Moving past the statistics to find people’s real stories of wellbeing of work

What is it about a workplace that really shapes how people feel at work and how does this impact life outside work?

With one of Australia’s oldest financial companies, we explored the rich interaction between people’s needs for personal fulfilment, financial security and their relationships, both at work and at home. In order to understand the situation, we talked at length with a handful employees in order to explore all sides of wellbeing at work and how wellbeing at work overlaps and intertwines with people’s personal lives.

Using loosely structured interviews, with the deep exploration of underpinning emotional, psychological and behavioural drivers, our insights extended far beyond classic survey data. We learned what people aspired to, what they were afraid of and what caused them to trust or mistrust the organisation.

Given the sensitive nature of the topics involved and considering the emotional risk people run speaking transparently about their work to someone who is being employed by their workplace, we designed a very careful interview, recording and analysis structure whereby even those helping us source participants from within the company were not aware of which participant gave which piece of feedback. This type of participant protection is common in social science and forms the bedrock of our strategy to protect participants and to allow them space to speak freely on sensitive topics. We’re beholden to people to let us, even for a moment, into their lives and we respect the duty of care that involves.

The hundreds of quotes were synthesised into a set of key insights and features about wellbeing at work. We personally presented the work to both Human Resources and People and Culture leaders, with the goal of helping them understand what key features would make a real difference to someone’s wellbeing and how wellbeing didn’t stop at the door to the organisation but extended into people’s personal lives.

Ultimately, our insights helped the organisation, at the juncture of planning a new wellbeing strategy, rethink their workplace wellbeing programs.