Emma Donaldson-Feilder

Emma Donaldson-Feilder is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist who specialises in helping organisations achieve sustainable business performance through improvements in the wellbeing and engagement of staff. Combining research and practitioner roles with writing and presenting on workplace wellbeing, Emma is:

·         Responsible (with Dr Jo Yarker and Dr Rachel Lewis) for a research programme investigating the link between leadership/management and employee stress/wellbeing, funded by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and Investors in People.  The team was named joint Practitioner of the Year 2007 by the British Psychological Society Division of Occupational Psychology for this project.  Together with Dr Fehmidah Munir of Loughborough University, Emma and Jo have also conducted a research programme looking at line managers’ role in facilitating employees’ return-to-work following long-term sickness absence. The team’s most recent research has been exploring the role of line managers in engendering employee engagement in those that work for them. All the research reports produced are available for free download on the HSE and/or CIPD websites, together with guidance leaflets for managers and HR practitioners.

·         Director of Affinity Health at Work, a specialist consultancy offering services to improve workplace health, wellbeing and effectiveness.  Emma works with a wide range of clients in the public and private sectors, providing consultancy and coaching to help employers and managers improve staff wellbeing, engagement and performance. Recent and current projects include executive coaching for senior managers within a large IT consultancy, stress management coaching for individuals in the Home Office, an employee engagement programme with Government Skills (the sector skills council for central government), a programme of work on resilience and workplace health for the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales, and individual stress risk assessments for an NHS Trust and a private consultancy company. In 2010 Emma and Rachel worked with Business in the Community (BITC) to develop an online training programme for managers on ‘Managing employee wellbeing’ which is free to access on the BITC website.

·         Author of numerous publications in the field, including a newly published book, Preventing stress in organisations: how to develop positive managers, which she wrote with Jo and Rachel and is published by Wiley-Blackwell. Emma has also written a number of book chapters and a range of journal and magazine articles. She is a regular presenter at professional and academic conferences and contributes lectures to the MSc in Occupational Psychology at various universities. She also appears on radio and TV providing expert comment on issues relating to health at work.