Mapping employee-centred wellbeing beyond the bounds of the workplace

Co-hosted by Sydney Employment Relations Research

Abstract

Employee wellbeing research often centres around the connection between wellbeing and organisational outcomes, rather than identifying organisational practices that can positively impact employees. Furthermore, there is limited research that identifies how HR practices can contribute not only to organisational and employee outcomes, but to thriving communities and society. This is particularly so with community support workers, a crucial yet undervalued health workforce, whose wellbeing has largely been overlooked in current research in favour of identifying means to increase quality of care or efficiencies. Using a community-based partnership framework, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were held with 87 community support workers to co-create a definition of wellbeing. Our findings illustrate that employee-centred wellbeing is multifactored and interdependent, including less studied components of green wellbeing, and cultural and spiritual wellbeing. Importantly, our findings suggest that employee-centred wellbeing extends beyond the workplace to families and communities suggesting a significant, strategic role for HRM practices in society.

Speaker

Dr Katherine Ravenswood is Professor of Industrial Relations in the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law and Associate Director (Human Resource Management) of AUT's New Zealand Policy Research Institute. She is a leading expert in employment relations and the impact of macro and workplace levers on inequality and inclusion in work.

Her research extensively examines the care and support workforce, especially the impact of the care workers' pay equity settlement and informs national and international policy and research. She has provided expert evidence on pay equity and precarious work to government agencies and researchers in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK and to the OECD. She has led large qualitative projects funded by the NZ Health Research Council and leads a current NZ royal Society Marsden funded project on systemic discrimination and workplace violence.