About

Most of what gets sold as workplace wellbeing is built to look good rather than to work. This is where I write about the difference.

The day job is Alltoogether, an employee benefits broker with its workplace-health platform included. Before that I worked at a large corporate benefits consultancy, where I kept being told to talk to clients about wellbeing. Broking benefits policies I understood. Wellbeing I didn't, and I was being paid to sound as if I did. So I did an MSc in Workplace Health and Wellbeing at Nottingham, part time, while working. My thesis looked at how subjective wellbeing relates to the psychosocial work environment, and it left me obsessed with measuring properly: single-item measures, quantitative wellbeing, and the difference between a number and a finding. I also hold a law degree (LLB Hons).

Fifteen years in this field, and the same gap the whole time: workplace health has no common way to record anything. So I wrote one. The Open Workplace Health Standard is free for anyone to use.

Here you'll find longer notes on work, health, working with AI and where work is heading. Where I make a claim, the evidence is laid out with its limits. Some notes are rough, and corrections are dated.

Nothing here speaks for Alltoogether.

How this site works

Notes are essays in progress. They are dated, they can be rough, and each one stands on its own.

Evidence reviews sit behind some notes. They set out what the research actually supports, claim by claim, with the source passage, its limits and the date it was checked.

Corrections that change what a piece says are dated on the piece and listed on the corrections page.

What the verdicts mean

Supported

The source says what the claim says.

Overstated

The source supports a weaker version of the claim.

Misattributed

The finding is real but comes from a different source.

Unsupported

The source does not support the claim.

Unverifiable

The source could not be accessed or checked. The attempted source, the reason and the date are recorded.

In review

Not yet checked against the source.