Well-being: The missing department on the call sheet
We perfect what appears on screen, but the true success of a production depends on something unseen – the emotional health of a team behind it. Becky Morrison, CEO and Founder of The Light, believes that the industry’s next creative leap won’t come from better tools, but from better care for those using them.
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Anyone who has ever stepped onto a commercial set knows how much we invest in the visual aspects of production. State of the art equipment. Top of the line crews. Award-winning directors. We tweak lights, measure focus and adjust wardrobe so that every frame reaches its highest form of perfection.
Yet the thing that ultimately determines how a shoot goes, and how the work turns out, is something you will never see on a monitor. The success of a shoot depends on the collective emotional health of the team.
Teams perform at significantly higher levels when they believe their ideas matter.
The health of the team affects everything. It dictates whether the day flows or becomes a grind. Whether people bring ideas or stifle them in silence. When there is interpersonal tension, an unresolved conflict or even the sense that something is off, it can jeopardise the shooting schedule, the creative and the bottom line.
This is not an anecdotal observation. It is supported by extensive research. Harvard professor Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety shows that teams perform at significantly higher levels when they believe their ideas matter.
A Gallup poll found that only 30 per cent of employees feel their opinions count at work, and calculated that by raising that number to 60 per cent, “organisations could realise a 27 per cent reduction in turnover, a 40 per cent reduction in safety incidents and 12 per cent increase in productivity.”
Above: Studies show that a team's performance is greatly enhanced by good communication and a sense of engagement.
The Harvard Business Review has reported similar findings, noting that a positive work environment can boost productivity by more than 30 per cent. Feeling good at work increases employee engagement, which is a person’s emotional commitment to the project and their willingness to put discretionary effort into their work. Engagement is the key to activating a high performing workforce.
Engagement is the key to activating a high performing workforce.
So why have we not yet integrated these basic tenets of organisational leadership into our productions? The reason is simple. There has never been a designated role on set responsible for wellbeing. In an industry where every position is hyper-specialised and nothing happens unless there is a crew member assigned to it, this gap has left the most influential factor for success without a place on the call sheet.
That is beginning to change. In the UK, productions have introduced well-being facilitators – trained professionals whose sole focus is the mental health and well-being of the crew. They support communication, strengthen alignment and help resolve issues before they affect the work. Productions that use them report smoother days, healthier morale and a noticeable lift in creative output.
A well-being facilitator helps bridge gaps in trust, prevent conflict and de-escalate issues before they arise.
I wanted to understand this emerging role firsthand, so I traveled to London as part of the first US cohort to complete training with 6ft From the Spotlight, the organisation that pioneered the role in the UK. Their framework is inspiring, providing everything from preproduction mental health risk assessments to one-on-one crew support on set. A well-being facilitator helps bridge gaps in trust, prevent conflict and de-escalate issues before they arise.
Above: A happy, healthy culture on set actually boosts creativity of the work.
A similar role is beginning to surface in the US, though it has not yet settled into a standardised job title. On my own sets, I have had someone in this position for several years. In an industry where we often neglect our own health for the sake of the project, when people realise that someone is dedicated to their well-being, they light up. Whether you call it well-being, care, mental health or safety, the function is the same: someone actively creating a healthy culture that supports people doing their best work.
If we don’t tend to culture, we replicate the one we inherited and anyone who has worked in production knows that it is much in need of improvement. Emotionally healthy environments do not appear on their own. They must be cultivated, and cultivation requires someone tasked with tilling the soil.
As director David Lynch said, ‘Negativity is the enemy of creativity’.
In addition to a more satisfied workforce, an added benefit is that creativity flourishes in emotionally healthy environments. More money can pay for better equipment, bigger locations and more crew — but it cannot buy more creativity. As the director David Lynch said, “Negativity is the enemy of creativity.” An invisible adversary that, until now, no one was looking out for.
I don’t pretend to know precisely what this role will be called or exactly when it will arrive. But I do know that it’s coming. Crews are asking for it. And the next generation will expect it. I welcome this shift with open arms. After decades of running productions, it is clear to me that the next creative revolution will not come from AI or upgraded tech, but from how well we care for the humans using it.
