Who doesn’t want a good sense of well-being? In life, most everyone does, which necessarily means feeling good at work too. Yet, according to a recent national survey, most employees say their workplace well-being has worsened in the last year. Therefore, when the Leadership Development Committee saw this, they wanted to find out if it was true for us in PNCWA as well.

A survey probing this question was sent out in July to all PNCWA members. Unfortunately, the responses indicate we are not too different than the national trend. Answers to the questions asked are summarized below, followed by some insights on how to improve workplace well-being, gained from reviewing narrative comments that were included in the survey responses.

Respondents were roughly split between those who feel their workplace well-being is good or neutral with ones those who said it was poor. Furthermore, it did not seem to matter the number of years they had in their careers; the differences in workplace well-being were split more or less equally at all career stages. What mattered most was whether the respondents believed their employer cared about their well-being. All who felt good or neutral believed their employer cared about them and felt their well-being had stayed the same or improved this last year, whereas all but one with poor well-being believed their employer did not care about them and only one felt their well-being had improved.

As a sign of the times, common among all the groups was a feeling of having too much work to do, so the workload was not the differentiator between those who felt their well-being was good and those feeling their well-being was poor. Instead, the overriding factor cited for having good well-being was employers providing their employees with some form of “flexibility” in their work schedules, while the majority having poor well-being cited dissatisfaction with leadership.

The survey results clearly show having poor leaders is detrimental to employee well-being. However, it was not so clear if providing flexibility made up for it or if those with good well-being also had good leaders, We on the Leadership Development Committee postulate the latter, believing that to make

flexibility work you need good leadership. Therefore, it is more important than ever that we invest in developing our leadership skills, so we can promote well-being in the workplace. Otherwise, the survey suggests we risk losing valuable staff because nearly half of the ones who said their well-being improved did it by changing jobs.

Instead, it’s better to care about our employees and invest in their well-being, which we can do by making ourselves better leaders. If you are interested, the Leadership Development Committee will be providing a training opportunity to do so during the Spring Summit in March 2024. Planning for the summit is underway, so look for more details in upcoming editions of the newsletter.