Prioritizing employee health is good for business. Senior Partner Brooke Weddle and coauthors examined a “Well-being 100” portfolio, made up of 100 companies with the highest scores for employee well-being on the job-seeking website Indeed. They explain that this portfolio outperformed major market indexes, including the S&P 500, Nasdaq composite, and Russell 3000, between 2021 and 2024.
Image description:
A line chart illustrates the stock performance of a “Well-being 100” portfolio compared with 3 other major stock market indexes: the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and Russell 3000. The chart covers the period from 2021 to 2024, with the y-axis representing the stock performance in dollar amounts indexed to 1,000 in 2021. All 4 lines show fluctuations throughout the period, indicating changes in stock market values. The Well-being 100 portfolio generally demonstrates a trend of outperforming the other 3 indexes, although there are periods when its performance aligns more closely with or even slightly underperforms them. The chart shows that all 4 lines above 1,400 occurred in late 2024. The Well-being 100 consistently outpaced the other 3 indexes in the final year, reaching a peak that appears to exceed 1,500.
Note: This image description was completed with the assistance of Writer, a gen AI tool.
Source: Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Micah Kaats, and George Ward, Workplace wellbeing and firm performance, Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford working paper number 2304, July 2024.
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To read the report, see “Thriving workplaces: How employers can improve productivity and change lives,” January 16, 2025.