Friend of FAIRER interview: William Ajayi

About William Ajayi

William Ajayi is a clinical psychologist, programme manager and global wellbeing lead with over a decade of experience, having worked with the US federal prison system, Veterans Affairs, and global tech companies such as Google, YouTube and most recently, Netflix. William colloquially describes himself as an “organisational health architect”, designing systems that embed wellbeing and inclusion into the work environment.

Fairness is about how work is experienced

William reflects on what fairness truly means in the workplace, and how it's demonstrated across day-to-day behaviours and decisions.

"When I think about fairness, I think beyond policies and programmes – it’s ultimately about how employees actually experience their work environment. For me, fairness means equitable access to support and recognition. It also means that there is an acknowledgement of individual circumstances and experiences, and how those show up in the workplace.

"Fairness also means that workloads are thoughtfully distributed across the team and across the organisation, not just localised on your high performers, because that’s how people burn out. In high-stress, high-risk roles, fairness is tested on a day-to-day basis – from a workload perspective, appreciation of individual experiences, and access to support when you need them. It’s very difficult sometimes to plug into the support that you need when you’re in the middle of putting out a fire.

"What makes the difference is combining psychological safety with the micro-personalised supports that employees need as they navigate those moments that matter. If we’re able to tie tailored supports with psychological safety across functions, employees will be able to feel seen, valued, and feel empowered to do the work that they need to do."

Create an ecosystem, not standalone wellbeing programmes

William highlights the need to set clear definitions, create a shared understanding and tie inclusion and wellbeing into organisational values.

"Wellbeing should not be a standalone set of programmes. It is an ecosystem that you intentionally create and maintain, if you’re truly interested in creating the conditions for excellence and sustaining performance.

"What we – as organisations – tend to do is throw all sorts of things into the pot, expecting to have a wonderful soup. We have things that are inconsistent with the company culture, things that are at odds with different initiatives, and we’ve just expected it to gel together in a comprehensive way. Not going to happen."

"If it’s too convoluted or inconsistent, people disengage."

"If we want to be practical, we need to go back to the basics. Have we decided and aligned on what our description of wellbeing is? What inclusion is? What belonging is? Most of the time, the answer is no. Instead, it becomes a very diffuse, 'this is someone else’s problem' approach.

"Without those definitions, and without tying them into the culture and values of the organisation, everything else we do is essentially offshoring our responsibility in that space to somebody else."

Building inclusion for sustained performance

How do you achieve long-lasting change? William shares his top takeaways for building inclusion at scale, with sustained results.

"An isolated programme will die. If you don’t have full vertical support and leadership all the way up to the top, it’s not going to work, period. We tend to place inclusion and wellbeing work in a vertical and then wonder why it doesn’t scale across the organisation. How are you going to impact the enterprise when you’re sitting in a vertical?

"For me, inclusion and wellbeing work comes down to three things:

"The first is scaling – how do you scale a global wellbeing framework? You need a definition of wellbeing for your organisation first, and that definition has to be tied to the culture, otherwise it’s going to flop.
"The second is integration. It should not be that I’m the wellbeing person and you come to me with an issue. This should be a conversation we’re having in every single touch point – leadership development, onboarding, performance, manager fundamentals. It doesn’t need the title of wellbeing or inclusion to be inclusive and to support wellbeing. Standalone versus integration – I’ll go for integration every single time.
"The third is sustained performance. If performance is the goal, then performance alone is how you get burnout. So the question becomes: what are we doing on this side of the equation to sustain performance over time? That means building the right ecosystem, with psychological safety, leadership effectiveness, and the right systems in place to sustain excellence."

Before burnout, there's always smoke before the fire

William explores the critical skills that inclusive leaders need to make a difference. What happens when leaders are not aware of the first signs of burnout – and how can they become better attuned to their people?

"Leaders need empathy and cultural attunement, but that has to be paired with psychological insight. They need to be able to notice the early signs of stress, burnout, disengagement, lack of belonging. Those signs always come before the fire – there’s always a little bit of smoke.

"In tandem with that, leaders need to be strong collaborators. This is a cross-functional conversation, and they need to be able to coach effectively, guiding their teams towards sustainable performance and a healthy working environment.

"Leaders also need to model vulnerability. If you want people to feel safe enough to challenge and to innovate, that starts with the leader. At the same time, leaders tend to have a bias for action, which can be problematic for psychological safety. Instead of jumping straight to solutions, it’s about asking, 'Help me understand how you got there. What do you need? How can I support you, and what barriers can I move out of your way?'

"It’s about providing autonomy with air coverage, so people can grow. If you over-index on high performers, they burn out, and others don’t get the opportunity to develop. Instead, they step aside, and eventually step out of the organisation for one reason or another. Leader-driven inclusive decision-making creates an environment where people feel safe, valued, and empowered to contribute fully."

Positioning can limit impact

Who is responsible for driving forward the inclusion agenda? William imagines an organisational structure where everyone holds accountability.

"This work naturally intersects with talent, HR, inclusion, legal and safety – but where it sits matters. If you place it in talent, it becomes 'that’s an HR thing, that’s not my responsibility.' That positioning alone can limit the impact.

"In an ideal world, you have a separate vertical focused on the employee experience, where wellbeing and inclusion live, and that has a direct line to the CEO. That gives visibility, access, and the ability to influence at the level required. How this work is positioned is usually what makes or breaks it."

"If I could redesign the structure, I would build a vertical called something like health and performance. It cannot just be wellbeing, because that would be done on arrival. It needs to be a cross-functional conversation, bringing together safety, HR, talent management and others into a shared accountability."

"We’re all responsible for the health and performance of the organisation. When that accountability sits, builds strategy, and delivers results together – reporting to the top – it becomes a very different and much more meaningful conversation."

Rethinking ROI - are we measuring the wrong thing?

William reflects on the conversation around ROI (return on investment), suggesting that it's not the right way to think about wellbeing and inclusion.

"ROI turns inclusion and wellbeing into products to be evaluated, rather than a core capacity owned by the entire organisation. The more effective way to think about it is – what is the nature of the investment you’ve put into this space? Most of the time, the investment is not enough. Are we investing at onboarding, at promotion, at performance evaluation, at manager transitions, at the senior leadership level? That’s the level of investment you need if you expect a return.

"What is the return you’re actually looking for? If it’s sustained performance, then we need to measure that properly. People who feel well work better. People who feel connected work better. If you don’t understand that core principle, then we’re not speaking the same language.

"It’s not that metrics don’t matter. We should look at attrition, engagement, retention, and risk. But you cannot measure ROI if you don’t have the infrastructure to measure it. If you’re going to be serious about it, then be serious about it.

"A more thoughtful question is – what are we currently doing to support our employees, and what support do you (responsible person) need to help us do that better? Then we can talk about outcomes. Until then, the ROI conversation is not a serious one."

A word from Laura

Laura Drakeford, Partnerships Manager at FAIRER, shares her key takeaways from William's interview.

Inclusion and wellbeing need to be a shared responsibility across the whole organisation, with visibility at senior leadership level, not just something that sits in HR. If leaders aren’t bought in, teams won’t be either.

Instead of focusing on ROI, focus on meaningful investment and outcomes rather than treating inclusion like something to measure. The data matters, but there’s a difference between measuring inclusion and actually being inclusive - don’t lose sight of the real goal behind the numbers.

If you'd like to be considered for an expert interview, or want to further discuss any of the themes covered in William's interview, please get in touch.