This week marks the 16th R U OK? Day, a reminder that asking “Are you OK?” can spark life-changing conversations. For startups and scaleups, it’s also a call to action: employee wellbeing must be built into your growth strategy, not left to chance.

Too often, fast-growing businesses focus on performance metrics and headcount, while overlooking the very people driving results. That’s where HR consulting and outsourced HR support can help founders move beyond awareness campaigns and embed wellbeing into the everyday fabric of work.

Awareness: Why Wellbeing Matters in Startups and Scaleups

In small, high-growth teams, every person counts. Burnout, disengagement, or turnover doesn’t just dent morale, it disrupts delivery, strains culture, and distracts leaders at pivotal moments.

The research is clear:

• Businesses with strong employee wellbeing see 21% higher profitability and 41% lower absenteeism (Gallup).

• Burnout is one of the leading causes of turnover, with replacement costs as high as 200% of an employee’s salary (SHRM).

• PwC’s Future of Work survey found 70% of leaders rank maintaining culture and wellbeing as their top scaling challenge.

For founders, this means wellbeing isn’t a “perk”,  it’s a growth strategy.

The Hidden Risks of Stopping at Awareness

Awareness campaigns like R U OK? Day are powerful, but if the conversation stops there, risks remain:

1. Lost Productivity – Burnout reduces focus, creativity, and resilience.

2. High Turnover Costs – Early attrition forces founders into endless cycles of rehiring and retraining.

3. Culture Cracks – When wellbeing is ignored, trust and psychological safety erode, making it harder to retain top talent.

Action: How Startups Can Embed Wellbeing

Awareness is only the first step. Real change comes when leaders take action and build practices that make wellbeing part of everyday business. Here’s how:

🛡️ Prioritise psychological safety

• Encourage open dialogue where employees feel safe raising concerns without fear of judgment.

• Introduce anonymous feedback channels to surface issues leaders might not see.

• Train managers to respond constructively when people speak up.

🤝 Encourage genuine check-ins

• Shift one-on-ones from being purely task-driven to include personal wellbeing check-ins.

• Use open questions like “What’s been energising you this week?” or “What’s felt challenging?”

• Provide leaders with coaching on active listening and empathy.

🌱 Design sustainable roles

• Conduct regular role reviews to ensure workloads match business priorities.

• Set clear expectations for success in each role, and adjust as the business scales.

• Build cross-functional capacity so no single person becomes a “single point of failure.”

⚡ Model balance from the top

• Founders and leaders should demonstrate healthy work habits — logging off, taking breaks, and setting realistic boundaries.

• Share personal stories about balance to normalise wellbeing as a leadership priority.

• Celebrate teams not only for outcomes, but for sustainable ways of achieving them.

Don’t know where to start, we can help

This is where outsourced HR consulting can be game-changing for startups and scaleups. Without the overhead of a full in-house HR team, you gain access to expertise and frameworks that:

• Build wellbeing into people strategy from day one

• Train leaders in how to have meaningful mental health conversations

• Develop policies and practices that prevent burnout

• Align wellbeing with performance, culture, and growth

With the right support, wellbeing becomes more than an event on the calendar — it becomes a foundation for sustainable scaling.

Moving Forward: Building Workplaces Where People Thrive

R U OK? Day is an important reminder, but the real test is what happens every other day of the year.

At Pupal, we help startups and scaleups design cultures where people thrive, not just survive. Because when your people are well, your business doesn’t just grow, it grows stronger.