Wellness expectations within a telecommunications organisation

Abstract

Wellness is becoming popular as the human factor is realised in terms of empowering employees to perform through wellness initiatives and in the long-term gaining financial success of an organisation. Wellness is bound to be of growing importance in the future, as it is a business prerequisite and has far greater significance for the organisation, employee's managers and society as a whole. The real challenge is implementation of wellness initiatives and to gain employee and management participation. The main objective of this research was to determine conceptualisation of wellness in the minds of employees, and to identify wellness expectations in a telecommunications organisation. This study was qualitative and explorative in nature with a total of 30 participants. Of the 30 participants, 15 were on a managerial level and 15 were in non-managerial positions. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. The data analysis was carried out by using the content analysis method to explore the meaning, events and states experienced by the participants. The results indicated that participants viewed general health, physical and mental health; work-life balance; perceived organisational support and work environment as the 6 themes that describe wellness, with general health being the core element. Therefore, dividing general health into 4 main areas specifically; physical health, mental health, work-life balance and work health (perceived organisational support and ergonomics). Ranking the main aspects of wellness identified by participants from the highest to the lowest, the most frequently mentioned aspects not getting sufficient attention in this organisation were: ergonomics and perceived organisational support. Recommendations were made for workplace interventions.