What the latest wellness data reveals about the UK workplace wellbeing sector  

The global wellness economy grew to $6.8 trillion in 2024, continuing to expand faster than the wider economy, according to the latest country rankings from the Global Wellness Institute. Wellness spending is now significantly higher than before the pandemic, reflecting a long-term shift towards prevention, lifestyle and quality of life as economic priorities. 

The data highlights strong growth across sectors such as mental wellness, physical activity, healthy eating and preventative health. Together, these areas are shaping how wellness is increasingly experienced not as an occasional activity, but as part of everyday life. 

Within this context, workplace wellness occupies a distinctive position. While the report shows workplace wellness growing at a slower rate than some other sectors, this does not indicate weak demand. Instead, it reflects the evolving way wellness is being delivered and experienced, particularly in countries such as the UK, where work patterns, health needs and expectations are changing rapidly. 

Natalie Shears, CEO of The Well Crowd, said: “Our perspective is simple: workplace wellness isn’t underperforming, it’s undercounted, and is expanding; but from a set of discrete initiatives into a core organising principle for how the workplace supports health. The workplace is increasingly where wellness is lived.

“Most working adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work. Work environments influence stress, mental health, movement, nutrition, social connection and access to preventative behaviours. As a result, many of the fastest-growing wellness activities identified in the report are now embedded into working life, even when they are not labelled as workplace wellness,” Shears adds.  

This creates an important opportunity for interpretation. Much of the wellness activity that takes place at work is captured within other sector categories in the data. Mental health support, physical activity, healthier food environments and preventative initiatives are often counted as part of those individual markets, rather than as workplace-driven activity. This can make workplace wellness appear smaller and slower-growing than its real-world reach suggests. 

Rather than operating as a standalone category, workplace wellness increasingly functions as a delivery platform through which multiple wellness sectors are activated. It enables mental, physical, nutritional and preventative health behaviours to be adopted consistently, at scale and over time. In this sense, the workplace acts less as a single sector and more as an integration layer within the wider wellness economy. 

This perspective is particularly relevant in the UK. Employers are navigating rising mental health need, workforce ageing, long-term conditions and widening health inequalities, alongside pressure on public health and healthcare systems. The workplace is one of the few settings with the regular contact, infrastructure and reach needed to support sustained wellbeing across large populations. 

The Global Wellness Institute data also points to a broader shift in consumer behaviour. Globally, people now spend more per capita on wellness than on out-of-pocket healthcare. This reflects growing demand for preventative and everyday approaches to health, many of which are shaped by the environments in which people live and work. 

Shears adds: “Understanding workplace wellness as part of this shift opens up new ways of reading the data. It suggests that growth is not limited to formal programmes or services, but is increasingly embedded in how work is organised, how spaces are designed and how wellbeing is supported in daily routines.” 

As wellness continues to move into everyday life, the opportunity lies in recognising the workplace not as a peripheral channel, but as a central environment where multiple forms of wellness converge. Supporting this role more clearly in research, measurement and policy would help reflect how wellness is experienced, and where much of its future growth is likely to occur. 

The Global Wellness Institute report provides a valuable snapshot of a fast-evolving economy. Seen alongside changing patterns of work and health in the UK, it also points to a clear opportunity: to better understand the workplace as one of the most important settings through which wellness is now lived.