in the right role, with the right job design and the right support.