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Physiology is becoming the next boardroom obsession with employers deploying wearable healthtech to track performance, says Paul Armstrong
There’s a growing gap between how businesses model risk and how performance actually degrades. Corporate performance is still described through revenue growth, operating margin, capital efficiency and market share, yet the real constraint on execution increasingly sits elsewhere. Human physiology now lies directly between strategic intent and operational reality. For finance leaders, physiological and psychological capacity has become a balance-sheet exposure rather than a lifestyle curiosity. Boardrooms debate AI transformation, productivity and resilience while senior executives monitor their sleep apps at 3am, hoping personal optimisation compensates for organisational neglect. But what about the rest of the team?
Strategy looks good on paper, but biology doesn’t cooperate
AI, strategy reviews, digital programmes and cost controls continue to dominate executive attention, but few companies are looking at human decline with such rigour. Traditional P&L isn’t remotely related to chronic sleep debt, metabolic instability, sustained stress and age-related cognitive slowdown, although measurement for each exists and is improving rapidly. Research linking health decline to absenteeism, judgement error and lost productivity continues to harden, yet those costs remain diffuse, poorly owned and rarely modelled. Tech is quietly changing this, largely thanks to the wearable market, which is set to become a $232bn industry by 2030 (GlobalData) in large part through more sophisticated health monitoring.
A small number of organisations have already adjusted behaviour, understandably without much public fanfare. Healthcare vertical integration strategies recognised early that outcomes shape enterprise economics more reliably than benefits optics. Large technology firms have spent years correlating sleep quality, cognitive load and decision accuracy, reshaping working patterns accordingly while avoiding public claims. Financial institutions and asset managers increasingly deploy resilience and neuro-performance training not as cultural signalling, but as protection against impaired judgement under pressure. Professional sport reached this conclusion long ago, where physiological optimisation is booked as operational expenditure because performance failure carries immediate cost. Business remains behind the curve.
Measurement has changed everything, but governance hasn’t caught up
Instrumentation has shifted the conversation from theory to observation. Wearables and diagnostics once dismissed as enthusiast accessories now produce signals credible enough to inform enterprise decisions. Continuous glucose monitoring reveals metabolic volatility that precedes fatigue and cognitive drift. Heart-rate variability surfaces accumulated stress days before error rates rise. EEG-based neurofeedback measures attention regulation and emotional control directly rather than inferring them from surveys or sentiment scores. Brain health no longer sits in the realm of guesswork. Observation increasingly replaces assumption.
The transition was visible at CES, where beneath predictable consumer noise sat a quieter but more consequential signal. Devices designed for continuous, passive monitoring of cognition, mood and recovery are moving steadily from personal optimisation into corporate interest. Parallel developments unfold behind closed doors in London clinics such as Hooke, where comprehensive biomarker panels, advanced brain imaging and longitudinal ageing analysis already help wealthy clients extend high-functioning years. Corporate governance has yet to reconcile the reality that such tools exist, are improving quickly, and are already normalised among decision-makers.
Office environments and executive benefits represent the next distribution channel. Neurofeedback systems such as Neurosity’s Crown already train focus and stress regulation through real-time brain signals rather than coaching metaphors. Smart jewellery like Incora’s earrings monitors physiological markers discreetly, reducing the social friction associated with wrist-based devices. Oura rings have moved well beyond consumer wellness, with employers and sports organisations deploying them at scale to understand fatigue, recovery and readiness. TruDiagnostic has a range of products including one that compresses roughly 900,000 epigenetic biomarkers into biological age signals that shift discussions from chronological time to functional capacity. Mendi’s neurofeedback headband targets cerebral blood flow to improve concentration and emotional regulation. Red-light therapy, sleep optimisation systems and continuous metabolic tracking are also sneaking into perks packages for remote workers.
The next enterprise secret sauce might be biological, not digital
Adoption of such tools forces responsibility to migrate away from HR and towards finance, risk and governance. The transition won’t be smooth. Physiological data in the workplace raises questions most boards have yet to confront directly, covering consent, privacy, liability and disclosure. Ignoring those questions does not remove exposure, because leaders already self-optimise in uneven and ungoverned ways. Performance variance increasingly reflects access to optimisation rather than role or seniority. Organisations not optimising are begging for disruption.
Boards that continue framing human performance as a cultural or wellbeing issue rather than an enterprise variable risk widening execution gaps. Decision cycles go longer, error rates increase and innovation timelines stretch as biological capacity erodes unnoticed. Burnout becomes an unmodelled cost centre rather than a predictable outcome of sustained overload. Tech can only do so much, but businesses have to be willing to invest in solving this problem, not just assume AI can solve everything. Stress is killing most businesses from the inside out through what might be called ‘capacity drift’.
Capacity drift compounds quietly. Unlike financial leverage, deterioration does not announce itself through volatility until performance slips and recovery costs rise. Boards already model succession risk, operational fragility and capital constraints. Allowing capacity drift to build despite available measurement creates downside without corresponding upside. Investors will not need direct access to biological data to price that risk. Outcomes will surface it first.
Competitive moats rarely appear where companies expect them. Cybersecurity once sat outside governance until breach costs forced recognition. Human physiology is moving along the same path, but the window for advantage is narrowing. The difference is that while cybersecurity threats came from outside, this one is already inside the building, degrading performance in real time. Organisations applying the same rigour to biological performance as they do to capital allocation and operational resilience will compound advantage quietly. Others will continue optimising strategy atop declining human hardware, mistaking planning sophistication for execution capacity.
Physiology is not a wellness trend, it’s increasingly business infrastructure, and the CFOs who recognise this first will be the ones still standing when the board asks why execution keeps missing strategy.
