by Professor Cary Cooper
Gross National Well-Being
David Cameron suggested that the country should not only be worried about its Gross National Product but also about its Gross National Well-Being – that is, the well-being of its citizens. Lord Layard has written about ‘happiness’ and the need to create less stress, greater happiness and improved well-being in our social institutions (eg the family, schools, work, etc). Indeed, one of the major ‘Foresight’ programmes in the Office of Science and Innovation is about mental capital and well-being in the country. Well-being is now firmly on the national agenda!
The need to move toward reducing stress and enhancing mental capital and well-being stems from the vast changes that have taken place in the UK. According to a recent UN survey, the UK now has the longest working hours of any country in the developed world. The CIPD’s recent working hours report indicates that stress and mental ill-health are the second leading causes of long-term sickness absence. In addition to working hours and stress-related problems, well-being is undermined by an increasingly job-insecure world of work, and by a more bottom-line – in some cases more severe – management style in many organisations. Meanwhile, the mobility of people has meant that their natural counsellors and support systems from the extended family and community are no longer there for many individuals. All these developments have caused individual and corporate well-being to be profoundly compromised, with inevitable consequences for corporate performance and productivity.
Well-being is now a bottom-line issue, and is seen as such by many of the more advanced companies and public sector bodies in the UK and elsewhere. There is much that enlightened employers can do and are doing to enhance the well-being of their employees and, thereby, corporate well-being and performance. By providing guidance on a range of potential interventions and approaches to achieving greater health, well-being and performance in the workplace, this manual will hopefully contribute to more organisations’ doing the same.
This manual is a timely reminder of the fact that improving individual and organisational well-being can have a major impact on performance and productivity in UK plc. Making this link is fundamental for any change to improve well-being at work. The manual provides the thoughtful views and evidence to advance this argument, which will benefit not only individuals and employers but also society at large. As Studs Terkel wrote in his acclaimed book Working:
[Work] is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor – in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday-through-Friday sort of dying.
This is our challenge and that of the readers of this important manual.
Cary L. Cooper, CBE, is Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health, and Pro Vice Chancellor, at Lancaster University; he is also President of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, and is Chair of the Sunningdale Institute in the National School of Government.