Wellbeing frameworks and spaghetti clock towers

To most people, the term ‘wellbeing framework’ makes as much sense as the term ‘spaghetti clock tower’. Which is fair. And delicious looking.

So, a sentence like, “we find and fix sources of employee frustration using a wellbeing framework,” is especially meaningless.

For us, a wellbeing framework is a way of operationalizing and using something abstract in a concrete way. A definition of wellbeing is important, but it doesn’t describe how wellbeing is used to increase employee engagement and organizational impact. Our w@w model breaks wellbeing into five components: health, finance, career, connection, and purpose.

In case your mind’s drifting back to spaghetti towers and ways to introduce meatballs onto this tasty but structurally questionable feat of architecture, here’s how this relates to your company.

Regardless of your sector or industry, the same questions in our Wellbeing Diagnostic tool can be used to get insights into the same five components of wellbeing. For example, if you’re an association supporting bankers or one advancing mental wellbeing, low scores on the Finance component would still involve diving deeper to better understand employee attitudes towards financial planning and security. Work in insurance or software development? Doesn’t matter. Low scores for the Career component for both will likely lead to a deeper dive into your employees’ career satisfaction, role engagement, and their opportunities for career growth.

Using a wellbeing framework, the issues and the solutions across professions may vary, but the processes are the same.

So, while a wellbeing framework may not be as edible or tasty as a spaghetti clock tower, it is a lot more useful in helping to identify causes of employee frustrations, and to make your organization achieve its full potential. Unless you work in the manufacture and sales of pasta, of course...