Workplace health and wellbeing programs have been chronically under-utilised for decades, with the reasons for low participation including employee change readiness, perceived locus of responsibility and organisational trust (Spence, 2015). Whilst many of these issues were unresolved prior to the pandemic, the realities of post-COVID organisational life offer real possibilities to enhance the design of wellbeing programs and their implementation. With an unprecedented number of employees working remotely, physical workplaces are no longer the convenient channel for health promotion they once were. As such, organisations with a genuine interest in employee health and wellbeing need to rethink their approach.
According to Spence (2022), when wellbeing advocacy is driven by health promotion principles - as it often is in organisations - inherent limitations exist. Most obviously, such approaches are innately prescriptive, with organisations engaging in a packaging up of various directives from health experts. From a self-determination theory perspective, unless employees are provided with the support to internalise and integrate such directives, opportunities are lost to assist people become more autonomously regulated in respect of their health (Ryan & Deci, 2017).
This presentation will argue for a more autonomy supportive approach to workplace health and wellbeing. Using the example of physical activity, it will present the rationale for a more person-centred approach – the Health Activation Process (HAP; Spence, 2022) – and outline its foundations in reminiscence therapy (Hawkins et al, 2020), pragmatic prospection Baumeister et al, 2016), motivational interviewing (Rollnick et al, 2010), and systems theory. It will argue that each component contributes to the establishment of a more sustainable form of self-motivation, with enjoyment elevated as a central determinant of health change decision-making.
The presentation will also outline practical steps for facilitating such change, along with a progress report on empirical testing of key hypotheses emanating from the HAP, using both community and workplace samples.