We had two guests this time, Dóra Szász, HR Manager, BAT Hungary and Iryna Bryzhak, HR Director, Metro Cash & Carry Ukraine. This time we summarize Iryna’s main thoughts shared with the fellow HR Heads.
In short:
- Engagement without well-being is unstable, often leading to stress, burnout, and high attrition, highlighting the need to address both in parallel.
- Metro Cash & Carry’s “Care to Dare” strategy focused on improving physical, mental, and social well-being through cultural shifts, support systems, and virtual learning, especially effective during lockdown.
- HR teams must use a full set of KPIs, not just Employee Experience Index (EEI), to accurately assess engagement and predict long-term success.
- Sustainable engagement requires ongoing well-being initiatives, with HR playing a critical role through training, support structures, and proactive health programs.
Care to Dare as an answer to unstable engagement
When Iryna joined the company she saw that even though the Employee Experience Index (EEI) was pretty high, all other human related KPIs were not satisfactory, especially the attrition rate.
Iryna started to look for solutions. She discovered that the different combination of well-being level and engagement level will result in different QUALITY OF ENGAGEMENT. It was an answer to the riddle – low level of well-being with high level of engagement leads to stress, burnout and high attrition. This engagement is therefore unstable.
This realisation was one of the key reasons for Metro Cash & Carry to start to implement the strategy called “Care to Dare” – to get great results, to DARE to reach higher, you need first to take CARE of yourself and your people.
Benefiting from four years of efforts
Well-being covers 3 areas – Physical, Mental and Social Health. It is an overwhelmingly complex area to influence. The improvement required dramatic change in culture, processes and initiatives in the company. The HR team invested more than 4 years in this project. But exactly when the lockdown started, they saw huge benefits of this approach and culture.
Health and well-being of people at all levels became priority number one, providing financial support and safety to employees, hotline of psychological support, managerial activities, and online training. With the help of DEVELOR they developed skills of internal trainers to transfer offline training sessions into a virtual environment. Thanks to that they were able to provide people with knowledge and skills to support their health.
At the end of the story, Iryna’s team evaluated all main KPIs again and saw that even though they managed to keep the EE index on a very high level, they managed to decrease the attrition rate dramatically, as well as all other HR related KPIs, which looked absolutely fantastic.
EE index alone is not enough
This case presented at our international HR webinar teaches us that for generating long term business results and productivity of people it is crucially important to evaluate engagement with a FULL SET OF KPIs. An isolated EE index does not paint sufficient picture to assess the situation.
There is a high correlation between employee engagement, attrition and well-being of people. And although a high level of EEI with a low level of well-being generates high results on a short run, it also means a high level of burnouts and attrition rate.
To build sustainable engagement, the people initiatives must also closely cover well-being in all three areas – Physical, Mental and Social Health. We as HR professionals and training providers can support it with routines and online training.
Stay in the conversation
In the second lesson learnt we share learnings from Dora Szazs of BAT about Going hybrid in a smart way. You can find it here.
Also – register yourself or notify your HR head to check out the third International RE/Think HR Webinar.
Frequently asked questions about employee wellbeing, engagement and burnout prevention
Employee wellbeing is essential for sustainable engagement because high engagement without sufficient wellbeing can lead to stress, exhaustion and burnout. Employees may stay committed and deliver strong results for a while, but if their physical, mental or social health is not supported, performance becomes difficult to sustain. This can result in higher attrition, lower motivation and a weaker employee experience over time. For HR and L&D professionals, the key lesson is that engagement should not be measured or developed in isolation. A strong people strategy needs to support both performance and wellbeing, so employees can contribute with energy, resilience and long-term commitment.
HR teams can prevent burnout by building wellbeing initiatives that address the real sources of pressure in the organization. This may include mental health support, physical wellbeing programs, social connection, leadership training, psychological support, and practical learning opportunities for employees and managers. Effective wellbeing strategies also need to be embedded into culture and routines, rather than treated as occasional campaigns. Managers play an important role because they can notice early warning signs, support workload discussions and create safer spaces for employees to speak up. For L&D teams, burnout prevention should be connected to resilience, stress management, leadership development and the everyday skills people need to protect their wellbeing at work.
Organizations should track a full set of HR KPIs to understand the real quality of engagement and wellbeing. Employee engagement or Employee Experience Index scores can be useful, but they do not show the whole picture on their own. HR teams should also monitor attrition, absenteeism, burnout risk, wellbeing indicators, participation in support programs, manager effectiveness and feedback from employees. When high engagement appears together with low wellbeing or rising attrition, it may signal unstable engagement and hidden exhaustion. For HR leaders, combining these indicators helps identify risks earlier and build people initiatives that support long-term business results, not only short-term productivity.
