Whither the ethical case for employee wellbeing? A critical review (virtual)

Join ARU's Centre for Research into the Organisation of Work and Consumption (CROWC) and speakers from the universities of Essex, East Anglia, and Cardiff for a discussion about the impetus behind employee wellbeing initiatives.

Employee wellbeing is a key issue for organisations, but this is typically framed in terms of productivity gains. Employees with good wellbeing will miss fewer days of work, are more engaged, more innovative and are likely to work harder.

Critical perspectives are suspicious of this notion of the happy-productive worker, arguing that attempts to manage employee wellbeing are really just managerial imperatives to secure greater commitment and productivity. Such imperatives are not only contrary to wellbeing, but also provide a facade that cloaks the productive emphasis of management.

Rather than engaging in debate, the two discourses have tended to talk past one another, ignoring the ethical dimension to the question of why and how to pursue employee wellbeing. We seek to extend the dialogue between critical and managerial perspectives on wellbeing by critically reviewing the literature to explore what ethical claims exist and how this connects with normative arguments about good work and a good life.

This review aims to surface the ethical assumptions and commitments that underpin literature on the employee wellbeing to address the question of why employee wellbeing should be a key goal for organisations.

We consider the range of different ways in which employee wellbeing might be justified on ethical terms rather than providing an objective ethical truth. Reviewing the literature with this leads us to consider the consequences for work and organisations that different ethical justifications of employee wellbeing might lead to, with a view to transformation for the greater good.

Speakers

Dr David Watson

Dr David Watson is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies and Human Resource Management at the University of Essex. His research centres on the concept of well-being. He is interested in how different experiences of work and configurations of organisation shape wellbeing.

He has worked on a range of interdisciplinary research projects in and outside of academia and his work has been published in a range of journals, books and edited collections. Recent publications include work on gender and stress in the workplace and the role of organisations in supporting wellbeing.

Dr Helen Fitzhugh

Dr Helen Fitzhugh is a social researcher with a focus on organisations and social value creation, particularly around workplace wellbeing. She is currently a Senior Research Associate and Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the University of East Anglia.

With diverse experience of applied and academic research, the golden thread of her work is how good intentions are translated within organisations into action and whether that action is successful in creating positive change for the people involved.

Dr James Wallace

Dr James Wallace is a Lecturer within the Management, Employment and Organisation subject group at Cardiff Business School. Broadly speaking, his research interests relate to critical management and organisation studies, particularly regarding issues such as power and identity in the workplace.

More specifically, he is interested in the issue of wellbeing in the workplace. He has recently been interested in thinking about how critical approaches to wellbeing may lead to arguments for alternative forms of organisation.

This event takes place online via Microsoft Teams. You can also attend in person on our Cambridge campus.