SOCIAL
WELLBEING
SOCIAL
WELLBEING
SOCIAL
WELLBEING
We believe in unlocking potential and delivering excellence, and recognise that this can only be achieved by providing a safe and supportive working environment where people can flourish. Our ambition of healthy high performance means embedding a positive working culture through helpful working practices. This includes sharing responsibility for positive wellbeing, supporting wellbeing objectives, and creating opportunities for people to share ideas and access tools and resources.
By starting conversations about employee health and wellbeing, and listening to personal experiences and feedback, we focus on the issues that matter most to our people. We work alongside many groups across the business who help us with this listening work: Wellbeing Champions, Menopause Champions, Men's Wellbeing Group, Mental Health First Aiders, Grief First Aiders and our seven Sports and Social committees. This consultation informs our action plans; not only the issues to address, but how to do so.
We contribute to SDG 3 – Good Health and Wellbeing, through our healthy high performance workplace culture, as well as our engagement with clients and our communities around the importance of good health and healthy lifestyles. In addition, we don’t shy away from more difficult topics, and our Hub page offers information, support and signposting around addiction – currently covering alcohol and gambling, with information on gaming, shopping, screen time, overwork and other coping patterns coming soon.
Key statistics
Highlights from FY 2025/26
Our policies
Looking forward FY 2026/27
Accreditations and awards
UN Sustainable Development Goal
Stories
Key statistics
of our people took a Wellbeing Day
new Wellbeing Working Practices implemented across the firm
new Talk Clubs launched in Bristol and Southampton
Highlights from Financial Year (FY) 2025/26
Building on our mandatory ‘Managing Mental Health’ training, which aims to ensure our people managers feel confident and equipped to support their teams and each other, and recognising the important role managers play in shaping day‑to‑day experiences, we launched our People Manager Toolkit, which includes sections on both wellbeing and managing healthy high performance.
We continued to offer a range of sports and social activities to colleagues across our offices covering both firmwide initiatives, such as a book club, and local office initiatives such as a craft club, a choir, running clubs, quizzes and year-end celebrations.
We developed and embedded four new Wellbeing Working Practices across the business, informed by consultation with our Employee Forum and our Wellbeing Champions, which all look at stress in the workplace and how it can be prevented, rather than just managed. Find out more here.
Following the huge success of Talk Club, piloted in our Leeds office in FY 2024/25 and then expanded to our Newcastle office, we established Talk Clubs in more locations, with support from our Men's Wellbeing Group. We now have talk and listen groups and trained captains in our Bristol and Southampton offices, in addition to Newcastle and Leeds. This helps to address the critical gap in men participating in wellbeing activities and engaging in mental health conversations. Feedback from colleagues has been overwhelmingly positive, with many expressing genuine appreciation for the safe, non-judgemental space to talk and listen. Notably, participants consistently report higher self-assessed wellbeing scores at the end of each session, demonstrating the direct, positive effect of open dialogue on mental health. To read more about Talk Club please visit our Responsible Business Report FY 2024/25 where we interviewed two of our members.
We delivered a mix of preventative and support focused webinars, including a firmwide ‘Managing Burnout’ session in partnership with WBD Thrive, our women’s network, and a financial wellbeing webinar delivered with our mortgage partner. In addition, we amplified provider led content on pension market volatility and on seasonal and winter wellbeing, ensuring colleagues can readily access practical guidance when they need it.
We have taken purposeful steps to broaden the visibility and expand the use of our faith and wellbeing rooms, particularly among returning parents, ensuring these spaces genuinely meet the evolving needs of our people. Find out more here.
Take up of Wellbeing Days remains strong, with 85% of the firm using their Wellbeing Day in FY 2025/26. All colleagues are entitled to take a day each financial year to focus on their wellbeing. This is separate and in addition to holiday entitlement.
Our policies
We have a comprehensive suite of policies in place to support colleagues and their wellbeing, including: Flexible Working Policy (simply requiring an email request to their line manager for approval); Reasonable Adjustments Policy (and workplace adjustments passports); Maternity (including IVF), Paternity and Adoption Leave, Parental & Shared Parental Leave, and Carers Leave Policies; Neonatal Policy; Menopause Policy, and more.
These policies include a ‘day-one of employment’ approach removing the requirement to have been working at the firm for a certain period of time to access the benefit. We also provide enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave and pay. Our AI tool, iWomble, makes our policies much more accessible by helping colleagues quickly find answers to their questions about our policies and procedures.
Looking forward - FY 2026/27
We continue to work closely with our Wellbeing Champions and draw on insights from health assessments, our insurers and benefit providers and our engagement survey to understand the evolving needs of our people. This ongoing feedback loop helps us to target our support effectively and ensures that what we offer is responsive, data driven and aligned with our commitment to healthy high performance. Through Great Place to Work (more in story here), we will complete an annual survey of our people to track changes and progress which includes areas related to wellbeing. We will also be considering the use of pulse surveys to certain demographics within the business to better understand their needs.
Accreditations and awards
ISO 45001: Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (certified in FY 2025/26, with our wellbeing work receiving a special “commendable practice” mention)
Legal 500 UK ESG Awards 2026: finalists in various categories, including: DE&I: Champion (Private Practice) - Jane Freeman; DE&I: Law Firm Initiative – Wellbeing Working Practices; and Best Internal Support Network of the Year – Talk Club / Men’s Wellbeing Group.
MBC Awards 2025: Contribution to the MBC Community award: Jane Freeman, Head of Wellbeing and Engagement. In addition, WBD was featured in the top 10% of all MBC member organisations for commitment, engagement and contribution.
2026 Team London Bridge Great Place to Work Award: Our London office was recognised in the inaugural Best Practice Health and Wellbeing in the Workplace category.
Our priority UN Sustainable Development Goal
Goal alignment
3.4 Reduce mortality from non-communicable diseases and promote mental health
by 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being
3.5 Prevent and treat substance abuse
strengthen the prevention and treatment of substance abuse, including narcotic drug abuse and harmful use of alcohol
