Wellness programmes in the literature - Defining major concepts

EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND WELLNESS STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE

2.2 Defining major concepts

2.2.3 Wellness programmes in the literature

Figure 1. 1 Framework for operationalising wellness programmes

Source: Adapted from the EHWSFPS DPSA (2008, p. 31).

From the description given to WLB in the text and figure 1.1 above, there seems to be a misinterpretation of the meaning of the WLB concept in the EHWSFPS. Therefore, this researcher seeks to review the literature on wellness programmes to clarify the

misconstruction.

Africa and the recommendations of the report of the WHO’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health (DPSA, 2008, p. 8). The adoption of this programme as a WLBS may be attributed to the institutional and situational theories discussed in chapter three of this study.

The particular idea for endorsing health and wellness programmes in the workplace began earnestly in the 1980s (Després, Alméras, & Gauvin, 2014). Sieberhagen, Pienaar, and Els (2011) report that organisations are increasingly recognising the challenges relating to workers’

wellbeing (Hooper, 2004) and that there is the heightened interest of the public in the integration of wellness events and the responsibilities of the employers (Hillier, Fewell, Cann,

& Shephard, 2005). The foregoing have resulted in the establishment of programmes like EAPs and EWPs to look into matters regarding wellness of employees at the workplace (Frey, Osteen, Berglund, Jinnett, & Ko, 2015; Sieberhagen et al., 2011). They confirm that both EAPs and EWPs similarly address wellness issues. Similarly, Meyer and Maltin (2010) report that wellness programmes are adopted by today’s organisations purposely to enhance employee health and the possibilities of advancing organisational success.

Traditionally, the reason behind EAPs was to assist employees with their domestic problems capable of undermining their work performance. The initial EAPs concentrated on addressing alcohol and substance abuse, which negatively affected workers’ performance. For example, some of the first EAPs focused on addressing issues emanating from abuse relating to alcohol and substances which negatively affected workers’ performance. But in contemporary times, some EAPs integrated dependant elder relative care, domestic relationship counselling, stress management, legal advice, financial/debt counselling, HIV/AIDS counselling, and substance/alcohol abuse counselling (these are life strategies) to help workers address their personal life challenges (Benavides & David, 2010). Klingner and Nalbandian (2003) are of the view that these interventions are “designed to diagnose, treat and rehabilitate employees whose personal problems are interfering with work performance.” On the other hand, they further reported that employees perceived the programmes as having the objective of treating workers’ personal problems so that they do not degenerate to the point of permanently affecting the employee’s performance at work. EAPs are reactionary programmes intended to alleviate prevailing adverse situations by attending to core issues (subjective, psychological and medical) in the way they impact an employee’s performance at work (Benavides & David, 2010).

Similarly, wellness programmes are designed to promote employee’s awareness of their wellness needs as well as facilitate personal psychological and physiological change towards promoting individual health and a supportive workplace. But according to Sieberhagen et al.

(2011), employee wellness is a poorly defined concept in South Africa. Leiter and Durup (1996) report that EWP activities are particularly targeted to provide relief to employees from stress emanating from substance/alcohol abuse, finance/debt issues, medical and chronic diseases, career crises and job demands (Tuwai, Kamau, & Kuria, 2015). Basically, most of the strategies adopted by EWPs are counselling based and use is voluntary. By their formulation and design, EWPs are not structured to address work-related issues (Reynolds &

Bennett, 2015) like job stress, function vagueness/role clash, and or absence of autonomy and their outcomes on employees’ stress levels. Moreover, the services rendered through the wellness programme to employees are targeted at personal and health related matters instead of addressing WLB issues. Some of the challenges facing participation in wellness programmes are stigmatisation (Gerber, 1995; Naidoo, & Jano, 2003a) as well as trust and confidentiality related issues (Sieberhagen et al., 2011). According to Gunavathy (2011), although corresponding interventions seem to be under the umbrella of WLBS, sound knowledge of the concept per se is still grey.

The municipality in the South African public sector investigated in this paper, adopted the wellness programmes as WLBS to assist employees in addressing their work and family related challenges.

However, the result of a survey conducted in 2007-2008 found that the idea of providing wellness programmes though gaining ground has not resulted in significant changes in the facilities and structures of organisations (Després et al., 2014). Similarly, Shamian and El- Jardali (2007) examination of the implementation of wellness programmes in the healthcare sector showed that significant improvement to the work environment due to legislation and governmental policy which combined empirical information and inculcated information from literature was noted. Edries, Jelsma, and Maart (2013) found wellness beneficial in enhancing health related behaviours and employee perception of quality of life. Brown, Gilson, Burton, and Brown (2011) and Ho (1997) report that employees who participated in the wellness events showed greater levels of satisfaction with their jobs than those that did not participate. In line with prior studies, Zheng, Molineux, Mirshekary, and Scarparo (2015) found that a relationship exists between health, wellness and WLB (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006; Kossek, Colquitt, &

Noe, 2001; Meyer & Maltin, 2010). Després et al. (2014) suggest the need for a new breed of

studies on the assessment and development in practices regarding employee health and wellness.

Therefore, this study is significant in assessing the work-life practices (wellness programmes) at the municipality to appraise its efficacy in assisting employees address their work and family challenges. As observed from the framework operationalising wellness programmes in the public sector and confirmed by Sieberhagen et al. (2011), the definition of wellness as well as WLB is inconsistent with the literature. This researcher assumed that the definition problem may affect the effectiveness of the wellness programmes in assisting individual employees cope with work and family stressors and achieve WLB, since it may have been formulated along a different direction. To ascertain the actual situation, there was therefore a need to assess individual benefits in order to ascertain the efficacy of the strategies (wellness programme) adopted by the organisation (municipality). According to Casper and Buffardi (2004) and Arthur (2003) in Casper and Harris (2008), the examination of the various strategies may have distinctive results on workplace outcomes and possibly relate in predicting outcomes. The expected outcome in the paper is the reduction of work and family stress and the achievement of WLB by employees.

To Casper and Harris (2008), workplaces give WLBS for the purpose of facilitating optimistic outcomes (Osterman, 1995), therefore, gaining insight into the efficacy of these interventions in the achievement of the goals for which they are adopted has become imperative. Grover and Crooker (1995) suggest that there is a need to analyse specific WLBS since various merits may accrue to organisations based on the attributes of each strategy adopted, and could assist in the prediction of outcomes (Arthur, 2003; Casper & Buffardi, 2004). Cascio (2000) in Alma McCarthy et al. (2010), suggest that WLBS are assistances or working arrangements that are promoted and backed up by an organisation that aids employees in finding balance between work and domestic needs. They report that inclusive in these initiatives are transient measures that permit workers to cut down on the number of working hours (such as part-time work, flexi- time, job sharing, tele-working, and home-working) as well as employee assistance programmes (EAPs), stress and time management coaching, provision of crèche at the work environment or financial subsidies in lieu of the facilities for child care. Fundamentally, WLBS are provided by organisations in order to support and assist employees in handling their work and family needs (Grady, McCarthy, Darcy & Kirrane 2008; McCarthy, 2004).

Examining the wellness programme adopted by the municipality alongside WLBS noted in the literature, reveals that the municipality has in place strategies that should assist employees in managing their work-life challenges. Nevertheless, the need to evaluate the efficacy of these strategies in achieving the organisational objective as well as addressing individual employee work-life needs is necessary. According to Kossek, Baltes, and Matthews (2011), scholars of work-life are yet to considerably impact the lives of workers when compared to the quantum of studies on the subject. They suggest that reduction in work stress, improved balance between work and family life and effectiveness in the implementation of effective and holistic WLBS should be the desired outcome capable of proving impactful research on the lives of employees.

This is in line with the report from the study conducted by Valcour and Batt (2003), which found that the challenges of work and life domains could not be solely tackled through initiatives that are crafted to give flexibility and restrict general work demands.

The question as to the effectiveness of the wellness programmes in improving the SOC and assisting professional level employees achieve WLB comes to mind. The present study opines that there is a gap between WLBS and the need of the employees. For instance, there is no strategy among the wellness programme that addresses the SOC of employees. For example, an employee with weak or low SOC who is faced with job ambiguity may not be helped by counselling, and or stress/time management training. If a professional level employee heading for instance, Mayoral Administration is asked to prepare to host four thousand guests of the mayor two days before the event, one would naturally expect this employee to face enormous stress. Assuming that he/she has weak SOC, he/she may be unable to cope with this stress.

Therefore, to assist him/her in coping with these stressors and enhancing his/her SOC, WLBS should be developed to integrate ingredients that enhance SOC. Likewise, it could be assumed that stress emanating from the job structure may not be handled through attending a stress management course, especially if the stress is an outcome of the way in which the organisation is structured.

Although the framework (EHWSFPS) indicated that individual psycho-social wellness (economical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional and social wellness) was embedded in the wellness programmes, this study examined the impact of these on an individual’s SOC. The employees examined in the present study are professional level employees who may not have the need to utilise the wellness programme for reasons that may range from the fact that junior employees mainly use them and may not want to be seen by their subordinates at the service

provider’s offices or the fact that they are not designed to assist employees at the professional status. Literature reveals that the challenges faced by professional level employees are mainly work-structured problems although they may be facing similar familial problems as their subordinates. But the questions here are, “Is the wellness programme designed to assist professional level employees address stressors emanating from the work and family domains?”

Does the wellness programme have the resources that develop, enhance or strengthen SOC embedded in it?

Even where the WLBS is designed to integrate necessary SOC ingredients and address work- family needs of employees, there is a need to bridge the gap between policy and its implementation. Scholars have reported the existence of an implementation gap (Kossek &

Lambert, 2005; Kossek, 2005, 2006). For instance, the WLBS (wellness programmes) adopted by the municipality under study is outsourced to an external service provider. There are many reasons for outsourcing the service, ranging from confidentiality to need for expertise. But literature reveals that WLBS are better managed at unit levels (Parris et al., 2008; Ryan &

Kossek, 2008; Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007; McConville & Holden, 1999). Yet, Kossek et al.

(2011) are of the opinion that unit heads are not sure of the way to effectively execute and administer emerging WLBS. Moreover, they report that there are circumstantial evidences showing that employers have faced significant challenges in implementing encompassing strategies as well as enhancing performance, however, there are limited studies clearly addressing these difficulties (Ryan & Kossek, 2008; Kelly et al., 2008).

The municipality under study outsourced the implementation of its wellness programme. The researcher assumes that this could be as a result of the challenges in implementation as revealed in the literature. However, this researcher is of the opinion that outsourcing WLBS will keep the service ‘invisible’. ‘Invisible’ here implies that it will not be in the view of employees and as such, most employees needing the service may not even be aware of its existence in the organisation. Even though scholars in work-family study have shown that workers who have successfully used WLBS benefited mentally, for instance by experiencing better satisfaction with their jobs (Kossek, Pichler, Bodner, & Hammer, 2011), but there seems to be absence of the studies linking the use of the WLBS to enhancement of SOC and the management of stress towards the achievement of WLB.

Contemporary literature reveals that benefits of providing support to employees through WLBS by employers accrue to employers. Such benefits include recruitment and selection of

talented employees, improved attitudes among employees, and cost reduction ( Kossek &

Michel, 2010). Kossek et al. (2011) report that satisfaction with work and loyalty among employees, and improvement of the quality of employees, are associated with the provision and implementation of WLBS. They went on to confirm that organisations that provide WLBS are often seen as desirable employers and harvest the reward of having a large pool of applicants (Kelly et al., 2008). Decrease in costs accrue from the reduction in employee behavioural issues like unauthorised absence from work high rate of employee turnover, and reduced costs of labour arising from employee trade-off of salaries and flexibility (Kossek &

Hammer, 2008; Kossek & Michel, 2010; Kossek, 2006). Despite the foregoing benefits attributed to the provision of WLBS, as noted in this chapter, a notable drop in the support of WLBS by organisations has been reported (Shellenbarger, 2008).

Kossek et al. (2011) report that a study conducted by the American Psychological Association indicates that a significant reduction from 42% in 2009 to 36% in 2011 has been recorded in the rate of satisfaction by employees about employers’ assistance with respect to work-family demands (Clay, 2011). Kossek et al. (2011) further confirm that an increasing number of employers are also not satisfied with WLBS and that a contemporary survey in 2010 by Society for Human Resource Management shows that several organisations are doing away with various WLBS. Shellenbarger (2008) supports this claim in the report that there was a notable reduction over the past ten years from 27% to 16% of full-time salary and time allowed for maternity leave. It is important to note this contradictory reduction in satisfaction with WLBS since the study in work-family has burgeoned in recent times. Consequently, it is imperative to look into the reasons for this paradoxical trend and see if it could be linked to the fact that they (WLBS) have not been able to help employees address their work-family needs or if they need to be tailored to integrate resources that improve employees’ SOC.

The wellness programme seems to have been designed to address employee personal health and family related demands. WLB was mentioned in the framework but nothing therein seemed to be targeted at addressing the WLB needs of the employees. The programmes’ strategic vision seemed to have in focus the outcome of making employees more healthy and productive rather than addressing their WLB challenges. The wellness programme appeared tobe a one-size-fits- all strategy since it is tailored in a manner that does not look at challenges holistically; it seems to be tailored along equality and simplicity in management rather than rendering personalised support to persons like elderly employees and single parents. To expatiate on this, taking a look at an employee’s need to support his/her child by attending the soccer match where the

son/daughter is captaining for the first time is not provided for by the wellness programme.

Also stress management training may not be able to address the stresses faced by a manager as a result of the employment of a new head of unit in a department that has employees who are equally experienced and have put considerable years of service into the organisation.

Furthermore, sending an employee to counselling will not assist an employee facing stigmatisation for alcohol abuse when s/he returns to work without commensurate support from management and colleagues. Implementing the wellness programme may not be able to address pertinent needs of employees needing time off to address matters other than personal needs.

The South African public sector employs a diverse population with diverse work and family challenges. Therefore, as a result of the diversity of the working population, the municipality may face difficulties in ascertaining the WLBS that suit the workforce and the way to guarantee equality and organise various programmes and assistance (Kossek et al., 2011).

The proponents of the EHWSFPS seemed to have evaluated the wellness programme as being more able to address employee health and wellness issues better than WLBS, but they may not have realised that a wellness programme is only an aspect of WLBS. Due to the confusion in the description of WLB, employee assistance programmes and the wellness programmes in the framework, this study assumes that employees may not be able to address their work and family stressors holistically by using the wellness programmes. Secondly, it may not impact positively on employee sense of coherence. Thirdly, this study assumes that employees may not be able to use the wellness programmes to achieve WLB.

Dalam dokumen The connection between work-life balance (WLB) and a sense of coherence (SOC) at a municipality in the South African public sector. (Halaman 40-47)