Organizational Wellbeing – A New Look – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog #Post 1216

Organizational Wellbeing – A New Look – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog #Post 1216

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1216 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Hillary Fox

Preamble

This blog post is based on an INSEAD KNOWLEDGE article. Link at the end.

Rethinking Organizational Well-Being: From Perks to Performance Foundation

In recent years, concepts like “well-being at work” have proliferated in corporate discourse. We’ve seen yoga rooms, meditation breaks, gym memberships and digital wellness tools positioned as competitive perks to recruit and retain talent. But growing evidence shows that such superficial initiatives, often treated as human resource frills, are not delivering meaningful impact and are being cut during cost rationalization cycles.

Instead of being viewed as an add-on, well-being must be reimagined as a foundational element of organizational design, something that supports sustainable performance rather than functioning as a trade-off with it. This shift requires a far deeper transformation in how organizations measure, structure, and culturally define success.

Why the Traditional Approach Is Failing

For decades, organizations have approached well-being as a perk or soft benefit, something nice to have that might boost morale or improve the employer brand. This model assumes well-being is separate from “harder” organizational outcomes like productivity, profitability and performance.

But multiple indicators suggest companies are now deprioritizing well-being initiatives: investments in classic wellness programs declined from 6% of companies surveyed in 2023 to 14% in 2024, a sign that well-being is often seen as expendable during cost management cycles.

This reactive mindset misses the real value of well-being: it is not merely an HR expense; it is a strategic contributor to organizational resilience, engagement, innovation, and long-term performance. Treating it as peripheral undermines individual health and the organization’s capacity to thrive under pressure.

Well-Being Is Measurable - and Linked to Performance

A key reason organizations have historically sidelined well-being is the belief that it is too “soft” or intangible to measure rigorously. But this view is outdated. Organizations can now use validated, evidence-based measures, such as the PERMA-W model (which assesses positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment, and well-being) and the Workplace Well-Being Index, to quantify employee experience in ways that are just as rigorous as financial or productivity metrics.

An important lesson from recent experiments is that well-being improvements do not necessarily compromise organizational performance. For example, a large trial of nearly 3,000 workers across 141 companies that adopted a four-day workweek with no pay reduction found increased job satisfaction and reduced burnout, without any drop in performance. Over 90% of participating organizations chose to retain the shorter workweek after the trial.

Other interventions, such as flexible working arrangements, mental health programs, and ergonomic workplace redesign, can also be measured against both well-being and performance outcomes. This evidence underscores that well-being is not a “nice-to-have” but a core organizational KPI that can drive productivity, engagement, and retention simultaneously.

Beyond Perks: Addressing Structural Drivers of Well-Being

Most organizations still interpret well-being narrowly: programs delivered to individuals in response to specific issues. While valuable, such an approach misdiagnoses the deeper organizational determinants of employee health and safety.

For instance, workplace harassment is too often treated as a legal compliance or diversity issue rather than a fundamental workplace health and safety concern. But research shows that harassment harms not only the directly affected individuals, leading to anxiety, depression, absenteeism and turnover, but undermines team cohesion and performance broadly. By reframing harassment as a workplace health and safety risk, organizations can address it with the same seriousness given to physical hazards like unsafe equipment or environmental risk.

This broader view highlights that employee well-being is profoundly shaped by organizational structures, norms, and incentives, not just individual programs. If leadership fails to address systemic issues, even progressive well-being programs can feel superficial or fail to create lasting change.

Cultural Norms Matter – Especially Definitions of Success

Perhaps the deepest barrier to sustainable well-being is organizational culture, especially norms around success, strength, and “performance at all costs.” Research into Masculinity Contest Cultures (MCCs) shines a spotlight on how cultural norms can subtly reinforce toxic behavior: workplaces that glorify endurance, dominance, and toughness often devalue collaboration, vulnerability, and psychological safety. In such environments, bullying or aggressive behavior can be mistakenly interpreted as dedication or competitive drive, even though they undermine trust, well-being and long-term performance.

This dynamic explains why some high-performance firms paradoxically experience low morale, burnout and high turnover, a sign that cultural values, not just individual “bad actors,” are shaping workforce experience. The implication is profound: well-being cannot be introduced as a bolt-on initiative if the underlying culture rewards the opposite behaviors.

Designing Well-Being as an Organizational Foundation

Embed Well-Being into Performance Dashboards

Organizations should include well-being metrics alongside financial and productivity KPIs. Direct measures like workplace satisfaction, stress levels, sense of purpose, autonomy and psychological safety should be regularly tracked. Doing so signals to employees that well-being is as important as revenue goals, not a secondary initiative.

Audit Structural Barriers Systematically

Rather than addressing issues like harassment or inequity on a case-by-case basis, companies can conduct structural audits. These look across policies, reporting mechanisms, power dynamics and organizational design to identify systemic risks to well-being. Interventions like strengthened anti-harassment policies, independent complaint channels and structural safeguards can help shift cultures away from fear and disengagement.

Redefine Success Beyond Traditional Norms

Organizational narratives, what is celebrated, rewarded and recognized, matter deeply. If success is only defined by long hours, output volume or competitive dominance, then well-being initiatives will be downgraded in practice. Instead, organizations can celebrate outcomes like innovation, collaboration, learning, empathy and resilience. These broadened definitions align well-being with performance rather than positioning them in opposition.

Integrate Well-Being into Leadership Practice

Well-being should be a leadership priority, not just an HR mandate. Leaders at all levels must model behaviors that promote psychological safety, encourage healthy work-life integration and demonstrate empathy in decision-making. This cultural modelling reinforces that well-being is part of “how we do things here,” not just a policy on paper.

Why Well-Being Will Matter More in the Future of Work

We are entering a phase of profound work transformation shaped by AI, hybrid and remote work, demographic shifts and intensifying competition for top talent. In this context, well-being is a competitive advantage rather than a luxury. Organizations that recognize it as central to organizational health will be better positioned to attract, motivate and retain talent, while those that treat it as peripheral risk obsolescence.

Also, as work becomes more fluid and complex, traditional models of control and performance measurement will no longer suffice. Well-being becomes not only an ethical imperative but a strategic necessity for resilience, adaptability and long-term success.

Sum Up

The time for treating wellness as a superficial perk is over. Organizations that want to flourish in the modern era must embed well-being into their structures, cultures and success metrics. This means:

Measuring well-being as rigorously as performance

Addressing structural issues that harm health

Redefining cultural norms that elevate harmful behaviors

Integrating well-being into leadership and organizational design

In doing so, companies can create workplaces that not only perform well in financial terms but also nurture healthy, engaged and sustainable human capital, a foundation for long-term organizational success in a fast-changing world.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, any claim is lodged, it will be acknowledged and duly recognized immediately. 

Reference:

https://knowledge.insead.edu/responsibility/rethinking-organisational-well-being/