employee well-being · at its core, the question of well-being makes an important distinction from...

EMPLOYEE WELL-BEINGThe new driver of corporate culture and performance

plasticitylabs.com

2 Employee Well-Being

79% of executives know that fostering a positive employ-

ee experience is important or very important.

Only 22% reported that their com-panies were excelling at building a highly engaged culture.

- DELOITTE GLOBAL HUMAN

CAPITAL TRENDS, 2017

3Email: [email protected] | Phone: +1.519.933.8295

Introduction

W hat is the key to highly engaged and high-performing employees? This question has become a staple in

boardrooms around the world, and rightly so. Disengage-ment costs organizations between $450 and $550 billion annually.1

In response, the employee engagement industry has grown into a $74 billion industry behemoth2, with organizations looking for that silver bullet in everything from recognition programs, to week-long team-building retreats.

In the face of this investment, however, significant gaps still persist. In their 2017 Human Capital Trends assessment of 10,447 businesses across 140 countries, Deloitte found that 79% of executives know that fostering a positive employ-ee experience is important or very important, but only 22% reported that their companies were excelling at building a highly engaged culture.3

Where are organizations falling short?

What if one of the most critical drivers of engagement rests upon the most basic foundations: Employee well-being?

Dave Whiteside, Ph.DDirector, Organizational Insights

Plasticity Labs

1 The Engagement Institute. 2017. DNA of engagement: How organizations can foster employee ownership

of engagement.

2 The Starr Conspiracy. 2016. Employee engagement brandscape report.

3 Deloitte University Press. 2017. Rewriting the rules for the digital age: 2017 Deloitte global human

capital trends.

Dr. Dave Whiteside is the Director of

Organizational Insights at Plasticity

Labs and leads the organizational

research and reporting team.

He holds a PhD in Organizational

Behaviour and Human Resources

Management from Wilfrid Laurier

University and is published in

numerous academic outlets, including

Journal of Management and Journal of

Business Ethics.

He also holds the record for most

high-fives given in the workplace at

any given time.


“...we define well-being as employees’ capacity to flourish and thrive in their jobs, with a particular emphasis on five key psychological strengths that can be developed and leveraged to

meet this goal - Gratitude, Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism.”


Defining Well-Being

At its core, the question of well-being makes an important distinc-tion from traditional approaches to employee engagement.

The value of well-being has been established in social and positive psychology research4, but the application of well-being research in the workplace is still relatively limited.5

At its core, the question of well-being makes an important distinction from traditional approaches to em-ployee engagement.

Specifically, the key objective of most traditional engagement and performance initiatives is to increase employees’ motivation – think about it, recognition programs are designed to make employees want to per-form well. Team-building activities are designed to make employees want to work together effectively.

Well-being, on the other hand, takes a two-pronged approach to engagement and performance.

A healthy well-being strategy suggests building the employees’ desire to be engaged and high-performing, while simultaneously building the employees’ ability to be engaged and high-performing.

Think about it like a muscle: A great personal trainer can motivate you to lift more weight when you are healthy and fit, but even the most motivational trainer in the world will not help you lift a weight that you simply do not have the strength to lift.

In the workplace, mental and physical well-being can act as both your personal trainer and your strength – and this desire and ability are both important resources in our capacity to engage with our work and perform at our best.6

4 Sin, N. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. 2009. Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: A practice friendly meta-analysis. Journal of

Clinical Psychology, 65, 467-487.

5 Kaplan, S., Bradley-Geist, J. C., Ahmad, A., Anderson, A., Hargove, A. K., & Lindsey, A. 2014. A test of two positive psychology interventions to increase employee well-being. Journal of

Business Psychology, 29: 367-380.

6 Hobfoll, S. E. 1989. Conversation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psyhologist, 44: 513-524.


Just How Important is Well-Being?

W ell-being in the workplace is often studied in two related, but distinct ways.

First, models of stress and health suggest that employee well-being is hampered by the experience of job strain (i.e., work that is too challenging) or job boredom (i.e., work that is not challenging enough).7

Using this perspective, employees experience peak states of well-being when they are adequately chal-lenged within their means.

The second perspective views well-being as the mental and physical benefits of positive perceptions about work and work relationships – the feeling that one is happy, growing and purposeful in their work.8

At Plasticity Labs, employee well-being is a criti-cal component of everything that we do, and our perspective is best understood as an integration of these two perspectives.

Specifically, we define well-being as employees’ ca-pacity to flourish and thrive in their jobs, with a par-ticular emphasis on five key psychological strengths that can be developed and leveraged to meet this goal – Gratitude, Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism (what we call the “HERO traits”).

7 French, J. R. P., Caplan, R. D., & Harrison, R. 1982. The mechanisms of job stress and strain. New York: Wiley.

8 Meyers, C., van Woerkom, M., & Bakker, A. B. 2013. The added value of the positive: A literature review of positive psychology interventions in organizations. European Journal of Work

and Organizational Psychology, 22: 618-632.

9 Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. 2003. Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality

and Social Psychology, 84: 377-389.

10 Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. 2005. Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60: 410.

11 Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. 2010. Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30: 890-905.

Through our Plasticity Platform and our Plasticity Insights initiatives, we have been able to collect a wealth of data on just how well-being can influence key engagement and performance outcomes.

In the current study, we explore these relationships with two well-being indicators:

1. General Well-Being - a general measure of employees’ physical and mental well-being

2. Gratitude at Work - a more specific proxy of employee well-being. We focus on gratitude in particular because it has been consistently as-sociated with individual well-being9, and can be directly increased through simple and targeted interventions.1011

Ultimately, the objective of this study was to find support for our hypothesis that employee well-be-ing and gratitude would be positively associated with key engagement and performance metrics. In the following section, we outline our methodology and break down our results.


“In the workplace, mental and physical well-being is an im-portant resource in our ability to engage with our work and perform to the best of our abilities.”

JUST HOW IMPORTANT IS WELL-BEING?


Trust, Sense of Community, Communi-cation, Recognition, Feedback

Engagement, Satisfaction, Inspiration, Predicted Satisfaction in Three Months

ENGAGEMENT CULTURE

General Well-Being, Gratitude, Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, Optimism, Job Stress

Method & Analysis

We tested our research question using a sample of Plasticity users who completed our Plasticity Insights survey in the first quarter of 2017.

The final sample consisted of 858 employees across a wide range of industries and roles.

The Plasticity Insights survey is a 20-item survey on 100-point scales measuring:

In terms of analyses, the objective of this study was to compare employees who demonstrate particularly high well-being and gratitude (i.e., the upper quartile – employees with the highest 25% of well-being and gratitude scores) with employees with particularly low well-being and gratitude (i.e., the lower quartile – employees with the lowest 25% of scores).

Specifically, we used independent samples t-tests to compare these groups on seven of the most im-portant performance indicators of an organization’s human capital: Engagement, Satisfaction, Inspiration, Predicted Satisfaction in Three Months, Trust, Performance, and Citizenship Behaviours (i.e., the extent to which employees go above and beyond on the job).

Performance, Citizenship Behaviours, Net Promoter Score

WELL-BEING PERFORMANCE


Results

Well-Being's Effect on Key Engagement and Performance MetricsOur results demonstrated remarkable differences across all seven metrics between employees with particularly high well-being and employees with low well-being. These differences are displayed in the graph below.

Specifically, employees in the top 25% of well-being scores were significantly more engaged by their work1, significantly more satisfied in their jobs2, significantly more inspired by their work3, and pre-dicted they would be significantly more satisfied in three month’s time4 than employees in the bottom 25% of well-being scores.

1 (M = 88 vs. M = 67, t(429) = -13.17, p < .001)

2 (M = 87 vs. M = 60, t(429) = -17.16, p < .001)

3 (M = 81 vs. M = 58, t(428) = -12.64, p < .001)

4 (M = 86 vs. M = 58, t(429) = -16.60, p < .001)

Results also indicated that employees in the top 25% of well-being scores demonstrated significant-ly higher levels of trust5, significantly higher levels of personal performance6, and went above and beyond on the job significantly more often7 than employees in the bottom 25% of well-being scores.

Overall, these results provide strong support for our hypothesis that employee well-being is an import-ant contributor to workplace outcomes.

5 (M = 82 vs. M = 59, t(429) = -13.35, p < .001)

6 (M = 89 vs. M = 74, t(429) = -13.54, p < .001)

7 (M = 80 vs. M = 64, t(427) = -9.90, p < .001)

-16

-15

-23

-28

-23

-27

-19

-30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10

Citizenship

Performance

Trust

Predicted Satisfaction

Inspiration

Satisfaction

Engagement

WELL-BEING’S EFFECT ON KEY ENGAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE METRICSMean Differences Between Top and Bottom Gratitude Quartiles:

Fig. 1 WELL-BEING’S EFFECT ON KEY ENGAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE METRICSMean Differences Between Top and Bottom Gratitude Quartiles:


To complement these general well-being results, we also examined differences between employees with the highest and lowest scores on gratitude – a more specific facet of employee well-being with clear ac-tionable implications. Consistent with our well-being results, the effects of gratitude on all seven metrics were particularly strong, as shown in the graph below.

Impressively, the magnitude of the differences between the top and bottom quartiles were even stronger for gratitude. Specifically, employees in the top 25% of gratitude scores were significantly more engaged by their work1, significantly more satisfied in their jobs2, significantly more inspired by their work3, and predicted they would be significantly

1 (M = 91 vs. M = 62, t(429) = -17.53, p < .001)

2 (M = 90 vs. M = 55, t(429) = -20.23, p < .001)

3 (M = 86 vs. M = 51, t(428) = -19.28, p < .001)

more satisfied in three month’s time4 than employ-ees in the bottom 25% of gratitude scores.

Also consistent with well-being, results also indi-cated that employees in the top 25% of gratitude scores demonstrated significantly higher levels of trust5, significantly higher levels of personal perfor-mance6, and went above and beyond on the job sig-nificantly more often7 than employees in the bottom 25% of gratitude scores.

4 (M = 89 vs. M = 53, t(429) = -20.04, p < .001)

5 (M = 84 vs. M = 56, t(429) = -14.46, p < .001)

6 (M = 88 vs. M = 74, t(429) = -11.29, p < .001)

7 (M = 81 vs. M = 62, t(427) = -10.17, p < .001)

GRATITUDE’S EFFECT ON KEY ENGAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE METRICSMean Differences Between Top and Bottom Gratitude Quartiles:

-19

-14

-28

-36

-35

-36

-29

-40 -35 -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10

Citizenship

Performance

Trust

Predicted Satisfaction

Inspiration

Satisfaction

Engagement

GRATITUDE’S EFFECT ON KEY ENGAGEMENT AND PERFORMANCE METRICSMean Differences Between Top and Bottom Gratitude Quartiles:

Gratitude's Effect on Key Engagement and Performance Metrics


Employees in the top 25% of well-being scores were significantly more engaged by their work, significantly more satisfied in their jobs, significantly more inspired by their work, and predicted they would be significantly more satisfied in three month’s time than employees in the bottom 25%.


The True Cost of Poor Well-Being

W hat are you missing by not actively promoting a culture of well-being at work?

What would you do for almost 50% more engagement?

And what if the key to unlocking that potential rested in some-thing as foundational as employee well-being?

The results of this study paint a vivid picture of just how inte-gral employee well-being is in creating engaged and high-per-forming teams. Employees with poor general well-being were significantly less engaged by their work (19 points lower on a 100-point scale), less satisfied with their jobs (27 points lower), less inspired (23 points lower), less trusting (23 points lower), and less confident in their performance (15 points lower) and their ability to go above and beyond on the job (16 points low-er) than generally healthy employees (see Figure 1).


These differences even magnified when examining the differences between the most and least grateful employees, with the least grateful employees gen-erally scoring over 30 points lower on engagement metrics (see Figure 2).

Organizations continue to undervalue the impor-tance of well-being as a key component of culture and performance. However, the magnitude of the results in this study suggest that directly promoting employee well-being isn't only a nice to have, it's a need-to-have for teams to meet their full potential.

Management trends have been known to change with the wind as management gurus and coaches try to find the “next big thing” to develop engaged

and high-performing employees. However, em-ployee well-being is one rare constant in a sea of change because it is the foundation underlying individuals’ ability to engage with their work and live out their potential, employee well-being is one rare constant in a sea of change.

Remember: ever-changing management initiatives do not count for anything if employees are lacking the well-being to truly engage with them. Weave well-being into the fabric of your culture, let it guide strategic and personnel decisions and it will pay dividends through an organization of teams able to meet their full potential.

"Employees with poor general well-being were significantly less engaged by their work, less satisfied with their jobs, less inspired, less trusting, and less confident in their performance and their ability to go above and beyond on the job than generally healthy employees."

ENGAGEMENT

-19

JOB SATISFACTION

-27

INSPIRATION

-23

TRUST

-23

PERFORMANCE

-15


Where to Start

T raditional employee engagement initiatives are rarely cheap and companies are already

highly invested in engagement programs.

For example, employee recognition programs alone represent over half of the $74-billion dollar industry.12 While employee wellness programs and policies can often carry tangible costs and budget considerations (e.g., employee gym memberships and health imbursements, or providing healthy lunches in the office), there are also things you can start doing today to help boost employee well-being at a fraction of the cost.

Specifically, a wealth of positive psychology re-search has demonstrated that quick and simple activities done regularly can significantly boost individual well-being by promoting positive behaviours and mindsets.1314

12 Bersin & Associates, 2012. The state of employee recognition in 2012.

13 Lyubomirsky, 2008. The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. New York: Penguin Press.

14 Sin, N. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. 2009. Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: A practice friendly meta-analysis. Journal of

Clinical Psychology, 65, 467-487.

15 Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. A. 2010. Gratitude and well-being: A review and theoretical integration. Clinical Psychology Review, 30: 890-905.

16 Kaplan, S., Bradley-Geist, J. C., Ahmad, A., Anderson, A., Hargove, A. K., & Lindsey, A. 2014. A test of two positive psychology interventions to increase employee well-being. Journal of

Business Psychology, 29: 367-380.

17 Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. 2005. Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60: 410.

18 Sheldon, K. M., Kasser, T., Smith, K., & Share, T. 2002. Personal goals and psychological growth: Testing an intervention to enhance goal attainment and personality integration.

Journal of Personality, 70: 5-31.

Some of the most common examples of these activities include writing about what you are grateful for as you start or finish your work day1516, finding new ways to leverage your core strengths at work and at home17, and creating personalized goal-setting programs to inspire you.18

Many of these activities can be done individually and can have long-lasting effects on well-being through only a few minutes of reflection a day.

To boost engagement and morale, however, try to get creative and make these activities social.

For example, at Plasticity Labs, we have made our practice of gratitude social and visible with our gratitude wall. Every day, we write something that

W e have made our practice of gratitude social and visible

with our gratitude wall. Every day, we write something that we are grateful for on a post-it note and stick it on the biggest wall in our office.

It has become a core piece of our culture and provides easy mental boosts in the middle of hard days – all it takes is a minute at the wall to read some reminders of the things that inspire us.


1. Make the Most of BreaksBreaks matter. And taking the right kind of breaks can make all the difference. Encourage your team to get up for quick walks around the office during the day and to get away from their desks for lunch. This injects some healthy exercise into the day, provides a valuable mental reset, and lets your team come back to their desk recharged and ready to take on their tasks. Remember: Breaks are not about laziness; they are about rejuvena-tion. And they should be taken seriously.

2. Say “Thank You”Recognition is a common theme in engagement strategies, but doesn’t receive the same attention when discussing well-being. In our data, however, employees who felt strongly recognized scored 23 points higher on general well-being than em-

ployees who did not feel recognized. Remember: well-being does not come from gift-cards; it comes from feeling valued. Be genuine in your “thank you”, be heartfelt, and be personal, and it will pay dividends.

3. Start Meetings with GratitudeOne simple way to incorporate more gratitude into your team is to make a habit of starting meet-ings with a quick gratitude exercise. Begin your meetings by simply asking attendees to say one thing they are grateful for and why. Not only does it provide an opportunity for a quick and effec-tive personal well-being intervention, but it also provides an opportunity for deeper team bonding and can illuminate new ideas to engage and moti-vate your team, straight from the source.

we are grateful for on a post-it note and stick it on the biggest wall in our office.

Our gratitude wall now has over 2,000 posts ranging from the big (“R.I.P. Aunt Bea”, “My incredible kids”) to the small (“Goat Yoga”, “Batman”). Posts about our team (“Our resilience”, “First day of V3 develop-ment”), our clients (“Laurel and Mikey at lululemon”, “Clarion Medical”), and our personal hobbies that inspire us (“Coaching the Gryphons”, “Watching my kids play lacrosse”).

It has become a core piece of our culture and pro-vides easy mental boosts in the middle of hard days – all it takes is a minute at the wall to read some reminders of the things that inspire us.

Unfortunately, there are no silver bullet solutions when it comes to employee engagement and per-formance. However, in an ever-changing corporate world, employee well-being is the one ever-present foundation required for thriving people and teams. With some investment, effort, and passion, you can ingrain well-being into the very DNA of your organi-zation. Set a foundation of well-being, and you can start to reap the true rewards of a fully engaged and high-performing workforce.

Three Things You Can Start Doing With Your Team Now

Contact Us:Office: 151 Charles Street West, Kitchener, ON, Canada

Email: [email protected]: +1.519.933.8295

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