Workplace Well-Being Initiatives: Evaluating the Costs and Benefits

Abstract

There is an extensive academic and practitioner literature on what sorts of workplace well-being interventions work and for which types of workers (see Daniels et al., Job design, employment practices and well-being: a systematic review of intervention studies. Ergonomics 60:1177–1196. 10.1080/00140139.2017.1303085, 2017; Watson et al., Well-being through learning: A systematic review of learning interventions in the workplace and their impact on well-being. Eur J Work Organ Psychol 27(2): 247–268. 10.1080/1359432X.2018.1435529, 2018; Whitmore et al., Promising practices for health and wellbeing at work. A review of the evidence landscape. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Cambridge, UK, 2018). However, few of these studies include an assessment of the costs of the interventions nor do they provide an approach for evaluating these against the benefits in terms of any improvements in employee well-being. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the use of a well-being cost-effectiveness analysis to evaluate workplace interventions and illustrates the technique using four case study examples of workplace interventions. We explore ways in which costs of interventions might be calculated, how the well-being and productivity benefits of interventions might be measured, and finally, how the cost-effectiveness of the interventions might be assessed.