Our international coffee chain client wanted to create a ‘people positive’ vision focused on employee well-being. But instead of simply guessing what might achieve greater happiness or satisfaction, they approached us. Our job was to research the landscape to help our client create a more informed vision.

In particular, they wanted to understand the landscape of initiatives and learn what other organizations were doing well to achieve physical, intellectual, emotional, and economic well-being for their employees.

How We Did It

This project focused on education, training, and career pathways. We ran the whole gamut of primary and secondary research, from literature reviews and landscape analysis to interviews with academics, companies, and training organizations.

We posed questions like “what are their  competitors doing regarding education, training, and career pathways?”, “how do competitors define well-being?”, and “what are the different methods and models of education, training, or career support?”

After synthesizing the various strands of research, a number of trends emerged. We found that delivery strategies need to be comprehensive and holistic — workers need support to unlock the ability to learn. The structure and quality of a program matter. A worker’s personal well-being and overall organizational well-being are inextricably linked. And finally, the research told us that today’s workers will hold more than 10 jobs and are likely to change careers in their lifetime. That’s why the future of work requires transferable skills — something a job or employer can help an employee with.

Each of these findings represents an opportunity area for our client and for other organizations like it. In the meantime, our client is prioritizing this People Positive work by creating an entire business unit dedicated to it.