Umbrella Supporting Wellness at Work

It’s heartening to see an increasing number of organisations recognising the value of supporting wellness at work and creating environments that nudge people towards improved wellbeing. Alongside this recognition, organisations want to invest wisely and to ensure that any wellbeing initiatives have the maximum impact possible.

At Umbrella they are often asked by organisations where is best to focus resources, and does it matter?  From Umbrella’s knowledge of the scientific research they have always maintained that both individual level and organisation level support and resources are important. Specifically, that they want to help employees maintain high levels of wellbeing, and employers to ensure psychologically healthy workplaces.

Now, a recent scientific paper has specifically examined this question of where to focus resources and provides some helpful guidance. The research team was led by Karina Nielsen, Professor of Work Psychology at The University of Sheffield and they conducted both a systematic review of the relevant research literature as well as a meta-analysis.

This was their definition of resources:
Resources enable employees to successfully complete their tasks and goals, as a way to enhance their well-being and capacity to perform well. Using this definition, and from their meta-analysis they concluded that workplace resources at all levels are related to both employee wellbeing and performance. “Overall our results suggest that organisations may successfully improve employee wellbeing and performance through interventions aimed at building resources at any of the four levels”.

The four levels were defined as: Personal characteristics or behaviours -inherent within the individual – that enable the person to cope with the demands of the job, and cope well. This could be emotional agility or maintaining good physical health for exampleShared relationships – the social context – which may foster a quality exchange of information and interaction between people at work.
Leader-level: leadership style and the quality of leader-staff exchanges.
Org resources – the way work and the work environment are organised, designed and managed.  This could be flexible working arrangements, encouraging exercise breaks and regular review of workloads.

There were two other very important findings from this study. Firstly, that no particular level of workplace resource was more important than any other for improving employee wellbeing and performance. Secondly, the researchers noted that there is a body of research literature to suggest that interventions at multiple levels are preferred, due to the potential synergistic (combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects) effects.

What is the take-away message therefore? That we are best to combine wellness strategies and initiatives from all 4 levels and to ensure we action them at the same time.

At Umbrella their passion is supporting people and organisations to Thrive. They provide consultation for creating stronger wellness at work, including the use of their Umbrella Wellbeing Assessment.

The research paper:
https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/63114/2/WorkandStress_2017_Nielsen.pdf .

For more information on workplace wellness, corporate wellness and stress management please go to http://umbrella.org.nz .