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What is a workplace health and well-being committee — and why do you need one?
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What you’ll learn: A new guide from MIT and Harvard researchers explains how a workplace health and well-being committee can reduce turnover and save money.
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What if there were a cost-effective way to reduce turnover among front-line workers, while simultaneously surfacing good ideas and empowering your employees to improve the workplace?
Welcome to the concept of health and well-being committees, a new form of participatory workplace program that can save organizations money while improving workers’ psychological well-being.
The HaWC program was developed by researchers from the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research and the Harvard Center for Work, Health, and Well-Being, working with business leaders at a company with operations across the U.S. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company was facing significant competition and high levels of turnover among its warehouse workers.
Company leaders were interested in developing a new kind of participatory program in which supervisors could learn about sources of stress in the workplace directly from front-line workers and partner with them to design potential solutions.
Hallmarks of a health and well-being committee
HaWCs are designed to address three main categories of concerns:
- Psychosocial environment — that is, how people feel about coming to work. Issues in this category include whether workers feel that they are treated well and with respect, and whether managers acknowledge employees’ lives outside of work.
- Work organization, which refers to how work gets done. This category includes concerns and ideas on workflow, training, professional development opportunities, scheduling, and workload.
- Physical environment, which involves ideas and concerns pertaining to safety hazards and other aspects of the physical plant.
Health and well-being committees reduced turnover among warehouse workers by 20% over 12 months.
We explain in more detail in our new report, “Starting a Workplace Health and Well-Being Committee: A Step-By-Step Guide for Managers.”
Results are promising
After its design, the program was implemented and tested in a field experiment that took place in the e-commerce division of the retail organization.
The results showed that HaWCs had positive impacts on employees’ mental health in the first six months after launch and reduced turnover by 20% over 12 months, all at a comparatively low cost. Researchers on our team estimate that to achieve the same reduction in turnover through wage increases, the company would have had to raise its hourly pay for front-line workers by 1.5%.
The findings speak to the value, for both an organization and its workers, of giving employees opportunities to voice their concerns and participate in addressing workplace problems.
Our report, which is designed to serve as a free step-by-step guide for managers, includes information on how to prepare for, launch, and run a HaWC, as well as guidance on their structure and leadership and key strategies for success and sustainability.
The research on developing and testing health and well-being committees in a warehouse setting was supported by the Harvard Center for Work, Health, and Wellbeing, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Good Companies, Good Jobs Initiative at MIT Sloan, the MIT Sloan Health Systems Initiative, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
