Wellbeing at Work

Jim Clifton, Jim Harter

• Publisher: Gallup Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781595622426
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

What if the next global crisis is a mental health pandemic? It is here now.One-third of Americans have shown signs of clinical anxiety or depression, and the current state of suffering globally has risen significantly.The mental health pandemic manifests everywhere, not least in your workplace. As organizations around the world face health and social crises, as well as economic uncertainty, acknowledging and improving wellbeing in your workplace is more critical than ever.Increasingly, leaders and managers must support mental health and cultivate resilience in employees — not just increase engagement and performance. Based on more than 100 million Gallup global interviews, Wellbeing at Work shows you how to do just that.Coauthored by Gallup’s CEO and its Chief Workplace Scientist, Wellbeing at Work explores the five key elements of wellbeing — career, social, financial, physical and community — and how organizations can help employees and teams thrive in those elements. The book also gives leaders ideas and action items to help employees use their innate talents and strengths to thrive in each of the wellbeing elements. And Wellbeing at Work introduces a metric to report a person’s best possible life: Gallup Net Thriving, which will become the “other stock price” for organizations.In a world where work and life are more blended than ever, maximizing employee wellbeing takes on greater urgency. Wellbeing at Work shows leaders how to create a thriving and resilient culture. If you and your leaders don’t change the world, who will? Wellbeing at Work includes a unique code to take the CliftonStrengths assessment, which reveals your top five strengths.

Part 1:
What Is Wellbeing?

What Is “The Best Possible Life”?

Lessons From the Past

In 1958 and 1959, polling pioneer George Gallup and his colleagues conducted in-depth interviews with 402 Americans and 128 Britons who lived to be 95 and older. He called these people “the oldsters.” The findings appeared in his book The Secrets of Long Life.

Dr. Gallup discovered what living a long life looked like decades ago, which offers clues to living a long life today:

• Respondents had jobs that required them to be physically active — 90% of men had jobs in which they were on their feet most of the time.
• 71% of men and 61% of women reported doing hard physical labor — their exercise came from their work.
• 62% worked outdoors.
• They lived in a time when there was little processed food. These oldsters were not particular about their food choices. They tended to eat plain cooking in moderate amounts — meat, potatoes and white bread on most days with dessert. They regularly used butter.
• Almost none tried to go on a diet.
• They were deep sleepers and early risers, typically waking up at 6 a.m.
• They worried very little.
• Most described themselves as “cheery” people who “take things as they come.”
• They reported happy overall lives.
• Their main interest outside of work was family and friends.
• They laughed a lot.
• Most weren’t intentionally trying to live long lives.
• They did not have luxurious lifestyles and were far enough away from poverty that they didn’t worry about money.
• These oldsters’ households were distributed across large cities, small cities, towns or villages, or rural areas.
• Half of the men never took vacations during their working years.
• The group’s median retirement age was 80 for men and 70 for women.
• For men, the median number of hours they worked per week was 60. For women who worked outside the home, the median was 64 hours per week.
• 93% of men and 85% of women reported getting “a great deal of satisfaction” from their work. The majority of men and women reported having “a great deal of fun” at work.

What Can These Oldsters Teach Us Today?

By all accounts, these oldsters lived thriving — not struggling or suffering — long lives. However, no single factor guaranteed a long and thriving life — but the combination of several.

So what do Dr. Gallup’s findings from the 1950s tell us about living a thriving life 70 years later?

We don’t suggest using the list above as an exact checklist for today. After all, how many people have the option to get substantial exercise through their work, to work outside and to live a stress-free life? How many doctors would recommend a daily intake of meat, potatoes, white bread, butter and dessert? How many people are willing to forgo vacations and work 60-hour weeks until they are 70 or 80 years old? Currently, 78% of the world’s working population is not engaged in their work — they are not getting “a great deal of satisfaction” nor “a great deal of fun” from work.

The key to a thriving life is not dependent on a list of policies or activities that everyone follows. Many of the oldsters’ practices throughout their lives don’t match the advice current experts recommend. Today, the tendency is to focus on easy-to-measure activities such as number of hours worked, vacations or diet. But the oldsters’ thriving lives were better explained by how they experienced life:

They had a great deal of fun at work.

They prioritized friends and family in their leisure time.

They didn’t worry about money.

They ate in moderation rather than following a specific diet plan. They were physically active and slept well.

They experienced little worry and were content regardless of the different geographies and town or city sizes where they lived.

These findings are consistent with recent longitudinal research on aging and mortality.

When organizations attempt to legislate policies for transactions like hours worked, vacations and retirement that apply the same way to all people, they’re missing the breakthrough.

We are not encouraging skipping vacations like half of the male oldsters did. We are simply pointing out that engagement trumps vacation time. Two people — one with miserable work and one with engaging work — have the most differentiated life outcomes.

Gallup’s most recent global analytics conclude that a good job, with engaging work, is the very foundation of a thriving life.

While “my work” is the single most important variable, it doesn’t exist on its own. Why did these oldsters keep working until they were 80? Because other aspects of their life supported and didn’t conflict with what they loved to do. More recent large-scale studies reinforce this point: The elements of your life that affect your wellbeing are interdependent. There are five of them. They rely on each other.

Net Thriving: The Other Stock Price

Much like a financial audit, reporting employee engagement or Net Promoter Scores for customers has become a requirement for boards and institutional investors over the past two decades.

While employee engagement has been on the rise for the past 10 years, as of this writing, 36% of U.S. workers and just 22% globally are engaged. Engaged employees produce far better outcomes on everything.

However, Gallup recently discovered that engaged workers who are not thriving in their lives are much more vulnerable and add risk to your organization.

For example, comparing employees who are engaged but not thriving in life with those who are engaged and thriving, those in the former group report the following risks:

• 61% higher likelihood of burnout often or always
• 48% higher likelihood of daily stress
• 66% higher likelihood of daily worry
• double the rate of daily sadness and anger

Thriving employees have 53% fewer missed days due to health issues. Suffering and struggling employees have substantially higher disease burden due to diagnoses of depression and anxiety, among others. This translates into big differences in productivity.

Reporting employees’ mental health and wellbeing will soon become a requirement for all organizations.

How many employees in your company are suffering, struggling or thriving?

If you want to know the wellbeing of your employees, this two-part question, called the Best Possible Life Scale, is the best question item Gallup analytics has ever found to measure GNT because it encompasses all aspects of an individual’s wellbeing:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you.

Q1: On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time? (0-10)

Q2: On which step do you think you will stand about five years from now? (0-10)

Your organization will need to know how your employees answer the Best Possible Life Scale questions to effectively meet the new demand of managing the whole person. Just like stock price is an indicator of current and future earnings, Gallup Net Thriving assesses the current and future resiliency of your workforce.

Even prior to COVID-19, work and life had become blended. Remote working and flextime were on the rise. And then with many employees ordered to work from home to flatten the coronavirus curve, work and life became completely blended for most employees.

Even with a vaccine and economic recovery, work and life will never be separated like they were in the past.

How Does Gallup Define “Thriving”?

Gallup uses the Best Possible Life Scale as the global standard to measure Gallup Net Thriving across 160 countries.

Packed into any person’s responses to these two simple questions is almost everything in their life — from basic needs such as food and shelter to personal safety to a good job, social status, money and health.

Let’s call the two parts of the Best Possible Life Scale “best life present” and “best life future.” They are both important because one reveals your current state, which influences your decisions right now, and the other reveals your hope for the future. Even people in a negative state can keep going if they have hope that things will get better.

Gallup tracked wellbeing in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the percentage of people who rated their lives highly on best life present dropped at a historic rate — while best life future improved slightly. People believed there was a way out.

Gallup analyzed how best life present and best life future predict happiness and health as well as negative outcomes such as stress, depression and burnout. Information from best life present and best life future gives us, in combination, indicators of whether individuals are suffering, struggling or thriving — an index of the resiliency of a culture.

We determined the thriving, struggling and suffering categories based on analytics from over a million respondents across 160 countries.

• Thriving: These respondents have positive views of their present life situation (7 or higher rating on best life present) and have positive views of the next five years (8 or higher rating on best life future). They report significantly fewer health problems and less worry, stress, sadness, depression and anger. They report more hope, happiness, energy, interest and respect.

Across countries, the percentage of thriving employees ranges from 8% to 87%.

• Struggling: These respondents struggle in their present life situation and have uncertain or negative views about their future. They report more daily stress and worry about money than thriving respondents do.

Across countries, the percentage of struggling employees ranges from 12% to 77%.

• Suffering: These respondents report that their lives are miserable (4 and below rating on best life present) and have negative views of the next five years (4 and below on best life future). They are more likely to report that they lack the basics of food and shelter and more likely to have physical pain and a lot of stress, worry, sadness and anger. They have less access to health insurance and care and more than double the disease burden compared with thriving respondents.

Across countries, the percentage of suffering employees ranges from ...

Table of contents

• Important Information About Your Access Code
• Quote
• Introduction: The Mood of the World
• Part 1: What Is Wellbeing?
• Part 2: Your Workplace’s Wellbeing Opportunities
• Part 3: Risks to a Net Thriving Culture
• Part 4: Net Thriving Starts With Career Engagement
• Part 5: The Fastest Road to Net Thriving: Play to Strengths
• Appendixes
• About Gallup
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Image Descriptions
• Copyright
• Gallup Press