BDO Business Wellbeing Index

Launched in June 2022, the BDO Business Wellbeing Index – BDO Te Rangahau o Ngā Hauora Pai - is a unique biannual study exploring the relationship between business performance and wellbeing (leveraging the World Health Organisation’s globally-recognised WHO-5 Wellbeing Index methodology) in the New Zealand business sector.

While at BDO, we’re certainly not mental health experts, as advisers to over 16,000 businesses across Aotearoa, we are in a unique position to see the impacts of a wide range of factors on New Zealand business leaders and their businesses – including financial, economic, regulatory, environmental and social. The BDO Business Wellbeing Index was born out of growing observations among our BDO Partners of the particular impact that financial concerns can have on business leaders and owners. The Index is our opportunity to provide practical tips to NZ’s business leader community – helping them to alleviate the key stresses of running a business, particularly financial concerns, and in turn promoting stronger wellbeing.

Survey methodology 

The biannual digital survey is conducted by an independent research agency. More than 500 respondents are canvassed in each survey wave, spanning a wide range of industries and business stages, based on a market-representative sample of New Zealand’s business sector. The survey targets business leaders and owners (anyone who was not an owner, General Manager, CEO or Director is excluded from results). For the purpose of the report, we refer to all respondents generically as “business leaders”.

The World Health Organisation’s ‘WHO-5 Index’ score, adopted in this survey, is a point in time measure – reflecting wellbeing as experienced by respondents over the past two weeks. For this reason, wellbeing is best tracked over time. Respondents were also asked to share where they expect their business performance and wellbeing to be in six months’ time – and the key drivers for this. The survey collects details of why respondents might have been feeling less mentally healthy recently. We also ask what they do to stay mentally healthy, both in their business and in their personal life.