Resilience, well-being, happiness? Should employers be responsible for how their employees feel?

The The answer to this question is yes. There is a growing body of evidence from the Gallup Organization, and from academic research studies in the US, UK and elsewhere that shows measurable benefits from high rather than low well-being among employees. The main benefits, in order of increasing employer progressiveness, are

• Reduced healthcare costs for employees (anxiety and stress-related illnesses now exceed traditional illnesses)
• Slowing down the steady increase in employees healthcare costs as they get older
• Reduced illness-related absence from work
• Reduced “presentism” (i.e. at work but not firing on all cylinders)
• Increased productivity, creativity, innovation, collaboration
• Improved customer relationships
• Less problematic management of change
• Attracting and, possibly more importantly, retaining top talent
• Creating a workplace and culture where humans can flourish with optimum performance without burning out.

The evidence is clear and unequivocal and can be measured in financial terms.

Sometimes people find it easier to see the relevance of resilience to organizational and individual performance. A definition of resilience that I developed and use for my own work is the ability to stay effective in difficult and challenging times and at the same time feel positive about the future. Given the pressures, uncertainties and demands of life in general, the economic climate, and the speed and fierceness of competition, resilience building seems, and is, a potentially advantageous thing to undertake. We are here talking about routine, day to day resilience and not the extremes that are so often depicted but which are heroic and exceptional. The good news is that for almost everyone resilience can be increased using scientifically researched and validated tools and processes such as finding and using natural strengths, finding meaning and purpose through goals, increasing positive emotion, blocking negative thought processes, etc.

But well-being seems to be another matter all together. Surely, we hear enlightened employers saying, that is a private matter for the individual. Surely, a commitment to employee engagement is enough. Surely we are not responsible for the happiness of our employees. Well, the evidence is growing strongly and unequivocally that employee engagement (even where it is genuine) may not be enough.

Consider these two top performers, both scoring high on employee engagement and commitment. Georgia loves her job, works long hours, rises to the challenge and delivers. She thrives on pressure, challenges and also supports her team, is collaborative and has good working relationships. She is energized and optimistic; she sees her life as tough but rewarding, and her work life and home life feel integrated. Above all she feels loyal to the company. Now meet George. Like Georgia, he Loves the job, works long hours, rises to the challenge and delivers. But unlike Georgia, he only copes with the pressure. He pressurizes his team, his working relationships are often tense; he has plenty of energy but often wonders how much longer he can keep going. For George, life is tough, feels like a treadmill, and home life is becoming strained. Above all, he is becoming attracted to other employers (the dreaded competition) where he thinks things will be better.

The difference between George and Georgia is Well-Being. Georgia’s is high and George’s is low. Employee engagement initiatives that have been common in the last ten to fifteen years are driven largely by the employers’ needs. Full engagement embraces this concept but extends it to embrace the psychological well-being of all employees. The challenge for today’s leaders is not to reduce pressure (after all we cannot slow down the rate of change that we are all experiencing) but to find ways to help people feel good about what they are doing, enjoying their work and their lives as a whole. Wellness programs are effective in addressing physical health and fitness and there are undoubted benefits in both physical and psychological functioning, but there is more to life than fitness such as our need for a strong sense of purpose and meaning, strong social networks, and critical levels of positive vis a vis negative emotions (the Positivity Ratio).

 

Resilience makes us stronger and better equipped to handle the pressures and set-backs, of our lives and our work. But what is the difference between Well-being and happiness? The answer is surprisingly easy if we think of happiness as a feeling and well-being as a judgment that, taken in its entirety, our life now, in the past and as anticipated is broadly as we would like it to be. We cannot be happy all the time and it is naïve to try to be. There are times when we are rightly sad, angry or aggrieved but we shouldn’t be too much of the time as it damages our health and ability to function. The higher our overall well-being the more resilient we are, the more open to change, more collaborative, engaged.

The smart employers will be early adopters of the need to assess, manage, and embed well-being into the culture and practices of the organization. If you think this is radical or contentious just think of the things in our recent past that were once regarded as radical innovations that many employers initially resisted. They include paid annual leave, onsite restrooms, sickness benefits, employment contracts, employee relations, career management, TQM, CRM, management development, diversity, environmental responsibility to name a few.

In a world of hurtling change when we human beings are feeling overwhelmed with the speed and complexity of life, early adopters of well-being at work will not only create workplaces where people flourish and perform sustainably at their best under constant pressure, they will also gain competitive advantage and achieve full optimization of limited resources.

In my next blog I will discuss the critical difference between work-life balance and the integrated life and will present a six-part framework for assessing personal well-being. In my final blog I will discuss what employers can do, and the role of leadership values and behavior in creating organizations that keep pressure positive and not destructive.