Measuring What Matters: Assessing Workplace Mental Health and Well-being

World Economic Forum

A group of researchers at the University of Oxford have developed a body of applied research based on the principle that workplace well-being is driven by how people feel at work and about their work.

Accordingly, measures of job satisfaction, happiness and the degree to which work is found to be meaningful are measured and correlated with an overall sense of well-being. The group’s well-being index – which combines the measure of work happiness, purpose, job satisfaction and stress – not only correlated company performance (measured using return on assets as well as correlated with market value, but also predicted future performance and returns on investment. In its most recent study, the group analysed 15 million well-being surveys by employees at over 1,600 publicly listed companies into a well-being index.