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The purpose of this paper is to examine and report how the construct of “Well-being” is being recognised within the public services. Using research conducted in a northern provincial police force in the UK the paper explores the issues that may contribute to sickness absence, presenteeism and leaveism; a recently described manifestation of workload overload. As sweeping public sector reform results in reduced workforce and potentially static demand, the question asked here is, “how do organisations adapt to the shifting landscape and retain employee engagement in the workplace?”

The study used A Short Stress Evaluation Tool to assess the risk of stress in the workforce. The questionnaire employed an online self-administered survey and collected data from 155 respondents on stress perceptions, health, attitude towards the organisation, job satisfaction and commitment to the organisation.

Sickness absence figures receive detailed attention when it comes to managing employees, but they may not represent a reliable picture. In this study one-third of respondents indicated that they had taken leave when they had actually been ill or injured; leaveism. The concept of leaveism does not currently appear within sickness absence reporting mechanisms, and the authors would suggest that the omission of this concept leaves a lacuna in current thinking that may have significant impact on both individual and organisational performance.

This research clearly shows that the issue of leaveism is a valid concept and has potentially far-reaching consequences. This study has only touched on the first (of three) of the leaveism behaviours and is conducted solely in a policing environment (although non-warranted employees are included in the research cohort). Further research could include attempts to quantify elements two and three of leaveism, and explore to what extent these may impact on organisations undergoing public sector reform.

Previous studies have highlighted the negative health effects on “stayers” in public sector downsizing exercises. This in turn raises the question of just how these “survivors” cope with the new regime; with potentially more work and less pay. The authors ask what behaviour cuts of this magnitude will eventually drive when the dust settles? As a consequence could the authors see an end to the practice of leaveism? In which case the authors could make the assumption that (in its first form) it may convert to sickness absenteeism? With a third of people surveyed conceding to the practice, this has far-reaching consequences. In comparison to presenteeism, which has no overt costs, this scenario presents an entirely different fiscal proposition.

Leaveism, a recently described and under researched phenomenon, is a hidden source of potential abstractions from the workplace, and could impact enormously on organisational effectiveness. The motivation for the practice is unclear, and could be a manifestation of loyalty, enjoyment or duty. It could also be construed as a reaction to fear of job loss, redundancy or down grade. Whatever the underlying reason this study clearly illustrates the potentially harmful consequences to (public sector) organisations.

A retrospective action-research case study of one branch of the University and College Union (UCU) is used to show how threshold requirements of the Act can be systematically beaten.

The paper responds to calls for “best practice” on how trade unions may react to member voting threshold requirements of the Trade Union Act 2016 (the Act). A broader aim is to make a theoretical contribution related to trade union organising and tactics in “get the vote out” (GTVO) industrial action organising campaigns.

Findings are presented as a lead organiser's first-hand account of a successful GTVO campaign contextualised in relation to theories of organising. The findings offer “best practice” for union organisers required to beat the Act's voting thresholds and also contribute to theories surrounding trade union organising tactics.

Further development and adaptation of the proposed model may be required when applied to larger bargaining units and different organising contexts.

The findings can inform the organising practices/tactics of trade unions in relation to statutory ballots. The findings also allow Human Resource (HR) practitioners to reflect on their approach to dealing with unions capable of mounting successful GTVO campaigns.

The findings have the potential to collectively empower workers, via their trade unions, to defend and further their interests in a post-financial crisis context and in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is the first known empirical account of organising to exceed voting thresholds of the Act, providing practical steps for union organisers in planning for statutory ballots. Further value lies in the paper's use of a novel first-hand account of a GTVO campaign, offering a new and first, theoretical model of organising tactics to beat the Act.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss why mental health education in the workplace is vital. The paper aims to give HR managers and directors an understanding of mental health education and advice on how to imbed a culture of mental health well-being into the workplace.

The feature identifies the issues faced in the UK’s workplace with mental health issues, such as stress, anxiety and depression. The research identifies much desktop research, as well as authors 20+ plus years’ experience of work, in the field as a qualified psychotherapist. The paper also addresses latest research that suggests employees are happier to turn to technology rather than human contact to address their mental health concerns. The feature was drafted during the Covid-19 pandemic when mental health issues were recorded at an all-time high.

Mental Health has become a major issue within the workplace, and much work has taken place to rid stigma of mental health issues. It is essential that industry embed mental health education into their organisations to create healthy futures for all. Employees want their organisations to offer support, preferably in an online, always available, service.

Although there’s much discussion and awareness of mental health issues, mental health education is rarely understood.

The purpose of this paper is to position well-being as a necessary component of the productivity debate and highlights the need for a deeper understanding of the nature of such a link. It first considers productivity at the national level in order to show how this affects both the climate and the economic policies within which organisations operate.

The paper presents an overview of current research and practice in the area. It treats the organisation as the primary level of analysis, and before highlights some of the apparent challenges in conceptualising well-being.

The importance of well-being is rising up national and employer agendas. Organisations need people to perform at their best in a sustainable way. The paper argues that an organisation with well-being at its core will reap productivity gains. It supports the view in the literature that improvements at national level can only be made on the back of sophisticated strategies across numerous organisations. However, for this to happen shared actions and understanding of these challenges has first to be created and acted upon across institutions and organisations. There are notable costs of poor well-being to productivity, and identifiable benefits of promoting and supporting employee well-being for productivity.

There is a clear practice implementation gap. Some organisations are embracing the opportunities to invest in their staff, but those who make employee well-being a business priority and a fundamental part of how the organisation operates are in the minority. There is also an ongoing challenge of measuring the impact of well-being programmes which can inform ROI assessments and enable organisations to demonstrate the business benefits of employee well-being.

There remain many unanswered questions about both the nature of the link between well-being and productivity and the economic impact of an association. This paper sparks further interest in expanding the understanding of the well-being and productivity link or peripheral issues.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen conceptual understanding of how employee wellbeing is identified and categorised in the workplace, and how management information is used to target workplace interventions.

This is a conceptual paper reviewing and discussing contemporary literature and practice, with a focus on themes congruent with employee needs and organisational intervention options in relation to wellbeing. This paper considers wellbeing in the context of police work in the UK, and how a framework can help those charged with leading to understand and act in the interest of both the employee and the organisation.

This paper suggests that the use of an appropriate strategic HR model, such as the General Analysis, Interventions and Needs (GAIN) pyramid (Hesketh and Rhodes, 2015), can assist organisations to develop practical categories and metrics to illustrate employee status in relation to wellbeing.

The arguments posed provide opportunities for practitioners to use workforce-modelling tools that assist in identifying, categorising and targeting wellbeing interventions in the workplace.

This paper highlights that identifying, categorising and prioritising wellbeing interventions in the workplace has hitherto received little academic attention. This paper contributes by providing a greater practical insight into what may work, which is important for leaders in all organisations, particularly those trying to maintain operational performance whilst undergoing programmes of change.

This study aims to explore how changing technology can be harnessed by HR teams to improve the efficiency of the workplace and elevate the employee experience. It analyses whether technology contributes to more issues than it solves, and whether HR teams should consider adopting measures grounded in technology.

This study stemmed from the recent publishing of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development employee well-being report and months of research into the key issues that HR teams face within the industry, offering a perspective on why they should consider technology as the solution to these.

By adapting HR strategy, technology can be used to better employee health and well-being, as well as business turnover. The future of HR doesn’t lie in rejecting these new systems and ways of working, but rather by accepting them and implementing the necessary boundaries to preserve and even improve employee health.

The value of this study is to provide HR teams with a comprehensive take on the role that technology currently plays, and will continue to play, as a solution to the issues that plague the industry.

Currently, sustainable HRM is largely an employer-driven exercise based on raising employee productivity. The purpose of the article is to expand this position by fully mapping out sustainable HRM and placing employees at the centre of such practices. A further purpose is to provide a research agenda suited to a wider take on sustainable HRM.

The article centres on an analytical review of extant sustainable HRM literature, plus an analytical review of wider literature considering further ways to sustain employment.

Employee-centred sustainable HRM goes far beyond what is accounted for in the extant HRM literature. The new map accounts for wider parties to sustainable HRM, including trade unions and self-organised employees. An extensive research agenda is a further key output from the study.

The article is based on a literature review. Follow-up empirical research is required to test out aspects of the new map, as well as address research gaps identified by the review.

The findings have practical implications for HRM and occupational health practitioners, line managers, built environment and ergonomics specialists, governments, trade unions and workplace activists. A key practical implication is the potential to create micro-forms of corporatism, where wider political structures are absent, to foster employee-centred forms of sustainable HRM.

The article is novel in terms of drawing on a wide range of incongruous literature and synthesising the literature into a new map and an extensive research agenda.

The paper celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Flamholtz’s seminal paper on the Human Resource Accounting approach to taking people into account, providing a critical review of its progress since that time and offering some thoughts on how the project might now be beneficially shaped.

The paper provides an authoritative review of the progress of the accounting for people project to date.

The continuing exploration of how it might be possible to take people into account is identified to be entering a new and exciting phase.

The authors readily acknowledge that what the paper provides is an account of the evolution of the accounting for people field, which they argue is currently extending into a new and important phase relating to employee health and wellbeing.

The paper’s principal contribution lies in bringing together three authors who have made significant contributions to the topic of accounting for people over the past 50 years.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the different contextual and psychological determinants of organisational resilience (OR) in the context of global mobility in multinational enterprises (MNEs). Banking upon the conservation of resources theory, this paper studies how and when reattachment to work (RTW), work engagement (WE) and two types of presenteeism lead to OR. Further, in the backdrop of the post-pandemic world of work, this paper also conceptualises the conditional effects of trait resilience (TR), organisational support (OS) and expatriation type (ET) on the aforementioned linkages.

This paper develops a conceptual framework that depicts various antecedents of OR in MNEs. Several testable propositions are also offered alongside the model’s moderated mediation and moderated moderation relationships.

The conceptual framework depicts the causal relationships between RTW and OR, such that Flexible RTW increases OR through higher WE and functional presenteeism under the conditional influences of TR, OS and ET, whereas rigid RTW decreases OR through lower WE and dysfunctional presenteeism under the conditional effects of TR, OS and ET.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of its kind that explores the psychological and contextual antecedents of the OR of MNEs and offers numerous testable propositions. The nexus of unique relationships presented in the conceptual framework bridges a crucial gap in the literature that explores the complexities of the post-pandemic workplace in the context of global mobility.