Diagnostics
Use our guided self-assessment tool to evolve your workplace wellbeing approach.
introduction
From ‘What now??!’ to ‘What if…?’:A comprehensive guide to exploring and embedding workplace wellbeing
This guided self-assessment tool draws on extensive research to dispel myths and show what really makes a difference to workplace wellbeing. It:
- reveals the people-focussed behaviours of thriving businesses
- invites employers to move from ‘what now?!’, to ‘what if…?’ approaches to ‘people’ matters
- foregrounds lower cost and sustainable processes that evolve over time
- offers questions and exercises that help reveal next steps for any business, however far along a journey towards workplace wellbeing.
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What does workplace wellbeing look like in practice?
Workplace wellbeing embedded
In businesses where people are thriving, supported by the organisation to feel and perform well, we see:
- A clear understanding embedded at all levels of the organisation that helping people thrive can help the business thrive too.
- Pro-active and open-minded enquiry (‘what if we…?’) on the impacts of every work process and procedure on workplace wellbeing.
- Manager and employee involvement in promoting, setting up and contributing to activities that support workplace wellbeing, in every layer of the organisation.
- Ongoing dialogue about what could be better, how it could be made better, trying out relevant solutions and then checking back to see what made a difference – on repeat.
- Realistic expectation that it takes work and time to make employees aware of a wellbeing approach, to build trust and to ensure separate smaller activities work together as whole.
Workplace wellbeing NOT embedded
In those businesses where people are not supported by the organisation to feel and perform well, we see:
- Prioritisation of short-term gains to the bottom line above employee needs when managers are unwilling or feel unable to spend time or money to avoid the costs of poor wellbeing in the medium to longer-term (e.g. presenteeism, absenteeism, staff turnover).
- Re-active, quick fix mentality (‘what now?!!’) focussed on standalone wellbeing interventions, events or gifts, with a narrow definition of wellbeing (e.g. safety, attendance).
- Top-down, cookie cutter-style approach to wellbeing, where any initiatives are seen as the niche activity of HR or other wellbeing professionals, not activity that spans the business.
- The implementation of new initiatives without checking with employees if they are appropriate, needed or make a difference. Senior managers believe that employee involvement would lead to unreasonable demands and ‘opening a can of worms’.
- Any useful wellbeing initiatives being counteracted by other ways the organisation is working, or unfairness in the way these are rolled out. Employees do not feel any attempts towards wellbeing are authentic because of lack of consistency and coherence.
Why is this guide unique?
There are plenty of guides out there already that talk about specific programmes or initiatives that businesses can implement to improve wellbeing. There are also guides to planning and project management for effective delivery. The explore and embed approach is different.
The explore and embed approach is an ecosystem approach to thinking about workplace wellbeing. It’s not about how you implement any single initiative, like a healthy eating policy or making counselling available to workers through your EAP. It’s about how you get the whole organisation pulling in one direction – you can work together for thriving people, thriving business.
This guide does not provide a plan for you to work through A to B. It recognises that sustaining workplace wellbeing within an organisation is a continuous, evolving process and at any one point, what you need most is to identify a ‘way in’ to making more positive change. This guide offers multiple different ‘ways in’, asking you to zoom in and out as you look at your organisation, to really look at workplace wellbeing differently.
Explore and Embed
What is the Explore and Embed approach?
The explore and embed approach is broken down into five sections that you can visit in any order and at any time, again and again, as your wellbeing process evolves over months and then years.
These are distilled from scientific evidence collected in surveys, via in-depth conversations with managers, HR professionals and workers in large and small organisations as they rolled out new wellbeing initiatives over time, and via systematic analysis of many studies. They are brought here together for the first time….
You can explore and embed via:
ALIGNING TO THRIVE:
Why is it important to pay attention to workplace wellbeing? – Building the narrative aligning wellbeing and productivity in your organisation.
PRO-ACTIVE APPROACH:
How do you go about building a wellbeing approach? – Building the will and finding the time to set out on a positive path to wellbeing.
SHARING THE LOAD:
Who can play a part?
– Enlisting the involvement of senior leaders, people-focussed professionals and the wider workforce in your organisation’s wellbeing efforts.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DIALOGUE:
What do we need to do?
Achieving continuous development through listening, imagining, piloting and evolving.
A DISCERNING EYE:
How will we know if things are going well?
Reviewing all progress against key principles (communication, coherence, creativity, consistency, commitment)
Each section offers:
- A simple explanation of what evidence tells us works
- At least one example of what this looks like in practice, drawn from real life cases
- Questions and / or prompts to help you identify areas to work on
- Signposting to other tools and information that could help on this
best use of the guide
How to make best use of the guide?
The suggestions in this guide are evidence-based, drawing on a wide variety of scientifically published and in-progress research work with varied organisations. If you are interested in what underpins this synthesis visit our News and Publications page, or for more detail, visit our UEA team’s full listings of papers and reports.
Use the questions in each section flexibly according to your own time and needs. Dip in and out or work through sequentially. Use it to give you a quick overview on your own, or work with a group of colleagues to do a more in-depth review.
Any of the five sections below can be used as a team or a group exercise, as an activity during planning or away days, internal training sessions, workshops or any time you want to discuss how your business is doing on wellbeing. Building your people strategy is an ongoing and evolving process. This type of discussion is necessary because even if you have KPIs, metrics, absence scores or service usage reports, these do not capture all the complexity that comes when truly understanding the health and wellbeing of your colleagues.
If you only have 10 minutes, pick one question, and jot down what comes to your mind as you are reading our examples. Set yourself a calendar reminder to pick up and read your jotted notes again soon or discuss them with a colleague.
This is your tool – so use it to help you think, reflect, discuss, engage others, plan or act as you see fit.
Questions
Where to start?
You can dive right into the information wherever you like or take our quick diagnostic first to see if it could help you choose where to start?