Call for evidence: Organisations as social communities and wellbeing

Deadline: 15th of November 2016

How do you feel about the organisation you work for? Not your colleagues, staff or line manager, but the organisation itself? The What Works Centre for Wellbeing is calling for employees and employers to share qualitative or quantitative evaluations that helps build an evidence base about the social aspects of the relationship between workers, an organisation and wellbeing.

Why do we need your evidence?

We want to find out whether interventions aimed at improving social relationships and climates in organisations promote wellbeing and performance. And what factors affect the impact of these interventions.  For example, are interventions more effective when targeted or carried out in a particular way, or for a particular group? Does the type of organisation make a difference? Some examples of an intervention could be improving communications, any team or company activities, even changing the structure of ‘breakout’ office spaces.

We are not exploring the social relationships between workers, their co-workers and their line managers. Rather, we are specifically interested in the relationship between workers and the organisational as a whole, including:

• The extent to which workers feel that the organisation values workers’ contributions and cares for workers’ wellbeing.
• The general social atmosphere at work, including social recognition and acknowledgement.
• Workers’ sense of belonging to a workplace community and how embedded they feel in the workplace.
• Fairness in how rewards such as pay and promotions are allocated and the truthfulness and respect with which those decisions are communicated.

How can you get involved?

We are particularly seeking the following types of evidence:

• Evaluation studies with assessments of wellbeing made before and after the introduction of an intervention – this is to allow us to determine whether the intervention produced any changes in wellbeing subsequent to its introduction.
• Evaluations, including comparison groups that did not receive the intervention.
• Evidence of impacts on wellbeing that may include stress, mental health, anxiety, depression, life or job satisfaction, burnout, or engagement.
• Evidence of changes in productivity and performance that may include factors such as safety, performance and absence.

Qualitative or quantitative evidence is welcome.

What is the criteria?

All examples must be written in English or have an English translation and include an author and date. We can only accept evidence which can be made publicly available.

Please send your submissions electronically to the What Works Centre for Wellbeing (evidence@whatworkswellbeing.org) with the subject line ‘Evidence: Organisations as social communities and wellbeing’. All submissions should be received by 15th of November 2016.

For a link to the Protocol on PROSPERO: http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42016049908