Featuring Chris Cummings, Founder of Wellbeing at Work
Some business origin stories start with a market opportunity. Chris Cummings’s started with something far more personal.
In 2014, Chris watched his partner navigate a mental health crisis and watched the workplace make it worse. That experience stopped him in his tracks and set him on a mission to change how organizations think about the wellbeing of their people. More than a decade later, Wellbeing at Work hosts summits around the globe, bringing together HR and benefits leaders from some of the world’s largest organizations to learn, share strategies, and build cultures where people genuinely thrive.
From Footballs on Friday to Real Strategy
Chris is candid about how far workplace wellbeing has come. “Back then,” he says, “we were probably providing footballs on a Friday and a few yoga classes and thinking it was all okay.”
The data and evidence over the last decade have told a very different story. Organizations that genuinely invest in their people, not as a perk, but as a strategic priority, see it reflected in performance, retention, and ultimately, their bottom line. Chris puts it simply: healthy businesses, healthy profits.
His vision is bold but practical: he’d love to see every organization have a dedicated wellbeing department, sitting alongside finance, sales, and operations as a core function of the business. “When they say on their website, ‘our people are our most important asset,’ I want them to actually mean it.”
Small Business, Big Mission
Despite working with enterprise-level clients, Wellbeing at Work is itself a small business, a team of 20 operating on a global stage. Chris understands firsthand the challenges that come with that reality. When one person is out, it’s not a minor inconvenience; it’s a meaningful chunk of resource that disappears quickly.
That’s exactly why Chris made a decision a few years back that he describes as life-changing: bringing on a financial analysis person dedicated to drilling down into margins, understanding where savings could be made, and identifying opportunities to impact the top line. “Instead of just having a P&L to tell you where you are day-to-day,” he says, “you really have a complete hold on all aspects of the business.”
The shift gave him an evidence base for decisions rather than just enthusiasm. “I’m a visionary,” he laughs, “and I probably needed something to rein me in a little bit.”
The Numbers Behind the Wellbeing
This is where our conversation got interesting.
One of the things I talk about with our clients at Fit for Profit is the relationship between financial health and nervous system health. When a business is running at break-even, there’s no buffer and no buffer means every disruption becomes a crisis. But when you’re operating profitably and you have 30, 60, 90 days of runway, a team member being sick for a day is just… a day. The numbers create the space to respond thoughtfully rather than react from fear.
Chris nodded at that immediately. The work Wellbeing at Work does in helping organizations care for their people and the work we do in helping wellness businesses understand their cash flow are pointing at the same truth: you cannot sustain high performance in people or in businesses without the systems to support it.
What’s Next
Chris recently authored a book reflecting on a decade of building Wellbeing at Work and the role that genuine people-first culture played in that growth. He’s also just took the stage at the Wellbeing at Work New York Summit.
His goal for the next two to five years? Keep expanding the conversation and not just with HR. Chris is increasingly seeing finance and operations leaders attend his summits, drawn by the hard data connecting wellbeing investment to business performance. “It’s a big issue across the whole organization,” he says. “That’s certainly what we’re trying to show.”
You can learn more about Chris’s work and upcoming summits at wellbeingatwork.world
Behind the Numbers is a Fit For Profit series sharing real stories from wellness business owners doing meaningful work while navigating today’s economy.
If you’d like to explore how to improve cash flow and profitability in your own wellness business, reach out at fitforprofit.com we’d love to feature your story next.