Brain Health in the Workplace: What Leaders Can Do (and Why It's a Business Issue)
Key takeaways
- Brain health is broader than mental health: it covers how we think, hear, see, connect and move across a whole life.
- Many of the 14 modifiable dementia risk factors map onto ordinary workplace decisions about facilities, benefits, schedules and culture.
- Loneliness is a brain-health issue as well as an engagement issue, and it is common at work.
- The best employer programs change the conditions of work rather than adding one more wellness app.
- You can start this year without a new budget line by assigning each risk factor to a leader who already owns the lever.
Brain health in the workplace means treating cognitive, sensory and social wellbeing as something work itself shapes. The 2024 Lancet Commission found that tackling 14 modifiable risk factors could prevent or delay nearly half of dementia cases. Several of those factors, including hearing, isolation, inactivity and blood pressure, sit inside decisions employers already make.
What is brain health, and how is it different from mental health?
Brain health is the overall functioning of the brain across thinking, senses, emotions, social connection and movement. Mental health is one part of it, not the whole.
The World Health Organization's 2022 position paper defines brain health as "the state of brain functioning across cognitive, sensory, social-emotional, behavioural and motor domains, allowing a person to realise their full potential over the life course, irrespective of the presence or absence of disorders." I find two phrases in that definition especially useful for leaders. "Over the life course" means this is not a topic reserved for employees near retirement. "Irrespective of the presence or absence of disorders" means it is about potential, not diagnosis.
Most workplace wellbeing programs were built around mental health, and rightly so. But a person can be emotionally steady while straining to follow meetings because of untreated hearing loss. That is a brain-health problem hiding in plain sight.
Why should employers care about brain health?
Employers should care because the brain is the organ that does almost all modern work, and because the conditions that strain it are partly created at work.
The scale is large. The same WHO paper notes that "1 in 3 people will develop a neurological disorder at some point in their life." The Lancet Commission projects dementia cases rising from 57 million in 2019 to 153 million by 2050. And in September 2025 the McKinsey Health Institute estimated that scaling cost-effective brain-health interventions could avert 267 million disability-adjusted life years globally by 2050.
After about fifteen years in senior housing, I came to see dementia less as an event that arrives in old age and more as the end of a long road. Much of that road runs through people's working years. Employers are not bystanders.
What does your organization currently do that makes thinking harder: noise, isolation, constant interruption?
Can dementia risk really be reduced, and what does that mean for the workplace?
Yes, at a population level. The 2024 Lancet Commission, reported by UCL, concluded that addressing 14 risk factors "could prevent or delay nearly half of dementia cases." For leaders, the striking thing is how many of those factors connect to work.
The Commission added two new factors in 2024: high LDL cholesterol in midlife, from around age 40, and untreated vision loss in later life. It found that hearing impairment and high LDL cholesterol each account for 7% of cases. I'm not a physician, and this is not individual medical advice. But when I read the full list as a leader, it looks less like a clinical chart and more like an operating agenda.
Hearing impairment — Where the workplace lever sits: Noise levels, hearing benefits, captioning in meetings · Natural owner: Facilities, Benefits, IT
Untreated vision loss — Where the workplace lever sits: Vision coverage, screen ergonomics, lighting · Natural owner: Benefits, Facilities
High blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol, diabetes, obesity — Where the workplace lever sits: Screening access, workload and chronic stress, food on site · Natural owner: Benefits, Operations
Physical inactivity — Where the workplace lever sits: Meeting design, shift patterns, movement built into the day · Natural owner: Every manager
Social isolation, depression — Where the workplace lever sits: Team design, remote connection, mental health support · Natural owner: HR, People managers
Smoking, excessive alcohol — Where the workplace lever sits: Cessation support, the culture of work events · Natural owner: Benefits, Leadership team
Traumatic brain injury — Where the workplace lever sits: Safety practice in physical and frontline roles · Natural owner: Safety, Operations
Air pollution — Where the workplace lever sits: Ventilation and air quality in workplaces · Natural owner: Facilities
Lower levels of education — Where the workplace lever sits: Access to learning and development across a career · Natural owner: L&D
A caution on that last row: the Commission's factor refers to less education in early life, and I won't overclaim what adult training can undo. Still, brains respond to what they are given across a lifetime, and work is one of the biggest things we give them.
How does loneliness at work affect the brain?
Loneliness is one of the most overlooked brain-health risks inside organizations, because it rarely shows up on a dashboard. Social isolation is on the Lancet list, and loneliness at work is common.
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 found that 22 percent of employees experienced loneliness during a lot of the previous day, rising to 23 percent of employees under 35. That second figure surprises people who picture isolation as a later-life problem.
In senior living, I've seen how much a person's spark depends on being known by someone. Workplaces are not so different. The antidote is rarely a program. It is a manager who notices, a team that has reasons to talk that aren't about deliverables, and meeting habits that let quieter people in. That is also, not coincidentally, what belonging looks like.
Who on your team would you struggle to describe beyond their job title?
What can leaders do this year to support brain health at work?
Start by giving each risk factor an owner, then fix the conditions of work before you buy anything. Most of the first-year work is redesign, not spending.
- Name it. Add "brain health" to your wellbeing strategy in plain language, using the WHO definition, so it stops being folded into mental health alone.
- Assign the table. Take the risk factors above to your leadership team and ask each function which lever it already controls.
- Remove the friction to hearing and vision care. Check what your benefits actually cover, then make captioning the default in virtual meetings. It helps far more people than you'd guess.
- Design out isolation. Give remote and frontline staff regular, protected time with their team, and train managers to treat withdrawal as a signal worth a kind question.
- Make movement normal. Walking one-to-ones and shorter meetings with real breaks all count.
- Protect thinking time. Treat focus as a resource the organization is responsible for.
- Point people to trusted information. Leaders shouldn't play clinician. For accessible, research-informed reading on brain health and dementia, I'd point employees to Brain Meets Bytes, which I co-founded for exactly this purpose.
None of this needs a moonshot. It needs leaders willing to see that the way we organize work is already a brain-health intervention, for better or worse.
If your leadership team or conference audience is ready to treat brain health as a strategic issue, I'd be glad to help through my keynote "Brain Health and the Future of Well-Being" or the "Aging, Brain Health & Human Connection" workshop. You can reach me through the Book Ki page on siadatan.com.
