Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the possible benefits of establishing standards of best practice for good leadership and psychological wellbeing for organisations across the UK.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills published a number of reports on Gov.uk, which complement the broader academic literature on the subject of leadership and wellbeing. These reports can be found on GOV.UK.

Firstly, the report “Leadership and Management in the UK - the Key to Sustainable Growth” was published in 2012. This summarised the key evidence and set out the benefits of business investment in leadership and management skills.

The research report “Does Worker Wellbeing Affect Workplace Performance?” was published in October 2014. The analysis suggested that well-being is also positively associated with workplace financial performance, labour productivity and the quality of output or service.

Most recently, the research report, “Leadership and management skills in small and medium-sized businesses” was published in 2015. The research suggested that entrepreneurship skills and leadership skills were most consistently and strongly associated with good management practice and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises.

In many areas, existing industry supported standards play an important role for businesses in establishing an effective quality infrastructure to embed best practices and further enable productivity.