Workplace well-being refers to whether individual employees generally feel good about their jobs.

There are several good reasons to prioritize employee well-being. A high level of well-being in the workplace improves the quality of work and generally leads to lower absenteeism due to illness. It is also a key asset when it comes to a company’s ability to retain and recruit employees.

Well-being in the workplace depends on a wide range of factors, including relationships with management and colleagues, the balance between work demands and the employee’s resources, trust, opportunities for development, recognition, and influence. The psychological work environment and employee well-being are therefore closely linked and are areas that management can actively address.

Well-being surveys as a tool

This could, for example, take the form of a formal well-being strategy developed by management in collaboration with the AMO, which is implemented through various well-being initiatives within the organization, where employee well-being is regularly assessed and specific action plans are established to strengthen relevant areas.

Employee satisfaction surveys are a useful tool in strategic planning and can be conducted in several ways. This can be done through one-on-one conversations with employees, department meetings focused on well-being, or via questionnaire surveys. At Acture, we recommend conducting the overall employee satisfaction survey via a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire allows employees to respond confidentially and provides management with concrete data from the survey. This enables the individual well-being parameters to be compared to identify where it is most relevant to take action in your specific workplace. However, these methods can easily be combined, and well-being should not be something measured only once every three years as part of the mandatory workplace assessment if a company truly wants to improve well-being. On the contrary, ongoing measurements and conversations can provide a more accurate picture of how well-being is evolving within the organization.

Another important aspect of well-being initiatives is, of course, that the results are followed up with concrete actions, so that the assessment is not merely conducted for the sake of assessment. In the subsequent work with the results, it is recommended to prioritize the areas that require further attention and then create concrete action plans for each area, making the process tangible and led by a responsible manager or employee. This ensures there is a coordinator overseeing the process to prevent the work from falling by the wayside.

… So what are your managers doing to improve workplace well-being?