Abstract/Summary

Debate among researchers and practitioners persists as to how to define a workplace well-being construct that measures people’s experienced well-being. Existing definitions often have a differing narrow focus on eudaimonic or hedonic aspects of well-being. An inductive approach to determining key features of workplace well-being through exploring real-life work experience might alleviate this issue as checking the meanings people assign to well-being would create further insight into key aspects of the workplace well-being concept. Further, the endeavor to understand how different people at work experience well-being is important as their understanding is likely to impact on how they maintain and enhance well-being, how they rate their well-being in occupational surveys, how they respond to interventions, and how they manage their own well-being. Therefore, this research explores through two studies of lay descriptions of workplace well-being and extends previous research by using an inductive framework of an occupationally heterogeneous sample. Different groups of employees in different work settings were given qualitative surveys and took part in interviews and focus groups in order to establish components of workplace well-being. Dominant components were established through thematic content analysis. Similarities and differences were found between lay and theoretical conceptualizations of well-being. Results indicate that a multicomponent measure of workplace well-being should go beyond hedonic and eudaimonic aspects by including an energy component and social and physical aspects of well-being at work. Further, the use of a context-specific definitions and resulting implications for designing workplace well-being interventions is also discussed.