Define wellbeing
Earlier this year, I visited a top UK University during a local wellbeing week. Students and staff could access free activities like yoga classes and nutrition tutorials throughout the week. I left unsure about what this world leading academic institution was trying to achieve and if the wellbeing week activities would have any impact.
With ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) becoming more mainstream as non-financial factors that matter to investors and other stakeholders, employers across the economy are interested in how they can improve staff wellbeing. But what is the purpose of these initiatives, and are they successful?
How do you define wellbeing?
There is no universally accepted definition of wellbeing, but many definitions cover similar themes around promoting a holistic and positive sense of life experience.
The OECD is interested in wellbeing as a measure of societal progress, recognising the need to measure outcomes beyond GDP and other macro-economic statistics. The OECD wellbeing framework defines key dimensions that factor into wellbeing including income and wealth, work and job quality, housing, environment quality, health, subjective wellbeing and social connections.
This framework allows the OECD to compare different components of wellbeing in different countries, and also track measures of wellbeing over time.
Though not all domains relate to work, it is possible to distil domains that relate to occupational health, such as long hours in paid work. Interestingly, the UK and the US score moderately when it comes to long hours in paid work overall, but with a high degree of inequality within that domain in each country.
The point is that wellbeing does not have a clear definition. Wellbeing is important but is nuanced, and does not start and end with work.
What is the role of the organisation in promoting employee wellbeing?
Living and working conditions are connected with health outcomes. Boundaries between work and life are blurring. Some employers are stakeholders in the health of their employees far beyond the workplace- such as in organisations where employer- provided health insurance coverage is self funded. In these plans, keeping employees well (within and outside work) reduces the employers bill for healthcare costs.
Meanwhile, other companies are attempting to implement clearer boundaries between work and life. A number of tech companies, including Meta earlier last year, have implemented policies to restrict workplace socio-political debate unrelated to work. In the case of Basecamp, these changes were connected with withdrawing fitness benefits and wellness benefits and replacing these with a 10% profit sharing plan. The CEO wanted to extract the organisation from ‘nudging’ employee behaviour into doing certain things outside work, albeit with the good intention of improving wellbeing.
Our workplace is invested in and contributes to our overall wellbeing. In some companies there are incentives to improve wellbeing beyond work. Other companies are implementing clearer boundaries on where work starts and ends.
How can we evaluate wellbeing initiatives?
Employers are not always specific on what they are trying to achieve with wellbeing initiatives. For example, the university I visited where a wellbeing week was taking place may have been trying to encourage people to reflect on different components of wellbeing, rather than effect change. Some employers view wellbeing benefits as a ‘tick box exercise’ for ESG, part of organisational branding or something they have to offer to make the role attractive to prospective employees.
The global corporate wellness market was worth $53 billion in 2022, forecast to reach $75 billion by 2030 and is not always evidence based in improving outcomes for employee or employer. Every investment in a non-evidence-based wellbeing initiative is a missed opportunity for actual improvement for all stakeholders.
Where to start
Be specific
Pick one aspect of wellbeing that matters to the company and the workforce, and share this with the organisation
E.g. ensuring that workers take adequate paid leave, where this has been shown to relate to improvements in productivity and reduction in sickness absence
Measure changes
Measure the component of wellbeing the organisation is trying to improve and share updates
E.g. are people taking more leave now that the policy has changed from unlimited to fixed leave? How is this related to productivity data and sickness absence?
Start with the basics
Tweaking leave policies are unlikely to be effective in improving productivity and sickness absence when working conditions are poor.
If there are high levels of high sickness absence, work-related ill health and poor employee retention there may be fundamental issues with working conditions that cannot be solved with wellbeing initiatives.
E.g. the various wellness benefits made available to NHS staff through the pandemic was not enough to retain staff who were working in settings where demands far outweighed resource.
This article was researched with the help of ChatGPT