Sofy Richards is Chief Operating Officer of Sovereign Advisory at Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, where she leads operational performance and strategic planning for a team advising governments, sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises on complex transactions and transformation. Over fifteen+ years she has built her career on a simple belief: that how people are led and supported is inseparable from how well a business performs. Her experience spans organisations from early-stage start-ups up to FTSE-listed multinationals across professional services, telecoms, technology and the public sector. She holds an Executive MBA with Distinction from the University of Warwick. Sofy is a long-standing advocate for workplace wellbeing, bringing a practitioner’s view of what genuinely moves the dial for people leaders balancing commercial pressure with care for their teams.
We are delighted that Sofy will be speaking on our Reimagining Wellbeing Leadership Panel as part of our London Summit on 15th September. We caught up with her to see how she’s feeling in the run up to the summit:
Hi Sofy, we are thrilled that you are joining us at the Wellbeing at Work Summit London in September. Our first and most important question is, how are you doing today?
Honestly, a 7 out of 10. I had a great aerial hoops session this week, properly challenging and properly rewarding in equal measure. I’ve also got a holiday coming up, and I’m noticing the list of things to sort before I can switch off properly, which is a fairly fitting answer for a wellbeing summit.
As a leader based in the region, what are the main challenges you are facing when it comes to employee wellbeing and mental health?
Volume versus depth. Leaders are being asked to do more with less, faster, and that pressure cascades down to teams. Wellbeing often ends up as a tick-box exercise sitting alongside performance management rather than woven into it. I’ve worked everywhere from a start-up to a FTSE-listed multinational, and the pattern holds everywhere: the moment wellbeing is treated as separate from how work actually gets done, it’s the first thing cut under pressure.
What strategies have you seen developing over the past 6 months, both internally and externally, that are moving the dial on wellbeing in the workplace?
The clearest shift is from awareness to capability. Mental Health UK’s latest Burnout Report found nearly one in three employers admit their managers don’t have the time, training or resources to meaningfully support staff with mental health. That’s why Dentons Europe has invested in Mental Health First Aiders, myself included. A policy only works if the person someone turns to actually knows what to do with it.
The other shift is the rising value of employee resource groups. I’m part of our working parents’ group, and much of the real support happens peer to peer, not top-down. Employers don’t need to solve everything themselves; enabling staff to support each other is often the most valuable intervention.
Why is employee wellbeing so important to you personally?
I’ve spent my career building and rebuilding teams across very different environments, and I’ve seen both sides up close: people who are genuinely supported do extraordinary things, and people who aren’t, however talented, burn out or walk. I firmly reject the idea that ambition has to come at the cost of wellbeing, including your own. I’m also a parent, which has sharpened my view of what sustainable working life actually looks like in practice, not on the good days, but on the ones that don’t go to plan.
What impact is AI having in your organization and how are you managing that?
Our Innovation and Intelligence team has been excellent here, refining our in-house proprietary tools and integrating external ones like DeepL where they genuinely add value, alongside significant investment in training across the teams.
AI will continue to disrupt, and like any major change, that brings opportunity as well as risk. The opportunity only materialises if employers retrain and support people through that change rather than viewing AI purely through an efficiencies lens, too often shorthand for headcount reduction. Critical thinking, the ability to ask the right questions rather than simply accept an output, is increasing in value. I’d also caution against over-reliance on AI, not least because of the costs involved, including the environmental ones.
Other than AI, are there any challenges that you are seeing for the first time and how are you addressing them?
A generational shift in how people see the relationship between hard work and reward. Millennials and Gen Z have grown up against constant turbulence, wars, Brexit, a seemingly endless churn of prime ministers, and many no longer see the old promise of “work hard, life improves” holding true. That’s not cynicism; it’s a rational response to what they’ve watched happen.
I don’t believe the answer is another engagement survey. It’s looking honestly at how teams are invested in a company’s future, aligning shareholders, employees and local communities, rather than defaulting to shareholder value primacy and minimising tax and staffing costs wherever possible. If people don’t feel they have a genuine stake in where the organisation is going, no amount of perks will fix that.
What areas do you think employers should be focused on over the next 12 months?
Three things. Board-level backing, because without active support at the top, strategies don’t become operationalised. Psychological safety in particular around AI-driven change, because uncertainty about your own relevance is itself a wellbeing issue. And genuinely joined-up thinking between HR, finance and operations, so wellbeing strategy and investment aren’t isolated to one function.
Do you feel that investment in employee wellbeing in the region is increasing or decreasing and is that a direct reflection on HR leaders’ increasing ability to demonstrate effective returns of their strategies to leadership?
It’s a mixed picture, and I’d be wary of giving a single answer either way. What I do see consistently is leaders having to work much harder to justify wellbeing spend in a competitive landscape, where every line of investment is under scrutiny. That pressure pushes teams to build sharper, more evidence-led cases rather than relying on goodwill, but it also means wellbeing has to compete for budget in a way it perhaps didn’t a few years ago. The organisations that get this right treat that justification as an opportunity to embed wellbeing into core strategy, rather than a hurdle to get past.
How has your organisation been leading the way?
A few things stand out. Our investment in Mental Health First Aiders, the strength of our employee resource groups, and a well-established programme, the Allyship Pods, where colleagues from across the region come together in small groups over six months to explore how allyship turns into everyday action, build practical skills, and reflect on different perspectives.
Sofy is speaking in London as part of our Wellbeing at Work Summit UK 2026 which takes place in London and Manchester this September. Click the links below to find out more and book your tickets:
London Summit 15th September: Find out more and Book Your London Tickets Here
Manchester Summit 17th September: Find out more and Book Your Manchester Tickets Here
