Workplace Wellbeing

Workplace Wellbeing

Our mission

The global challenge of workplace well-being

The World Health Organization reports that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%. This means, over 1 in 5 people at any point in time will suffer from diagnosable levels of depression or anxiety, which costs the global economy $1 trillion per year. At work, nearly 50% of workers feel ‘nearly constantly burned out’, and almost 90% of workers feel their well-being is declining. Workplace-related stress is a significant precursor to organizational turnover, absenteeism, and to more severe mental and physical illnesses, weighing on the economic outlook of organisations. This needs to – and can be changed.

Investing in workplace wellbeing pays off. Workplace well-being creates job engagement and satisfaction, positive inclusive organizational culture, enabling increased performance at both the individual, team, and organizational levels. Thus, mental and physical well-being and resilience are a critical for a sustainable, prosperous, and inclusive future.

Insights
Sophie Bacq joins IMD faculty

A globally recognized thought leader in social entrepreneurship, Bacq’s work focuses on how entrepreneurship can serve as a force for good and civic w

AI-Enabled HR: taking talent management to the next level

Over the past decade, Mohammad Abu Al-Rob has established one of the Middle East’s leading human resource consulting firms. His next goal – using AI

IMD MBAs complete interactive learning exercise with students from Yale

IMD MBA students participate in the Global Virtual Teams course for the first time to give them hands-on experience of working effectively under a tig

Explore the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative
Programs and Outreach Events

We bring the insights and thought leadership to life through in-house education and training programs, as well as outreach events to extend the ripple effect to the wider community.

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Insights and Research

We stay at the forefront of cutting-edge research and practice on “what works” for creating human-centric workplaces through continued publication of articles, cases, reports, books, chapters, and academic articles in top international academic journals.

Read our insights
Team

To tackle complex societal challenges, IMD has a rich history of partnering and collaborating with executives, organisations, as well as Institutes at the forefront of scientific research.

Meet the team
We define workplace well-being as the overall mental, physical, and emotional health of employees. Lower levels of workplace well-being are strongly linked to stress, lower job-satisfaction, burnout, and turnover. Higher levels of workplace well-being are related to positive energy, satisfaction, engagement, and sustainable performance at work. Ultimately, workplace well-being supports levels of productivity and engagement that enable individuals to thrive over time, and to avoid detrimental, long-term effects on their mental and physical health

Workplace well-being has become an imperative on the agenda of leaders and organizations, who need better

answers to ‘what works?’, and practical tools to help them address declining employee well-being and support their employees to thrive.

Alyson Meister Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Why IMD

Driven by societal and business needs for relevant and actionable results, the mission of the IMD Initiative for Workplace Well-being is to connect evidence-based research with workplace application and practice, and deliver on our promise of creating Real Learning, Real Impact.

IMD is one of the few institutions in the world capable of initiating and driving leadership transformation on a scale big enough to create global impact. As a top-ranked, major business school that is uniquely focused on executive education, IMD is uniquely placed to equip the current and next generation of leaders with game-changing ideas and knowledge to shape a thriving, sustainable, prosperous, and inclusive workforce.