Wellbeing in Australian Workplaces

Promoting employee wellbeing has been a growing focus in Australian workplaces in the past few years, even more so in a post covid, flexible workplace. Employers and policymakers are recognising the importance of creating a healthy and supportive work environment not only to enhance employee productivity, satisfaction, and quality of life but also to contribute to society and see the sustainability of their workforce. 

In my recent article I discussed the question underpinning the development of our Thrive Stars initiative aimed at finding a way to measure Australia’s Gross National Prosperity or GNP. It’s a bold movement and that’s how all good initiatives start out!

The THRIVE Stars initiative aims to measure organisational prosperity through our unique five lead indicator system that has been developed to future proof organisations for the in line with what society, employees and stakeholders want. These five lead indicators include:

🍏 1. WELLBEING

🏆 2. PRODUCTIVITY

⭐️ 3. CULTURE

👩🏽4. INCLUSION

♻ 5. SUSTAINABILITY 

Last week we held the second of three industry Think Tanks to delve deeper into what leaders in the business community prioritised and felt about creating organisations with high productivity and wellbeing. 

As well as the key takeaways of how much employers and leaders in the Hunter Region care about not just their productivity but also the wellbeing of their people, were found the insights into what employers, employees and society care about when it comes to thriving organisations invaluable to our planning process.

The Think Tank came straight off the back of the release of the Australian government’s Measuring What Matters wellbeing framework, to  help better track outcomes in our economy and society. The framework uses 50 indicators to measure how we are faring as we pursue a more healthy, secure, sustainable, cohesive and prosperous Australia. The measures are in addition to, not instead of, the more traditional ways we measure our economy like GDP, employment, inflation and wages. 

We also met last week with the team who are building the Measuring What Matters framework and were excited to hear it is pat of a very deliberate effort to put people and progress, fairness and opportunity at the very core of the government’s thinking about our economy and our society, now and into the future. The release of the framework heralds  the first step of an iterative process as the government continue to consult and refine the framework based on ongoing feedback.

While Australia performs relatively well compared to similar countries on international indicators, we know there is always more that can be done. Over the last two decades, Australia has made progress in improving life expectancy, job opportunities and resource allocation and the government report shows that we are more accepting of diversity and have more trust in others and our incomes have also improved.

However, Australians are experiencing higher rates of chronic conditions and, in some instances, are finding it harder to access health, care and support services. We perceive our national security to be lower and we face new threats online. Over recent decades, biological diversity has fallen, fiscal sustainability has declined, and for many Australians, housing is taking up more of our income.

Improving wellbeing is the job of government, business and other organisations as well as Australian communities and the Australian people. We can play a part in improving the wellbeing of people in our workplaces across a number of aspects including:

• Mental Health Support
• Work-life balance
• Physical health
• Workplace Health and Safety
• Flexible work arrangements
• Training and development
• Career training an pathways
• Inclusivity 

If you’re an early adopter who is keen to be on on the action we have one more think tank on 2 November - drop me a “Thrive” below if you’d like an invite to this invite only event.