Business Leaders’ Council: Productivity and wellbeing

Here are the links shared and referred to over the course of the event:

• The Bennett Institute’s work with the Centre: The Many Dimensions of Wellbeing
• Dr Laura Kudrna’s work with the Centre on community and individual wellbeing including a new model: Different People, Same Place
• Survey shared by Dr Laura: Labour Market Statistics User Engagement
• Bennett Institute blog: Does education make us happier?
• Bennett Institute working paper: Respecting the subject in subjective wellbeing public policy
• The National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at Work
• Centre blog: Do employers care and employees feel like they do?
• Centre briefing about what interventions works for wellbeing and performance: Job Quality and Wellbeing
• Centre fact sheet: Wellbeing of men and women in the UK
• Centre blog: How are we doing, UK? 2012-2022

• Do you think it would help the scale of data issue for the APS to be stratified by local authority? There is a consultation on this survey now where we can ask for this: https://consultations.ons.gov.uk/external-affairs/labour-market-statistics-user-engagement/
• You showed some LS gently improving up until 2019 – has there been any analysis on why this was gently improving pre-pandemic?
• I wonder if the pandemic might actually cause a sea change in productivity? Partly because radical change became possible, partly because of an increase in trust and partly because people are more productive (and often happier) when working from home.
• Has anyone raised concerns that employers caring about employee’s wellbeing might lead to employers either not hiring people they judge likely to have lower wellbeing, or to employers letting go employees with lower wellbeing?
• Has anyone raised concerns that employers caring about employee’s wellbeing might lead to employers either not hiring people they judge likely to have lower wellbeing, or to employers letting go employees with lower wellbeing?
• Dr Matthew Agarwala: We’ve looked at the relationship between life satisfaction and productivity at different geographical scales. But we could equally imagine a map that displayed how ‘close’ different local authorities are in terms of their economic/industrial structure.