International Handbook of Work and Health Psychology, 3rd Edition

CHAPTER 19Building Interventions to Improve Staff Well-Being

Gordon Tinline and Ben Moss

Robertson Cooper Ltd, UK

The research-based case for improving staff well-being in organizations is very robust (e.g. Donald et al., 2005; Cropanzano & Wright, 1999). This chapter takes that as a given and provides our perspective as experienced practitioners on the critical issues that need to be addressed to improve staff well-being, and practical advice for doing so. There are three main stages to this:

1. Building the business case.
2. Measuring well-being and engagement levels.
3. Taking action to improve working lives.

19.1 BUILDING THE BUSINESS CASE

Without a business case there is little hope of engaging business leaders with the idea of investing in well-being. There will almost certainly be those in your organization who equate well-being with providing free massages and doing yoga in the workplace, rather than seeing it as a tangible and valuable process of improving levels of psychological well-being every working day. This means that it’s often difficult to present a solid business case for investing in the well-being of the workforce. However, the proof is available and when you pull it together it should be powerful enough to convince even the most hard-headed director.

A critical role of the business case is to help focus on the stakeholders of well-being in the organization and then to connect this with the business-level outcomes that are to be influenced by improving well-being. ...