The following pattern is not uncommon: organisations pushing for sustained high performance, while quietly absorbing the cost of depleted people. It doesn’t show up immediately, but it always shows up eventually.
In the past year, UK employees lost an average of 9.4 days to sickness absence, which happens to be the highest level in over 15 years and equating to 4.1% of total working time. Mental ill health accounts for 41% of long-term absences, with stress contributing a further 28%. That’s not a marginal issue; it’s a structural fault line in how we run modern organisations.
When I look outside corporate environments to places where performance failure simply isn’t tolerated, the contrast is stark. Take NASA’s Artemis II mission. Ten days of microgravity, disrupted circadian rhythms, and constant operational vigilance. In that environment, energy isn’t a “wellbeing” topic. It’s mission-critical.
That’s the gap. And it’s one that organisations can no longer afford to ignore.
The Science of Energy in Extreme Conditions
One of the most useful shifts in thinking comes from NASA’s Fatigue Countermeasures Laboratory. Performance doesn’t break down because people work long hours. It breaks down because their biology is out of sync such as circadian disruption, sleep deficits, and accumulated cognitive fatigue.
During Artemis II, astronauts wore actigraphy devices to track sleep and completed continuous psychological assessments. They weren’t guessing but they were measuring energy in real time.
And crucially, they weren’t relying on reactive fixes. They used structured, non-pharmacological interventions: controlled lighting to regulate alertness, exercise to stabilise physiology, and simulation environments like HERA to understand the cognitive impact of chronic sleep restriction.
Compare that to what’s happening across UK workplaces. In 2024/25, 964,000 workers experienced work-related stress, depression, or anxiety; a 24% increase year-on-year. Workload alone accounts for 41% of stress-related absences.
The insight here isn’t complicated: energy is a variable resource. Yet most organisations still treat it as if it’s infinite.
Parallels to Corporate High-Performance Demands
What extreme environments make visible, corporate settings tend to obscure.
Energy fluctuates across four domains - physical, emotional, mental, and what’s often described as purpose or meaning. On Artemis II, hydration, exercise, and routine were tightly controlled to counteract physiological decline. Psychological state was also actively monitored. Team dynamics weren’t left to chance.
NASA operationalises this. Most organisations don’t.
Around 75% of organisations now recognise the importance of line manager buy-in for wellbeing (up from 58% in 2020), only 29% are actually training those managers effectively. Meanwhile, musculoskeletal issues now account for 31% of long-term absences in the UK.
The mismatch is obvious.
Heavy workload remains the primary stressor at 41%. In NASA simulations, reducing sleep to five hours led to measurable neuro-behavioural lapses. In corporate environments, the equivalent signals such as errors, disengagement, presenteeism, are often normalised.
And presenteeism is the real blind spot. It costs the UK £28 billion annually, with 87% of employers acknowledging it, yet very few treating it as a measurable risk.
Translating Energy into Organisational Risk
This is where I think the conversation needs to shift and decisively.
Energy management is not a wellbeing initiative. It is a risk management function.
We’re now dealing with over 2.8 million economically inactive individuals due to long-term health conditions, costing the UK £150 billion annually. For organisations, that translates directly into higher insurance costs, rising mental health claims, and increasing regulatory scrutiny.
We’re already seeing this play out. In comparable markets, total permanent disability payouts for individuals in their 30s have increased by 700%. Regulators are also paying closer attention with HSE’s 2025 focus on workplace mental health is not incidental.
And yet, only 31% of organisations are using occupational health proactively, despite 69% having access to it.
From a finance perspective, the contradiction is just as stark. Deloitte estimates a £4.70 return for every £1 invested in wellbeing, yet only 57% of organisations have a standalone strategy.
This isn’t a funding problem. It’s a prioritisation problem.
Practical Implications for Leadership Teams
If you’re sitting at executive level, this is no longer abstract.
HR leaders need to move from reactive interventions to predictive insight, which includes using data to identify energy risk before it translates into absence. Finance teams need to quantify the upside properly: 39% of organisations report improved engagement, and 38% report performance gains when wellbeing strategies are implemented effectively.
Risk leaders, meanwhile, should be integrating this into Employee Benefit Risk Management frameworks. Only 41% of organisations currently govern benefits effectively, despite healthcare costs rising at three times the rate of inflation.
There’s also a regulatory dimension emerging. As HSE increases its focus on stress-related risk, failure to act will carry more than just productivity consequences.
And at board level, the impact is subtle but significant. Energy depletion doesn’t just reduce output instead it increases error rates and poor decision-making. As Harvard Business Review has long argued, stretch without recovery leads to shortcuts.
Strategic Recommendations for C-Suite Implementation
- Conduct Energy Risk Audits
Treat energy as a measurable risk. Use occupational health to baseline sleep, stress, and workload patterns, particularly in high-stakes roles. Increase line manager capability from 57% to 73% through targeted training.
- Engineer Peak Performance Schedules
Align work to biological rhythms where possible. Use tools like NASA’s such as light exposure, structured breaks, and workload design; to reduce stress-related absence by up to 30% in pilot groups.
- Build Recovery into the System
Recovery should be designed, not left to chance. Flexible working (61% effectiveness) and EAPs (52%) should be embedded as operational infrastructure, not optional extras.
- Create Cross-Functional Accountability
Bring HR, Finance, and Risk together. As healthcare inflation and long-term conditions continue to rise, use shared dashboards to track exposure
- Invest in Real-Time Monitoring
High-risk environments should adopt continuous vigilance tools to detect fatigue before it impacts performance.
The Leadership Test
Artemis II is ultimately about testing human limits in extreme conditions. But the lesson for organisations is simpler: performance fails when energy is mismanaged.
Right now, UK organisations are absorbing record levels of absence, rising mental health claims, and a £150 billion economic drag while still treating energy as an individual responsibility rather than a system design issue.
That’s the disconnect.
If you’re on the executive team, the question isn’t whether this matters. It’s whether you’re prepared to act on it.
Start with one function. One high-risk team. Audit it properly this quarter.
Because the cost of waiting isn’t theoretical anymore andit’s already sitting in your numbers.