Proof, Not Theory: Real Leadership Comms That Lift Employee Wellbeing

Leadership communications can do a lot of things: inspire people and move them to action, align teams, and clarify strategy.

But one of the most powerful and underrated effects is how they shape employee wellbeing. When leaders communicate with care and back it up with visible behaviors, the culture changes.

People feel more connected at work; they feel a greater sense of purpose and belonging. And work feels more human.

That theme came through clearly in our recent Poppulo webinar hosted by communications expert and passionate employee wellbeing advocate Jo Coxhill. The panel brought together Julie O’Grady (Save the Children International), Kylee Kendall (Beacon Health System), Suzilei Junta Matozinho (Iveco Group), and Eoin Byrne (Chief People Officer, Poppulo).

Different sectors, different pressures, same core lesson: consistency in what leaders say and how they show up is where wellbeing starts to gain traction.

Wellbeing Works Best When it’s Everyday

Relating her own experience of leadership comms and wellbeing, Julie O’Grady didn’t talk about campaigns. Instead she talked about habits. At Save the Children International, wellbeing has been woven into the daily flow of work, with no big budgets required.

Friday afternoons are protected: no meetings after 1 p.m., with leaders actively encouraging people to use the time for rest, learning, or a walk. It’s scheduled in everyone’s calendar because the Chief Transformation Officer put it there, and he shares how he uses the time too. That visible permission makes a difference.

Team meetings open with simple check-ins: How are you? What made you smile this week? Colleagues post photos from a dog walk, a sunny coffee, a quick reset between calls. Small things, repeated. The ripple effect is culture.

And the team feels it. In a recent internal survey, 82% of Julie’s function strongly agreed that wellbeing is a high priority, and 81% said they respect and trust their leadership. Not a glossy poster about culture or wellbeing in sight. Just leaders modeling the behavior they want to see.

(For more on leadership comms and employee wellbeing, check out this companion Poppulo presentation by Jo Coxhill: Leading With Care: How to Enable Leadership Comms to Foster Employee Wellbeing)

Honesty Beats Spin, Especially in Hard Moments

Save the Children also faced a period of difficult change. The leadership team could have softened the language and stuck to neat talking points. They didn’t. Instead, they created space for open conversations with no agenda other than listening. Sometimes messy, always human. They called out the uncertainty and they admitted when answers weren’t ready yet.

That honesty mattered. People may not remember every line of a statement, but they rarely forget how a message made them feel. When leaders are present and real, trust grows, even when the news is tough.

Listening Only Counts When it Leads to Action

At Iveco Group, Suzilei Junta Matozinho described a company in constant motion:mergers, spin-offs, acquisitions. In that kind of environment, employee voice is the backbone of how change lands, not merely a nice-to-have. Iveco’s Voice program gathers input across regions and levels and then, crucially, follows through.

One example began in IT and spread fast: Give Me Five—start meetings five minutes past the hour. It created breathing room between stacked calls and quickly expanded to 12,000 employees because it worked and leaders supported it.

That’s the pattern: listen broadly, act visibly, scale what helps. People notice when their ideas shape the way work happens.

Equip leaders first, then cascade

Kylee Kendall shared an approach from Beacon Health System that will feel instantly useful to any comms team: prepare leaders before the broader cascade.

Beacon Health sends a leader edition of its weekly newsletter on Mondays, two days before the whole organization gets the Wednesday version. It includes context, FAQs, and talking points so managers are ready when questions come.

The impact shows up in the numbers and the conversations. The leader newsletter sees a 93% open rate and 44% click-through, but more telling is how teams respond: employees see their managers as informed and approachable.

Engagement survey results picked up an 11% year-on-year rise in associates saying their work makes a positive impact in the community. Prepared leaders project confidence; confident leaders build trust.

Well-being is a team sport across functions

Eoin Byrne, Poppulo’s CPO, underscored a point that can get lost: well-being isn’t an HR program or a comms plan. It’s the outcome of how HR, Internal Comms, IT, and Facilities line up around the employee experience.

When those functions work in sync, messages land, tools support the work, spaces fit the need, and leaders get the support to show up consistently.

Eoin’s focus on organizational health starts with the executive team and tracks through the company. That discipline has moved the needle. Engagement climbed from 50% to 70%, with more progress expected. The message isn’t “send more emails”; it’s “make sure what you say matches how you operate, and measure whether people feel it.”

What strong leadership comms for well-being looks like

Across sectors and stories, a pattern emerges. The organizations getting traction are doing five things well:

• They model it. Leaders protect time, take breaks, share how they’re looking after themselves, and normalise others doing the same.
• They make it everyday. Not a campaign week. A daily rhythm. Check-ins, small rituals, consistent cues.
• They listen and act. Voice programmes and inboxes are only useful if they lead somewhere employees can see.
• They equip leaders before the cascade. Give managers context and language so they can handle questions with confidence.
• They work across functions. HR, IC, IT, and Facilities align around the experience employees actually have.

None of this is complicated. What it does require is consistency. The gap between “we care about well-being” and the calendar, the inbox, and the meeting room is where credibility is won or lost.

Start small, keep going

If you’re looking for a place to begin, borrow from the panel:

• Put a-few blocked time slots in the week and make them visible—especially in leaders’ calendars.
• Try a five-minute buffer between meetings and encourage people to use it as a real reset.
• Send a leader brief before big messages go system-wide. Even a one-pager with “what’s changing, why now, what to say” helps.
• Build simple feedback loops—and show what changed because people spoke up.

The point is you don’t need a perfect program on day one; what matters is momentum. Small changes that stick will outlast any grand plan