What do you mean by wellbeing?

When we are asked about what Worklife Support does, the word 'wellbeing' will usually come up. And that's where the fun starts as because, as Professor Joad would have said, "it all depends on what you mean by 'wellbeing.'" (A reference for our older readers.)

Searching for 'wellbeing' on the well-known search engines will bring up a wide range of sites. One even brings up an advert for a B&B!

Most results will focus on personal wellness and health. Some search engines will group or cluster results for you and a search on 'wellbeing' in Yippy for example, produces the following clusters:

• Education
• Mental
• Spiritual, Physical
• Women
• Lifestyle
• Children
• Coaching
• Emotional wellbeing
• Yoga

For an organisation like Worklife Support, offering a Well-Being Programme, this produces some difficulty for two reasons. The first is that we are not a healthcare company. Second is that all the ideas represented by those clusters impinge mostly or entirely on the personal and we aim to deal in organisational wellbeing.

So what do we mean by that and what does an organisation with effective organisational wellbeing look like? Here are some personal thoughts that you may want to consider. Why not leave us your comments?

Firstly, it is important to say that, in our view, wellbeing is a process and an organisational culture, rather than a state. You can't point at something and say "that's wellbeing" but you will know an organisation that treats wellbeing seriously when you come across one.

There are some common trends or cultural aspects to such organisations. One such is a focus on the people working for the organisation, not merely as employees or economic units, but as individuals with a real and valuable contribution to make.

A function of this is that the organisation will have stronger and more secure channels of communication than most. We have found that managers often over-estimate the effectiveness of communication in their schools and other organisations. Addressing that issue is hard but vital.

Another aspect of effective organisational wellbeing is how the leadership works. The traditional top-down, follow-the-leader style of leadership that still applies in many schools may well be necessary in certain situations, but it is not a recipe for a successful organisation in the long term.

It is noticeable that schools that have been on our Well-Being Programme for more than five years do not feel that the job is done. The more you invest in wellbeing, the more you realise that embedding it into how the school manages itself is the key aim, and one that needs to be regularly monitored and assessed.

Being on the Well-Being Programme can be tough. It is not about being kind to your staff and offering them massages at lunch time - although that can be a valid way of starting to embed wellbeing in your organisation.

As budgets start to tighten, organisations need to be more effective and efficient. That does not mean hard and uncaring - in fact, we know from our work with hundreds of schools, it means completely the opposite. As one headteacher we have worked with said:

"I don't see Well-Being as a project, but as part of the ethos of the school. I would recommend every school in the country to take part. It isn't about whether they can afford to, it's about whether they can afford not to."

So, consider the wellbeing of your staff – whatever that means to you. You have nothing to lose and lots to gain.