The orphaned issue: why workforce health belongs on the CEO agenda.

The World Economic Forum just named the structural problem most large organizations have been avoiding.

In a new article on workforce health and global supply chains, WEF describes employee health as an "orphaned issue." HR owns benefits. EHS owns physical safety. Operations owns productivity. Finance owns costs. And nobody owns the upstream conditions that drive all four.

Brain health is not a benefits line item. It is an organizational design problem that belongs on the CEO agenda.

Brain capital, the cognitive, mental, and neurological assets of a workforce that directly drive business performance, erodes when psychosocial stressors go unmanaged. Psychosocial stressors are the workplace factors like leadership behavior, culture, and job design that affect mental and brain health. They go unmanaged precisely because no function claims them.

We are building a brain economy. That is the economic framework recognizing that cognitive health is the foundational driver of productivity and growth. You cannot build competitive advantage on orphaned infrastructure.

Organizations that close this gap see measurable improvements in productivity, engagement, retention, and safety. Not because they added a new app. Because they redesigned the conditions.

The function WEF is describing exists. It just has not been named on most org charts yet.