What is Business Well-Being?

Birch Cove Definitions

1. Business Well-Being

  • The active creation, management, and operation of an organization that enhances individual well-being, and experiences high performance. One can not exist without the other in the definition of business well-being.

  • By consciously pursuing well-being, choosing from the very top that well-being matters, running throughout the ecosystem, strategy and integrating aligned activities, programs, tools, and experiences, an organization enables business and individual well-being. Counter intuitively, a business investing in individuals’ well-being will experience higher performance, improve productivity, and generate greater revenues.

2. Individual Well-Being

  • In contrast when considering well-being at the individual level this definition offers clarity:

  • The reflection of choices, activities, and lifestyles that lead to balance, not imbalance, in mind, body and spirit.

  • Acknowledging and accepting you are a human-being, not a human-doing, and establishing your own definition of success and alignment for your life.

3. The Eight Dimensions of Well-Being

  • Identified originally* as a set of dimensions needed by individuals to optimize health and wellness. Birch Cove has adapted them to help us understand the dimensions of well-being in businesses. Our offerings focus on elevating one or more of these dimensions.

 
 
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1. Physical

Create a culture that supports and encourages individuals in balanced practices of physical activity, diet, sleep, and nutrition.

  • Build, create, and offer programs to build awareness, education, encourage and support commitment to practices as individuals and as a community.

  • Create a culture to enable commitment to practices that are not in addition to, or on top of existing responsibilities, but as part of the daily working practices.

 
 
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2. Emotional

Understand how emotions and feelings drive and change business practices, engagement, and growth.

  • Recognize that emotions drive all business decisions and even create your culture and services.

  • Invest in understanding what type of emotional culture you want to develop.

  • Explore what kind of emotional experience you want clients to have.

  • Help individuals discover that feelings are just part of human existence and neither are good or bad, they are biochemical experiences presenting information.

  • Help individuals recognize emotions, develop skillsets in responding to them, and build emotional resiliency - which means welcoming feelings, not suppressing them

  • Discover how they impact business to empower choices and decisions made at every level.

 
 
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3. Social

Create a business culture and develop services that build, and foster positive personal connections and relationships among people.

  • Help all individuals create a sense of belonging, and provide encouragement for the development of professionally supportive relationships - with healthy boundaries.

  • As a result of pandemic lockdowns many individuals report that while they may have adjusted to home working they feel disconnected from the culture of their company, colleagues and friends, and this is having an affect on their well-being. When this happens it has a direct impact on the way individuals problem solve, make decisions, see solutions, and engage with everyone across your business.

 
 
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4. Intellectual

Create the opportunity to foster curiosity and stimulate intellect through different lenses and changing perspectives.

  • Offer and support individuals and groups with the opportunity to explore and develop interests.

  • Encourage the expansion of knowledge and skills through a multitude of topics, formats, and experiences.

  • Ensure opportunities exist for play, creativity, culture and arts, and are not just focused on functional role learning and expansion.

  • Perspectives evolve and shift when a variety of lenses are available for individuals to explore and test out which then develop into growth and expertise.

  • Often the greatest solutions to functional problems come when individuals are engaged in something different to their actual role.

  • Inspiration does not come from pressure, so giving individuals the space to explore and learn during business hours will enhance your organizational well-being.

 
 

5. Environmental

Understand that surroundings for living and working make a difference to the well-being of individuals, organizations, industries, communities, and societies.

  • Address “sick buildings”, materials used in buildings, indoor air quality, water filtration systems, cleanliness from floor to ceiling, bathrooms, kitchens, eating spaces, small desk spaces, packed-in buildings, people volume, plants inside, rest spaces, relaxation places. Meeting minimums standards is no longer acceptable.

  • Assess how your business environment enhances or detracts from the other well-being dimensions for individuals.

  • Adapt and refine workplace design and bring in natural elements to encourage healthy behaviors, collaboration, and creativity among individuals.

  • Provide education and practical steps and programs for individuals to implement at home.

  • Become aware to how external environments can become integral to experiences and seeks ways to bring the outdoors indoors.

  • Explore new ways of making changes to your business ecosystem, practices, and services alleviate and reduce environmental impact.

  • Engage team members and clients in making these changes.

 
 

6. Spiritual

Encourage, support, and offer opportunities for individuals to explore their own sense of purpose, direction, meaning of life, values and beliefs.

  • As individuals understand more about who they are, investigate and discover new dimensions to their character and personality they develop expertise and talent in new ways.

  • Often businesses shy away from helping individuals to find their purpose as they fear losing top talent. This is the biggest mistake an organization can make as it overlooks three core facts:

    • 1. Discovering purpose is not a sudden aha moment.

    • 2. Individuals who are supported in this discovery are more loyal and their commitment grows, and

    • 3. If talented individuals are not engaged with this activity they will discover it themself and leave anyway.

 
 

7. Functional

Create an ecosystem where individuals recognize and develop a sense of satisfaction in their work and role.

  • Create a supportive culture that authentically recognizes unique abilities and strengths, and encourages individuals to see and value in their own work.

  • Challenge, guide and encourage individuals toward growth and stretch goals and to take accountability for achieving personal satisfaction and enrichment in their work which aligns to their purpose, values, goals, and lifestyle desires.

  • This creates engagement and alignment with your business as a result.

 

 

8. Financial

Create an ecosystem that develops self management and accountability for financial success - both personally and organizationally.

  • Instill new self-management practices into your organization. Some businesses even go as far as having employees determine and publicly explain their own pay increases to grow commitment and accountability. The autonomy and engagement this brings is eye opening. Frederic Laloux’s work in Reengineering Organizations shares more about this.

  • Challenge, encourage, and provide support for individuals to understand their own financial goals and landscape.

  • Create an environment that self-regulates financial achievement by having individuals consider and recognize their own contributions toward the entire business.

  • Deliberately engage in growth and stretch goals that align with dreams, vision, and accountability.

 

*The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)