Wellness or Wellbeing? They are different

Recently I became curious, I felt that people were using wellness and wellbeing interchangeably and to be they were always different things?

Wellness, as I understand it, is an element of wellbeing. Wellness focuses more on physical and more recently mental health and it’s about living a life that consists of a number of ‘healthy’ habits that give you the ability and the energy to do the things that are important to you. Habits include healthy eating; physical activity, and good sleep.

Wellbeing is broader than this. It is a measure of satisfaction with life and is more holistic. The New York Economics foundation define it as “how people feel and how people function both on a personal and a social level and how they evaluate their lives as a whole”. Gallup’s global research identifies five elements of wellbeing: Career: you like what you do everyday; social; you have meaningful friendships; financial: you invest your money well; physical; you have the energy to get things done; community: you like where you live.

You can have wellness but not have wellbeing. For example, you can be exercising everyday, eating healthily, practicing mindfulness, spending time with friends and family but you dread going to work, you have difficult relationships with certain colleagues or stakeholders, the culture of your organisation is challenging, you have a heavy workload, little control and poor management.

Why does getting clear on these concepts matter?

I think it matters when they are used interchangeably and if interventions are sold as ‘wellbeing’ but are really targeted towards ‘wellness’. This is often the case in organisations when Employee “Wellbeing” programs are health focused i.e. gym membership; EAPs; fruit baskets and not addressing cultural challenges such as job design; relationships; behaviours. I think it also matters because wellbeing is quite individual and personal and when organisations or other institutions want to support and enable people with their wellbeing, it needs to be recognised that this is the case and the interventions or programmes designed need to empower people to grow in awareness of what it is that makes them ‘well’ which might be in contradiction to the goals of the organisation i.e. increased productivity, staff loyalty. The reality is that work although a large piece of the jigsaw puzzle, is only one part of the puzzle that makes up ‘life’ and therefore, things might need to change about the work or the job to help improve wellbeing for that particular individual and these changes might not drive the outcomes that organisation’s would necessarily desire firsthand and more a CSR imperative.

With more awareness of these concepts now and what sits behind them, I’m keen now as a next step to explore measurement and how wellness and wellbeing, in particular, can be measured.