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Evaluating workplace wellbeing in 2021

Workplace wellbeing is often intangible and tricky to measure, but finding a way to do this in 2021 could be the key to securing buy-in from your organization's leadership. Becky Thoseby, head of workplace wellbeing, Ministry of Justice UK, offers her how-to guide

Source | www-hrdconnect-com.cdn.ampproject.org | Becky Thoseby

Though wellbeing in UK business has taken major strides in recent years, the process of measuring and evaluating it is another matter. With wellbeing often being considered an intangible concept, this aspect of the function is still very much in its infancy. As a result, there is simply no body of evidence that we can point to and say “this works, and this doesn’t”.

Based on this, we find ourselves facing a tricky problem. During a time where wellbeing culture is more important than ever before, how can we evaluate our efforts and demonstrate the impact of them to senior leadership?

The key challenges

Considering this dearth of measurable evidence, organizations tend to opt for one (or a combination) of three standard evaluation methods.

Firstly we have the seductive favourites of sickness absence, employee assistance programmes (EAPs), and the usage of other support services. Crucially, these methods tell us little about the state of the organization’s wellbeing; just the number of people who utilize the support services, and so on.

It’s also difficult to pin down what drives these numbers. For example, if mental health absence at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) increases, am I claiming that as a victory because people are being more honest about the reasons for their absence, or is it a defeat because mental health in MoJ is getting worse?

Secondly, we have subjective wellbeing measures – questions like “how anxious did you feel yesterday?” and “how would you rate your mental health now?”.  I’m even less fond of these; there are so many factors influencing how someone might answer questions like these, that it’s almost impossible to prove causality.  This is a drum I’ve been banging for some years, and in 2021 it’s more relevant than ever.

Thirdly, there are the outcome-based measures, which I’m slightly less averse to as they at least attempt to make a link between what we do and what we’re looking to achieve. But that said, they are still imperfect – again, it’s very difficult to prove causality.

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www-hrdconnect-com.cdn.ampproject.org
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