We Must Improve Our Workplaces as a Social Context for Wellbeing

The workplace is a powerful social context for enhancing or depleting one’s sense of wellbeing. This is as true for healthcare as industrial settings. Employee assistance programs commonly recommend promoting a workplace culture of health. Yet health and wellness programs sometimes overlook wellbeing, a psychological construct, and employees can be wary of workplace solutions that are motivated by more than altruism.

A focus on workplace culture emanates partly from employers wanting healthier employees who are more productive and use fewer healthcare dollars. It is theoretically a win-win situation. However, skepticism has spread because many employers try to layer a culture of health on top of a negative workplace environment. This seems both dishonest and counterproductive.

Many employers also question whether cultural changes and wellness programs produce a return on their investment through lower healthcare costs or greater productivity. Guidance through the sometimes-contradictory research literature can be found online at HERO, a collaboration of big employers promoting research and education. They see workplaces as potentially quite impactful.

The pursuit of social wellbeing

Health is not enough. We should insist that health be defined with wellbeing as a key component. Wellbeing describes psychological assets and strengths, or a sense of thriving. The WHO viewed emotional and social wellbeing as critical aspects of health in its 1948 charter. Wellbeing should be a focus in the workplace, both as an element of health and as an antidote for stressful environments.

This may arouse suspicions as well, but these misgivings might diminish with the clarification that social wellbeing, more than emotional wellbeing, should take priority. In other words, the focus must expand beyond personal health and personal wellbeing. Lowering one’s level of cholesterol or psychological distress is fine, but the quality of social interaction and communication in the workplace is also critical.

Some have pointed to the importance of trust in the workplace and to ensuring employees feel valued and supported. Employees want to be heard, and they need to experience some collaboration with management. Our field is based on communication. We are aware that we must not only “walk the talk” but also “talk the walk.” Leaders must explain in compelling terms why everyone’s contribution matters.

Executive leadership training

Communication in any setting is complex, full of nuances and ripe for misunderstanding. One of the pillars of our field, psychotherapy, is built on interpersonal communication. Executives need not act as therapists with their staff members to take advantage of what we know about healthy communication patterns. Executives should affirm these skills as being essential in the workplace.

Formal leadership training is not needed to facilitate positive dialogue. Leadership training has become a massive industry, but attendees mainly learn about old clinical wine in new executive bottles. People retain little and briefly use a few fragments. Why not opt instead for homegrown learning? Training provides jargon. Leaders just need confidence to guide regular, safe and meaningful discussions.

Executives in our field may or may not have clinical backgrounds. In either case, executives should ask clinical leaders to develop a few simple protocols for everyone to discuss, without judgement, topics like staff concerns, policies needing clarification, priorities for the company, future goals and people meriting recognition. The idea is to start a healthy dialogue, not solve problems.

Communication skills in organizations

While empathic listening and open sharing of thoughts may take place within therapy offices, behavioral health treatment centers are not necessarily workplaces that mirror those activities or values. However, executives can encourage listening and sharing in the workplace while still maintaining their leadership. The healthcare workplace can be as supportive or toxic as any other.

Leadership is about getting people motivated to follow their leader. Behavioral health executives will be increasingly tested by demands to navigate in new waters as our field merges with the broader healthcare industry. The ideas suggested here are simple and mundane. They are worth stating because 1) they rarely get put into practice and 2) we could set the standard for our industry.

A business of any size can foster good communication and generate social wellbeing in the workplace. Our field is as much about interpersonal skills and social context as it is about personal growth. It is critical to both walk-the-talk and talk-the-walk in the workplace. All too often people know what to do and yet fail to do it. Let us be workplace leaders. We have the skills to go with the strategic vision.

Ed Jones, PhD, is senior vice president for the Institute for Health and Productivity Management.