A book by County Durham business leader Emily Pearson, which argues that workplace wellbeing is shaped by the decisions of chief executives and boards rather than by HR, reached number three in Amazon UK’s HR and Personnel Management chart in its first week, alongside titles such as Start With Why and Crucial Conversations.
Solving a CEO’s Blind Spot: Human Sustainability was published on 10 September, deliberately timed for World Suicide Prevention Day. Pearson is founder and CEO of the Wellbeing Lead Academy.
Her argument is that while almost every organisation now runs wellbeing activity, very few design for wellbeing. Workload, targets, restructures, reward and management capability all determine whether work is sustainable, yet these decisions are made by leaders and are rarely seen as wellbeing decisions.
“Boards can see the cost of losing people,” she said. “What they cannot see are the design decisions that cause it, because those decisions are never filed under wellbeing.”
Michael Hall, CEO of EQS, said: “The most competitive organisations of the next decade will be led by CEOs who understand this message. This book shows why human sustainability is no longer optional, it is decisive.”
The book grew out of Pearson’s own experience of burnout while scaling a wellbeing consultancy during the pandemic. She went on to rebuild her business around the structural approach she had been unable to find at the time.
Since publication, Pearson has discussed the book with Anna Foster on BBC Radio Newcastle and launched it at Tynemouth Castle Inn on 18 September, with a second event at the University of Sunderland later this month.
Pearson sits on the Advisory Board of the Policy Liaison Group on Workplace Wellbeing and is the architect of the Certified Wellbeing Lead Career Pathway, an accredited progression route for workplace wellbeing leadership. The book is the first in The Human Sustainability Series, published by Intellectual Perspectives Press, and is available on Amazon: https://geni.us/HumanSustainability