An exploration of wellbeing measures to support the design of interventions to improve workplace wellbeing in a health care provider

This research seeks to explore the meaning of ‘wellbeing’ in the context of one private health care provider, and to develop a standardized measure that captures this notion. The aim is to develop a framework which will inform the design of interventions from the notion of wellbeing and its measurement.

This project is co-sponsored by Nuffield Health

Aims and objectives

Background

Unhealthy lifestyle choices contribute to poor wellbeing, sickness absence, loss of productivity and increased presenteeism. When designing effective behaviour change interventions, there must be an agreed definition of wellbeing. However, whilst wellbeing is a popular term, there is no consensus around how it is defined, nor is there agreement as to which measurement tools are appropriate (Dodge et al 2012). This is a particular issue in the health care sector, where sickness absence rates vary from 1.23% to 6.50% depending upon job role (ONS 2016). Although there is a wide range of validated measurement tools available, none fully reflect the nature of health care service provision. Wellbeing interventions in the workplace are, in part, determined by intervention characteristics and statistical analysis (Rangan et al 2013). Yet their design has not necessarily been informed by either of these features. Hence, there is a need to define wellbeing in the context of health care service provision, and create an appropriate, validated measurement tool to inform the design of behavior change interventions in the workplace.

Nuffield Health (NH) are a private health care provider, committed to improving the health of employees. They need an agreed definition of ‘wellbeing’ which reflects their culture and service provision and an appropriate, validated measurement tool, neither of which currently exist. It is only when these are available, that NH can design appropriate workplace behaviour change interventions which will improve employee wellbeing.

Aims

This research aims to:
◾Define ‘wellbeing’ in the context of Nuffield Health as a health care service workplace setting
◾Develop a validated measure of wellbeing in the context of Nuffield Health
◾Assess the performance of the measure in relation to commonly captured organizational data (for example, absenteeism, turnover)
◾Design a framework which will inform the design of behaviour change interventions to improve employee wellbeing
◾Determine the transferability across health care providers

Objectives

The objectives of the research are to:
◾Complete a systematic review of definitions of wellbeing and validated wellbeing measures
◾Explore the meaning of ‘wellbeing’ to employees of Nuffield Health and their opinion as to effective interventions
◾Develop an appropriate measure to capture the notion of ‘wellbeing’ provided by Nuffield Health employees
◾Pilot the measure with Nuffield Health employees and evaluate its performance relative to other meaningful workplace variables (for example, absenteeism, turnover, engagement)
◾Modify and validate the measure
◾Use the measure to develop a framework to support the design of interventions which will improve the wellbeing of Nuffield Health employees
◾Determine the transferability of the definition of wellbeing, the wellbeing measure and interventions across health care providers.

Research questions

The doctoral study could investigate three research questions in order to meet the aims and objectives of the project. The detail of these questions will be negotiated with the successful candidate:
◾What is the meaning of ‘wellbeing’ in the context of one health care provider?
◾What is an appropriate tool to measure that notion?
◾What framework would best inform the design of workplace interventions?