The story of well-being - the short version
In a 1968 speech, Robert F. Kennedy, US Senator and younger brother of John F. Kennedy, says of the country's focus on financial performance:
"Too much and too long, we seem to have abandoned personal success and societal values in the sheer accumulation of material goods. Our gross domestic product includes air pollution, cigarette advertising and ambulance cleanup after our massive carnage. Yet gross domestic product says nothing about the health of our children, the quality of our marriages, the level of intellect in public discourse or the integrity of our public servants. Nor does it measure our humor or our courage, nor our wisdom and learning, not even our compassion or our devotion to our country. It measures everything except what makes life worth living."
Since then, many pages have been written criticising our overriding focus on financial performance over softer, even utterly central parts of life, such as our well-being. Today, we are in a place where over 40 nations in the world regularly conduct official measures of citizen well-being (Diener & Seligman, 2018). At the same time, we are in a place where few companies and states question the link between good economic performance and people's overall well-being.
In Denmark, we are also at the forefront of the well-being agenda, as seen for example in the 2008 Well-being Agreement, where all municipalities in the country were obliged to conduct well-being and satisfaction surveys every three years. Despite this obligation, many choose to conduct well-being surveys more often than every three years.
What is well-being?
Well-being can be difficult to define, especially because it is poorly defined in theoretical terms. Is it simply the absence of stress? How does the psychological work environment affect an individual's well-being? What does the mental - and physical - health of the employee mean for well-being? Most people agree that well-being is a multi-faceted concept. And maybe that's okay? Because on reflection, thriving is a very subjective feeling. My well-being is a stage that I have to define for myself: "How would I rate my own well-being, and what could help improve it?"
Read the article on mental work environment here.
Reading the Psychological Pedagogical Dictionary (Hans Reitzel, 2006), well-being refers to the concept of satisfaction in a person as a general emotional attitude or state. The term is often applied to [children's] general well-being in [school], including the meaning of a good physical and mental environment.
If we replace the words "children" and "school" with "staff" and "workplace" we have a definition that could be a starting point, albeit with a respect that the elements that affect the well-being of children and adults may be different.
Nevertheless, let us try to embrace well-being in a number of theoretical perspectives. Just to provide a starting point for your work on well-being.
Theories of well-being
Let's try to embrace well-being in theory anyway. Let's visit well-being from three perspectives 1) the feeling of happiness and satisfaction in life, 2) natural and inner motivation at work and 3) less stress leads to more well-being
The feeling of happiness and satisfaction in life
An understanding tool that can give some direction to workplace well-being is the PERMA model, developed by Martin Seligman, one of the pioneers of positive psychology(Seligman, 2011). The PERMA model is used to assess general life satisfaction and well-being, but in relation to well-being it can be used as a conversational tool and a working framework to work towards greater well-being in the organisation.
You can read about coaching here
The PERMA dimensions cover:
Positive Emotions - Positive emotions are about experiencing positive emotions in a preponderance rather than negative emotions. The term covers affective stages. The emotions here could be contentment, complacency, redemption, optimism, faith, confidence, self-assurance and hope. There are proven techniques that can be learned that will lead to more positive emotions.
Engagement - Being engaged refers to a psychological state of being absorbed by and focused in the work. In full effect, this state is also called "flow". The following things must be true to feel engaged: the employee has clear goals and is genuinely interested in the tasks at hand. The task poses challenges that match the employee's skills. Working on the tasks provides direct and immediate feedback to the employee. Last but not least, the employee feels in control of the activities related to the job (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1996)
Relationships - Positive relationships are a central part of well-being research. Yet it is difficult to say what drives us humans to seek out and engage in positive relationships; do we do it to achieve a particular outcome? Or simply because it leads to positive feelings? No one knows for sure, but it is a central part of the evolution of our species - Homo Sapiens.
Meaning - Meaningfulness, in this context, relates to the employee's use of the unique strengths and abilities that the employee is particularly good at. Further, it also requires that these skills be used to contribute to a cause that the individual employee perceives to be "greater than themselves."
Accomplishment - To achieve results - or to win - we chase solely for the sweetness of victory. This drive drives people in pursuit of wealth, status and other socially positioning activities. For the individual employee, this feeling is achieved when they reach a desirable stage or reach a stated goal.
The PERMA model looks at the individual as a whole, both as a private person and as a professional. Therefore, there are of course certain limitations in dealing with all parameters - the overall happiness and well-being - in an employment relationship. However, we still believe that the model can be an incredibly useful tool to italicize different components of overall well-being. The model can also help provide clarity to individual employees about how different domains of their lives contribute to their overall well-being.
As an example of an intervention, managers and employees could jointly launch a survey on the PERMA parameters of working life.
Issues that can be discussed about well-being at work can be:
- In what situations do I experience positive emotions in my work?
- Where do I find myself using my strengths in a productive and contributing way?
- How does our work contribute to making the world a better place?
- What relationships do I find myself missing when I am away from work for long periods of time (during holidays, for example)?
- When was the last time I experienced flow? And what can I do to get there more often?
- What is one thing I can do to get closer to my personal goal of [insert personal goal]?
Motivation at work as a cornerstone in improving employee well-being at work
Feeling naturally motivated in one's work can, usefully, be used as a cornerstone in understanding the well-being of individual employees. As motivation creates a naturalness in the desire to do the job. Motivation is a well-worn leaf in psychological research, and in relation to well-being we choose to include a classic in recent motivational research. This recent classic is Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan's Self Determination Theory (SDT) (Deci & Ryan, 2000), which describes a difference between external and internal motivation in humans. In this article, the focus will be on the intrinsic motivation that arises in people when they experience these three components of their employment - also known as CAR:
Competence - Feeling competent, or feeling mastery, is about feeling that you contribute your knowledge and skills in an effective way that contributes to the overall performance of the organisation. In other words, it is partly about possessing certain competences, but also about these being brought into play in the context of solving the employee's work tasks. This is the case, for example, when an employee feels that the competences acquired through training and experience are being used - and are important - for the solution of their task. The opposite case is of course detrimental to the achievement of intrinsic motivation.
Autonomy - Freedom, free choice and autonomy in task-solving. Basically, it is about the extent to which the employee feels that he or she has room for manoeuvre in solving his or her tasks. The employee should have a feeling of choice and be able to use this choice to solve the task in the most attractive way from the employee's point of view. Rigid and detailed process descriptions with no room for deviation or alternative interpretations can be restrictive to the employee's freedom. You may know the situation; nothing is more deadly to your desire to perform a task than if your boss has given the orders: DO IT, do it EXACTLY this way and do it NOW. Don't get us wrong - rules are allowed, as long as they are meaningful to the employee, they won't have a negative impact on motivation and well-being.
Relatedness - The last is the need for relatability. This refers to a need to feel a sense of belonging to one's colleagues, and thus for the individual to feel that the workplace provides a secure and meaningful relational base. In several places, relatability is elaborated to mean that the solution of the employee's tasks has a visible impact on the ability of colleagues, customers or business partners to succeed in their goals and tasks.
There are no universal limits to the degree of competence, autonomy and relatedness that is sufficient to build intrinsic motivation. This arises from the model's unit of analysis, the individual. It is therefore crucial that the individual employee feels that the elements are present to a sufficient degree. Therefore, organisations often have to deal with some individual adaptation in relation to creating intrinsic motivation in employees.
So how can this knowledge be used to improve well-being in the workplace?
Well, there are a few approaches.
First, you can investigate the extent to which employees feel that the CAR principles are present in their everyday lives - relatively simply by asking them or conducting surveys. Next, you can align expectations about resources, frameworks, direction and conditions to make employee empowerment visible, which can lead to reorganization or restructuring of workflows to increase employee intrinsic motivation. A final, but often overlooked task lies in communication with and appreciative management of employees. After all, what is the organization's raison d'être? Which cogs in the machine does our work contribute to? And who cares if I, as an employee, come to work tomorrow? These are important questions to know the answers to as both manager and employee.
Less stress means better well-being at work
There can be little doubt about both the financial and personal consequences of being affected by stress, either for the individual or the organisation as a whole. Here we take the liberty of including absenteeism in stress, as a factor contributing to well-being.
To elucidate stress, theoretically, we will visit two perspectives; "role clarification" as well as stress in a transactional perspective.
Lazarus and Folkman put forward a theory based on the fact that individuals interact with their environment and that stress arises as a result of an imbalance between the demands of the environment and the resources of the individual to cope and meet these demands (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
How can it be that stress only affects some employees when several of them have comparable working conditions and pressures? This curiosity became the starting point for Lazarus and Folkman's transactional perspective on stress. Their theory describes three basic factors that influence an individual's experience of stress.
The strain - is about the general strain that the individual feels, for example through demands on him/herself and demands from the outside world. The burden thus covers both factors from the private and professional spheres. "Today is just a bad day" - We all know it, on some days, or in some periods, we are better at dealing with stressful elements. This can have a lot to do with how well we've been thriving recently.
Stressors - are about the individual elements that induce or contribute to our feelings of stress. Stressors can involve relationships, experiences, tasks. The car breaking down this morning, the meeting with the demanding customer, the lack of internet connection in the office, the understaffing in the department today. Every time you have experienced stress "flaring up" it happens in the encounter with a stressor.
Coping - is a generic term for all the things you can do to lessen the impact of confronting stressors. They are also called coping strategies because they can involve a series of actions, thought patterns and rituals. All the things you do to reduce the feeling of stress are your coping strategies. It may be that you physically remove yourself from the stressor, it may be that you distract yourself from thinking about the stressor, it may be that you call a friend to explain and unload, it may be that you go for a run to forget about the stressor, it may be that you comfort eat, it may be that you have a glass of wine to calm your thoughts. With this last example, we want to reveal that not all coping strategies are equally productive in the long run. So poor or stubborn coping strategies can ultimately affect your well-being. But if you have well-chosen and effective coping strategies, these can be your protective shield against stress. It's all about balance.
It is not uncommon for us to work with feedback in relation to well-being, and here the following topic often comes up. It is often about setting expectations and clarifying roles. Employees in an organisation are employed to fulfil one or a number of roles, and according to Katz and Kahn, tensions associated with these roles will lead to increased stress for the individual. Role clarification is central to Katz & Kahn's view of stress. They nuance the language of role clarification with the 3 perspectives 1) Role overload 2) Role conflict 3) Role ambiguity
Role overload - When there are too many demands on the role. We may know it ourselves when we read job advertisements. The list of expected tasks and skills is endless, and will require 27 hours a day to fit together. If this becomes reality, the employee will experience role overload. Smart and conflict-averse employees risk ending up here because they are not good enough to turn down new tasks or demands in an attempt to help a colleague or manager.
Role conflict - When the demands are in conflict with each other. The new manager of the department must ensure that we complete the announced reorganisation and the building of the new service element, but it is important to do this in a way so that staff feel that their workplace provides a stable base for their lives at the same time. Wait for what? An employee can easily take on several roles, but not if they conflict too much.
Role ambiguity - When the requirements of the role are unclear. When we try to define Must-Win-Battles for employees, this is in an attempt to help them understand the priority and importance of the different requirements of the different roles. But if this is not crystal clear and prioritised we end up with 25 Must-Win-Battles and if there is no synergy and coherence between these, the employee may end up with more stress, greater tension and lower well-being than before.
Again, from this perspective, dialogue and the exchange of feedback on experiences can be part of the way to greater openness and improved well-being. If you have job descriptions in your organisation, these can provide the framework for a dialogue on role definition between manager and employee.
Alternatively, with the aim of improving well-being in the workplace, a dialogue could be based on these questions:
- Where do you experience the biggest "grey areas" in expectations of your work?
- In what ways do you feel your role has evolved?
- What are situations that have brought more tasks to your role? And how have there been fewer?
- How does my role interact with the roles of my closest collaborators?
- When do I feel successful in my role?
- What are expectations of my role that I find difficult to balance?
- What are the 5 most important requirements for my role?
- If I were to remove the least important requirement of my role, what could I cut?
- What direction do I hope my role will take?
Why talk about well-being at work at all?
Is well-being preferable? Yes. Is well-being important? Yes. This sums up public attitudes towards well-being, and there are many good reasons to nurture and build a high level of well-being in your organisation. Both in terms of the organisation's finances, brand, development and accountability. Let's take a look at a few.
CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) - Many companies try to meet social responsibility in their operations, both in terms of environmental concerns, but also in building socially sustainable workplaces and organisations. This can quickly tarnish an otherwise good reputation if the public becomes aware of poor well-being within the company's walls. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen suggest that well-being measurements should be made public to boost the focus on well-being in Danish workplaces (Djøfbladet, 2020).
Employee Advocacy - A secret weapon for companies is to create representatives and ambassadors among their employees. Employee well-being is an important part of this weapon because if, and only if, they can vouch for their workplace - if they like being there - they will go out and recommend friends to look for work or their network to buy the company's products. So, for the individual, satisfaction needs to reach a certain minimum level before they will start advocating for the company to both new customers and potential new employees.
Economics - What are the costs of low well-being? It's a question that's hard to answer in dollars and cents. But there is a broad consensus that letting your staff down can be an incredibly high cost for your organisation. Resignations, sick leave, low engagement, re-hires and training periods, lack of initiative, reduced creativity - the list of potential costs can quickly become long. One example that may speak to the level of costs is that the proportion of sickness absence related to stress is estimated to be up to 25% of total sickness absence and the cost to society is estimated at DKK 14 billion/year (NFA and Ministry of Employment, 2006, 2014). In short, the economic consequences are incalculable and far-reaching.
Learning - A significant amount of research on well-being is about the well-being of school children, and this links to the importance of well-being in our ability to learn. If a child - or an adult - is unhappy, this condition will take up a large proportion of the total cognitive capacity that could otherwise be directed towards learning activities. In short, the environment acts as a threat to the individual, who will therefore naturally focus on protecting himself rather than learning new things. Therefore, well-being becomes an important prerequisite for learning new things and learning new things fast enough. This will be particularly important in these years when the ability of organisations to learn new things will mean everything for their competitiveness. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is famous for this quote about learning and speed:
"If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness."
This list is far from exhaustive, and the arguments for striving for high wellbeing could no doubt go on and on. One question the conscientious manager could ask themselves could be: "How do I want my appreciative leadership and my employees' work life to affect their wellbeing? And when will I be proud of the result?"
Well-being and feedback - how are they linked?
When we work with feedback in organisations, increasing well-being is often one of the main reasons to work on creating better feedback. Indeed, the goal should not be feedback per se, but rather other larger, more important and strategic goals.
And here the arrow often points to greater well-being as the goal of the work - And how exactly is that connection to be understood?
Expectations, exchange of views, recognition and dialogue are some of the key words in our approach to feedback. If we link these words to the theories above, it will also become clear that well-being can easily be at the centre of the exchange of healthy feedback between both employees and managers. However, this requires an agreement or consent to work concentrated on well-being in the organisation. This agreement must then be translated into concrete behaviour and actions. How will we create better well-being? How can I as a colleague contribute to an overall increase in well-being? What is one thing I already do that contributes to your well-being? The answers to these questions can form the framework for your well-being work.
Themes that often come up in this study can be:
- Foul or abusive language/interruptions
- Lack of inclusion or responsiveness
- Role expectations
- Overload due to workload
- Quality of work carried out in the context of handovers
- Lack of recognition
Now the staff can, together, agree on what is good or "well-being" behaviour within each of the themes. The secret of whether the work is going to make a difference comes now: Will you get good at giving feedback, and holding each other up for more of this new behaviour, or will you fall back into old habits and patterns?
Working to create good feedback habits and strong competencies therefore enables you to actually influence the behaviour you experience in your collaboration.
This well-being process can be boiled down to four steps:
1) Set goals and create acceptance to strengthen well-being
2) Define "well-being" behaviour
3) Use feedback to create learning about well-being experiences
4) Possibly introduce measurements to show future developments
Feedback is a big topic in itself, and in this article you will find more knowledge about: what good feedback looks like.
Well-being at work - what are the elements and responsibilities?
Actually, well-being is a funny concept, because how can we embrace and understand it? What are its elements? How can it be measured and weighed? Which elements are universal to all people and which are individual? How much of people's well-being depends on private and professional factors? And as we discussed earlier - how can well-being be defined in theoretical terms?
One division that may be useful is between mental and physical well-being.
This alone provides a number of different areas to look at. On the mental side: collaboration, psychological working environment, relationships, stress levels, motivation. In the physical arena it could be: working postures, lighting conditions, nutrition, training condition, physical strain of work, lifting, illness. All these are factors that are usually included in the most common well-being surveys and workplace assessments. To find areas for action, we need to ask ourselves and our employees: What factors contribute most to your well-being? What factors are most inhibiting your well-being right now?
So who is really responsible? We choose the diplomatic answer = Overall well-being is a shared responsibility. And here is an elaboration. Since well-being covers such a wide range of facets, we obviously need to engage in dialogue about what expectations, efforts, responsibilities and resources belong to each side of the table.
Some facets are obviously the responsibility of the workplace: for example, the physical working environment, personnel legal issues, conflict management, well-being initiatives, role descriptions and clarifications, and management more generally. In other parts of the well-being elements, it is more obvious to have expectations for individual employees: physical health, personal relationships, approach to collegial relationships, coping and expression of well-being. Clarifying these and determining what factors can create high well-being is then a joint task. But isn't it a bit black and white to think that sharp divisions can be made in this way? Of course, there will always be grey areas and conflicting perspectives. But precisely to reduce confusion and clarify direction, we need to engage in dialogue. The dialogue must clarify responsibilities in relation to the overall well-being of the workplace. The graphic below shows an example of how the different elements and facets can be grouped into different roles of responsibility.
In short, responsibility for well-being is shared and dialogue will clarify expectations and reinforce well-being-promoting behaviour.
Well-being surveys - How do you measure whether well-being is poor or good?
Well-being measures and surveys come in many shapes and forms. What the vast majority have in common is that they are questionnaire-based and examine each employee's perception of well-being, or subjective well-being as it is also called.
Of course, it is both good and bad that research methods work in this way.
Among the advantages is that well-being is about the individual's perception and feeling of well-being, and therefore it is the subjective and individual responses that we are interested in finding out.
One of the disadvantages is that a well-being measurement becomes a snapshot with a very short time span. Have you just had an account dispute with your colleagues? Then this will typically rub off heavily on your responses. If the organisation has recently undergone restructuring and redundancies, this will also strongly influence the overall picture of such a measure. Of course, restructuring and reorganization will affect well-being, that makes sense. The problem can arise if organisations stick to simply measuring well-being every three years. Then it can be difficult to see the overall trend in well-being, as this is influenced by other more current organisational issues. It is therefore a good idea to pay close attention to how an organisation chooses to interpret the results it receives from the measurements.
Performance measurement can be the action behind management's words
Performance measurement also plays an important role from a management perspective. Launching a well-being survey is a very concrete initiative that clearly shows the organisation that management is committed to creating clarity and dialogue on well-being. Measurement is binding, also in relation to well-being. Because once a set of results is available, action will typically be expected from employees. Unfortunately, historically there are many examples of well-being measurement not being followed up and this can damage trust. To build trust, we need to match words with action.
There are a multitude of providers of wellbeing and employee engagement surveys, all of which operate and focus differently. So every organisation needs to find a rhythm and provider of wellbeing surveys that suits their needs and requirements. An example of a questionnaire aimed at examining the psychological working environment can be found on the National Research Centre for the Working Environment website. It can be a starting point for inspiration. If you are more interested in a more frequent measurement of employee engagement, you could take a look at Livingroom Analytics.
How can I improve well-being in my workplace?
A simple but effective approach that will increase well-being in the vast majority of workplaces is to recognise your colleagues more. Most of us crave recognition, and will always appreciate all the recognition we can get from our colleagues and managers. Indeed, recognition fulfils our psychological need to feel seen, and therefore as an accepted part of a community. Remember that one of the most effective ways to use recognition is by directing your recognition towards the efforts and contributions of your colleagues. Or put another way, acknowledging behaviours that you see in your colleagues. The good thing about recognising behaviour is that the recipient can then choose to turn it up or down. More of the good behaviour will lead to higher satisfaction, better products and stronger relationships. You may be thinking; "But I'm not the type to go straight to my colleagues and give them feedback praising their efforts." Fortunately, there are ways around this, and here's a short list of ideas on how you can recognise your colleagues today:
- Get a cup of coffee for your colleague when you go by the coffee machine yourself
- Ask for their opinion on your joint project
- Ask your colleagues for feedback on your own work
- Compliment them for the little things in everyday life
- Thank them for their distinctive contributions, for example their structure gene, clarity during presentations, curiosity, persistence, kindness
- Saying goodbye to your colleagues at the end of the working day; "Thank you for a good day because I think you have contributed to a nice atmosphere and funny stories and it has given more spirit to my work"
- Thank you for your help
- Offer your help and sparring to a colleague
- Ask about your colleague's life outside the workplace (if they feel like sharing)
- Send a smile
- Listen to your colleagues' stories about their experiences and views
As well as increasing recognition of your colleagues, why not look at your expectations and definitions of wellbeing behaviours. From these, you can get ideas for good actions and initiatives. Maybe you start the next activity club or invite the team out to the next social event?
If you can't find good ideas for actions on the list of well-being behaviours, you can also turn things upside down. What are the things I should stop doing that harm well-being?
What do I do now with our well-being?
Maybe you already knew a lot about well-being, maybe you have new knowledge and inspiration to approach your well-being work in a different way. In any case, we hope that this article has helped you to put together some threads on well-being and that your thoughts on well-being have been given a new framework in which to be understood. If you still feel that you need help to improve your well-being, please feel free to contact us here on the site. Our approach focuses on the social aspects of well-being and our method is based on open dialogue, sharing perspectives and feedback.
You may want to learn about: trust-based leadership
Another approach could be to look around the site among all our resources. Here you will find many exciting tools and more knowledge to help you on your way to creating higher well-being in your organisation.
Good luck and thanks for reading.
References:
1: Diener, E. & Seligman, M. (2018). Beyond Money: Progress on an Economy of Well-being.
2: Jayawickreme, E., Forgeard, M., Seligman, M. (2012) The Engine of Well-Being.
3: Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
4: Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Finding flow: The psychology of engagement with everyday life. New York: Basic Books.
5: Schwartz, H. A., Sap, M., Kern, M. L., Eichstaedt, J. C., Kapelner, A., Agrawal, M., Ungar, L. H. (2016). Predicting individual well-being through the language of social media. Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, 21, 516-527.
6: Deci, E. & Ryan, R. (2000) Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being
7: Lazarus, R. S. & Folkman, S. (1984): Stress, Appraisal and Coping. Springer Publishing Company, NY
8: https://www.djoefbladet.dk/artikler/2020/8/forskere-l-ae-g-trivselsunders-oe-gelser-p-aa--hjemmesiden.aspx
9: https://nfa.dk/da/Vaerktoejer/Sporgeskemaer/Dansk-psykosocialt-sporgeskema
10: https://livingroomanalytics.com/
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