01. Practice of Employee Wellbeing

"In current context the most successful and innovative organizations has a key focus on Employee Wellbeing and they invest a considerable amount of money, time, resources and energy to create workplace wellness by considering it as a vital part of their business strategy. Organizations promote employee well-being with the objective to maximize the positive and minimize the negative impacts of the company on the environment and finally to become the “Best Place to Work”."

The term of employee wellbeing has extended from traditional perspective and focus on providing medical care to employees to Employee Wellbeing which is about optimizing the health in every side of all employees (mental, physical, financial, etc.). Employers are aware of many elements that comprise employee wellbeing and are looking to make their employees happier and healthier. The concept of wellbeing can be analyzed from different perceptions like a macro perception which includes dimensions such as life expectancy, poverty rates and environmental factors and individual perceptions which include subjective or psychological measures of a person’s well-being. The quality of life and employment is determined through three main aspects - physical, social and psychological in the current world studies. The well-being or the state in which a person feels good, healthy and happy is associated with connecting to all spheres of life, among which work activity and occupational functioning play a special role.

Defining Employee Wellbeing

When going through the literature it lacks a clear definition. However, one comprehensive definition of employee well-being is given by the World Health Organization—at its core, it is the state of each employee in which they understand their capabilities, cope with life stresses, work productively, and contribute to their community.

Some other definitions given by scholars and researchers can be listed as below.

• Wellbeing' being a well-defined general work –“is the feeling of health, happiness and wealth. It includes the sense of life satisfaction, mental health and feeling of being purposeful” (Tchiki Davis, 2019).
• Psychologically wellbeing is attached to the purpose of life, mastery, positivity optimism and life satisfaction (Rudel-Fitzgerald, C., Millstein & Hippel, et al., 2019).
• Wellbeing is generally termed as a combination of a positive affective state of happiness and functioning with optimal effectiveness in personal, professional and social life (Deci & Ryan, 2008; Huppert, 2009).

However, it is found that most of the literature defines the workplace well-being as a term directly associated with the wellbeing of the employee and as the health and safety of the employees at the workplace or broadly the mental and physical well-being of employees.

• At the workplace, well-being is being referred to the health and safety in regards to psychological and psychical measures and goes beyond happiness and job satisfaction as well (Beer et al. 2015).
• Employee Wellbeing may be defined as a summative concept describing the quality of an individual's working life (occupational health and safety considerations included) (Schulte & Vainio, 2010).

  Research works on Employee Wellbeing

Employee well-being has been a major concern for the Employees for ages and always in the focus of the researchers for various reasons. Human Resource managers take employee well-being as the main goal of managing the workforce as per the view of Peccei (2013).

Research has proved that employee health influences work behavior, performance and attendance on the job and high-performance companies know the "human-capital-driven health and work behavior equation” (Mary A. Gowan). The performance-oriented Human Resource practices help in job satisfaction and organizational commitment based on the wellbeing of the employee (Van De Voorde et al. 2012) and autonomy, incentive-based working, team spirit, and concerned approach of the Human Resource helps in developing the wellbeing and trust in employees.

The researchers have proved that keeping various factors in mind the Human Resource Managers can contribute a lot to employee well-being. According to Sarah Short 2018, clarity of the work, responsibilities, variety of tasks, training and support, working hour’s flexibility in work scheduled and fairness and transparency are the major factors affecting the well-being of the employees.

Kathryn M. and Dianne (2009) studied employee wellbeing into three perspectives- Subjective wellbeing, work. They worked on the employee well-being and found that wellbeing of the employee is directly related to the organization's wellbeing as it is linked with performance and turn over.

Liyanage Chaturi (2020) connected the employee well- being with transformational leadership at the workplace and found that introducing leadership training would result in the social and psychological wellbeing of the employees.

Some researches indicate that in the work process, psychological well-being is the most important well-being factor and conceptualized wellbeing using the construct of psychological well-being, based on an individual’s development and self-actualization along six dimensions which are mentioned below.

1.      Positive attitudes toward oneself

2.      Trusting interpersonal relationships

3.      A sense of freedom from unacceptable norms governing everyday life

4.      Opportunities to control and contribute to one’s environment

5.      A sense of purpose in life

6.      Opportunities to develop one’s potential

References & Bibliography

Bakker, A.B.; vanWingerden, J. Rumination about COVID-19 and employee well-being: The role of playful work design. Can.Psychol. 2020, 62, 73–79.

Van De Voorde, K., Paauwe, J., & Van Veldhoven, M. (2012). Employee Well-being and the HRM-Organizational Performance Relationship: A Review of Quantitative Studies. Inter-national Journal of Management Reviews, 14(4), 391-407.

CIPD(2021). [online]. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/latest-research. [Accessed on 14 December 2021]

CIPD Community. [online]. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/community/blogs?pi236=44&pifragment-1424=6#gref. [Accessed on 14 December 2021]

Science Direct (2021). [online]. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/search?qs=employee%20wellbeing. [Accessed on 10 December 2021]

SemosCloud, 2020. Employee Wellbeing in the Workplace: Importance and Future Predictions.[online]. Available At: https://semoscloud.com/blog/employee-wellbeing/. [Accessed on 10 December 2021]

Shot, S., 2008. What is employee wellbeing?. Face2Face HR [online]. Available at: https://face2facehr.com/what-is-employee-wellbeing/. [Accessed on 10 December 2021]