Employee wellbeing business ready for next phase of expansion

A business founded in Yorkshire in 2018 is going global with its employee wellbeing platform.

Champion Health was co-founded by Sheffield-based entrepreneur Harry Bliss to bring together all aspects of worker wellbeing under one umbrella, improving and simplifying access for companies and other organisations.

He said he was inspired to make a positive difference by what happened to a friend and mentor – the director of a global wealth management business – who took his own life due to a bout of work related stress.

In just three and half years Champion Health has grown from Bliss and his co-founder to a team of up to 60 people.

Bliss previously worked for the largest wellbeing provider in the UK before leaving to found Champion Health in early 2018 when he was just 24.

He explained he had set out to create “The Netflix of Wellbeing” after noticing wellbeing provision was extremely fragmented, with various different providers each only addressing individual elements of this subject such as sleep, mental health or nutrition.

Champion Health aims to empower and support employees to manager and monitor their own wellbeing. And it supports people in senior leadership positions – helping them to make data driven decisions about the wellbeing strategies they implement.

To do this, the company has built its own algorithm-based tech platform and assembled a team of experts in the field of wellbeing assessment.

The business has a base at the Twinkl headquarters, in Sheffield but has workers based across the country from Harrogate down to Kent and it currently offers its services nationally.

Explaining how Champion Health has expanded so rapidly, Bliss said: “Finding the right people is always a difficult challenge but we’ve got a strong team of tech staff and wellbeing experts. They are very talented.

“As a team we’ve listened carefully to what employees and senior business leaders want.

“We have 70 odd clients and there’s no silver bullet that works for all of them but we’ve adapted and been more agile than other people.

“And when you look at the technology that’s available now, it’s incredible what you can achieve in terms of scaling a business. It’s a lot more cost effective than it used to be.”

Commenting on the company’s plan to bring its platform to countries outside the UK, Bliss said: “We always wanted to extend our reach. We’ve grown so much over the last few years and where I’ve encountered difficulties and made mistakes I’ve learned from these experiences.”

Responding to the effects of COVID-19, he added: “Covid couldn’t have been predicted and it has made a huge difference. Almost every organisation is now looking at wellbeing – the pandemic has really shaken things up.

“Absence rates have decreased dramatically, though that isn’t always a measure of performance and productivity.

“And in terms of wellbeing for people working from home, it depends so much on how well their organisation is geared up with technology and communications.

“It has become harder for companies to touch base with their employees and check on how they are feeling – that is easier to do in the office.”