Last month, Accor, a world-leading hospitality group, revealed its white paper titled, “The Road Map Towards a Transformational Well-Being Culture,” highlighting eight key pathways for navigating business, society, and leadership toward a future where well-being and fulfilment are essential priorities. At the core of them all, the white paper emphasises that well-being must be recognised to maintain the equilibrium of our lives, society, and planet. Whether you’re an employer, community member, or climate activist, these pathways are sure to resonate with you. Let’s take a closer look.
1. #MindBody: Well-being is body and mind
We are still learning about the linkages between our physiological and psychological states, and disciplines such as neuroscience are revealing how powerfully each can influence the other. The ancient Greeks recognised the connection and believed that the mind and body should be in harmony. The World Health Organisation’s first director general, Brock Chisholm, wrote more than 70 years ago that “without mental health, there can be no true physical health.” Today, we also know that physical fitness and exercise can have a powerful impact on our mental well-being. What all of us must do is forget siloed thinking: everything is connected when it comes to health and well-being. It’s your responsibility to make the choices and take the right steps in preventing illness, maintaining fitness, eating healthily, developing resilience, and cultivating contentment that will nourish your well-being rather than undermine it.
2. #MeasuringWell-being: Measurement can optimize well-being
If you can’t measure well-being, you can’t manage it: measurement is key to creating strategies for improvement. Management thought leader Peter Drucker and scientist Lord Kelvin have been variously credited with the idea that in order to improve something, it must first be measured. That means starting with a baseline and then collecting data to know whether you are moving in the right direction. Measuring well-being has always been considered challenging, partly because it is a multi-dimensional state and people can’t always agree on what the dimensions should be. But if you want better outcomes, it’s something that needs to be invested in. Measurement can also play an important role in joined-up thinking: it should be no surprise that health outcomes are worse in locations with poor nutrition and poverty. To improve personal well-being or that of employees/communities, maybe it’s time to go beyond just “good vibes” and start collecting data to then act on it.
3. #FinancialHealth: Our well-being starts with our finances
We can’t live well if we can’t afford to live. Economic and financial sufficiency is a prerequisite for physical and mental health and a precursor to more enhanced forms of fulfilment. More equal distribution of wealth would be the biggest step society could take to promote greater financial well-being. According to Accor, until that time, the focus needs to be on helping people manage their money better, adopt affordable well-being solutions and find ways to manage the stress that comes from financial problems.
4. #EquitableAccess: Access to well-being needs to be fully democratic
Societies that are more equal enjoy better health and a stronger sense of well-being. Democratic access to well-being is not a given. It depends upon acceptance that everyone has a right to aspire to good physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. It is contingent upon people being treated equally, regardless of their status. And it requires policies – whether from government or business – that seek to encourage well-being and give everyone an equal chance to realise it.
5. #InterconnectedThinking: Joined-up thinking is required
There are many strands to well-being, and they are all interconnected. Organizations need to be agile, adaptable and understand how they are connected to the wider ecosystem. Oli Patrick, physiologist and Co-Founder of FuturePractice puts it well: “You’ve got to transpose wellbeing into economic benefit, first and foremost. I think anyone at the top of an organisation will feel a duty of care for their people, but they’ll also be held accountable to the numbers that are recorded.” That means identifying, and where possible, measuring the benefits that investment brings, and aligning it with the overall business strategy. Leadership needs to make well-being part of the company culture and to communicate that for the full benefit to be realized.
6. #DigitalOpportunities: Technology must become a positive force
Technology should provide inspiration for well-being, not a threat. Tech has become an enormous source of stress and ill health in our lives. Yet digital innovation can unlock unparalleled opportunities to improve physical, mental, and emotional health in the future; the challenge is to make the impact of technology overwhelmingly positive. The increasing power of AI makes this challenge more urgent. If we don’t take the driving seat now, AI and machine learning have the potential to wrest our agency away further and make myriad decisions on our behalf. Digital technology is one of mankind’s greatest inventions – and could provide the solution to many of our greatest challenges. The time for making tech unambiguously a positive force for well-being is long overdue.
7. #SustainableLiving: Our own well-being is entwined with our planet
We can’t be healthy if our planet isn’t. Mitigating climate change, conserving our limited resources, and protecting biodiversity are all ways to ensure our planet is sustainable. Without achieving that, well-being is an illusion. Physiologist Oli Patrick says: “We know if people have a less toxic environment, be that (less) polluted air, (less) polluted water, cleaner food, it has an impact on health.” In facing each of these environmental challenges, governments and international bodies have a major role to play. But it is also down to each of us individually to take action to mitigate the effects of environmental challenges on our physical and mental health, by doing what we can to live in a more sustainable way. We each have a part to play and, in protecting our environment we are, in effect, looking after ourselves.
8. #GlobalRelevance: Well-being transcends cultural differences
Well-being is not culture-specific; it is universal. The underlying conditions necessary to lead a happy, healthy and fulfilled lives are the same throughout the world and permeate every major sphere of human activity. For governments and public authorities, well-being provides a lens through which to understand and change human behaviour. The LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science explains (29): “Well-being plays a major role in our experience of the world and our interactions with it. It underpins many if not all of our behaviours. Experiencing higher well-being after a change in behaviour, for example, makes it more likely that people change their behaviour for good.”
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