100. Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing

Working to make the workplace better, Essentialise is a one-stop shop for data-driven inclusion and wellbeing training for employers and employees.

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Exceptional Founder Award Shortlisted

For the entrepreneurs who have turned their own personal struggles or challenges into a force-for-good, leading the way for industry change and innovation.

Startups 100: Exceptional Founder Award
DEI Award Shortlisted

For the business that can give evidence of a committed diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative and how it has been embedded in the company.

Startups 100: DEI Award

Founder: Lee Chambers
Founded: 2020
Website: essentialise.co.uk

Nowadays – what with the Great Resignation and the UK’s current state of permacrisis – people and profit are inextricably linked for most companies. If you want to keep hold of your most valuable asset – your staff – you need to make sure they are happy.

That’s where Essentialise proves so valuable. Based in Preston, the company supports HR and leadership teams nationally to build and implement employee wellbeing strategies using cutting-edge training methods.

The brainchild of Lee Chambers, Essentialise is the lemonade that came about when life gave Lee a lemon. In 2014, Chambers had been running a video company in the tech space when an illness left him immobile.

If you want to keep hold of your most valuable asset - your staff - you need to make sure they are happy.

An 11-month process of relearning to walk ignited a passion for wellbeing. So he swapped tech for training to build something that would leave a legacy of social impact and health innovation.

“I saw a market opportunity to bring data-driven insight and training into the wellbeing space. Companies lacked strategy and how they could measure impact,” he explains.

From wellbeing workshops and strategy to mental health training, the company creates data-supported and tailored solutions to empower teams. Plus, as inclusion and wellbeing go hand in hand, Essentialise also offers Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) strategy and training, from race awareness to understanding neurodiversity in the workplace.

I saw a market opportunity to bring data-driven insight and training into the wellbeing space.

With clients including Mazars, KPMG and PwC UK and Ireland – alongside 113% YoY revenue growth in 2022 – it’s clear the company is practising being well, not just preaching it.

The company won a Great British Entrepreneur Award in 2021 and a National Startup Award in 2022, so what’s next? Chamber’s five-year goal is to establish a Wellbeing Academy with a global client base and multi-language delivery.

Now more than ever, wherever employees are working, they need to work well. Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing’s data-led workshops, training and strategy are focused on healthy people and profit which is why it’s earned a place on this year’s Startups 100.

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