Workplace Well-being: How to Build Psychologically Healthy Workplaces

1Building a Foundation for Psychologically Healthy Workplaces and Well-Being

Arla Day and Krista D. Randell

Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada

Healthy workplace awards, employee choice awards, and “top workplaces” honors have gained a high profile in the media in recent years, with both small businesses and large corporations being recognized as being among the best places to work, in terms of their tangible perks and psychological supports and benefits to employees, their business productivity, and their focus on social responsibility. In 2013, Google retained their title, leading Forbes list of 100 Best Companies to work for, for two consecutive years based on the “100,000 hours of subsidized massages it doled out in 2012 [as well as] three wellness centers and a seven-acre sports complex, which includes a roller hockey rink; courts for basketball, bocce, and shuffle ball; and horseshoe pits” (CNN Money, 2012). In Glassdoor’s 2013 Employee Choice Awards, Facebook was named Best Place to Work, offering benefits that “help employees balance their work with their personal lives, including paid vacation days, free food and transportation, $4,000 in cash for new parents, dry cleaning, day care reimbursement, and photo processing … employees also commented favorably about the opportunity to impact a billion people, the company’s continued commitment to its hacker culture, and trust in their chief executive Mark Zuckerberg” (Smith, 2012a).

The abundance of these types ...