Conceptualizing Organizational Wellness at a Multi-State Social Service Agency: Do Perspectives of Direct-Service Employees and Administrators Differ?

Background: Increasingly, organizations recognize the importance of developing and implementing organizational wellness initiatives. This recognition is reinforced in the enactment of high-profile federal legislation, specifically the Affordable Care Act of 2010. This act encouraged administrators to implement and evaluate organizational wellness initiatives. In addition to these policy considerations, burgeoning evidence documents that wellness initiatives have significant impact in myriad employee and organizational aspects. 

Despite the increased attention, and documented benefits, social service agencies have been slow to engage in organizational wellness efforts. Very few, if any, published works document the conceptualization or evaluation of wellness initiatives in a social service context. Furthermore, little research examines the perspectives of social service employees and administrators towards wellness programs.

The purpose of this study was to explicate a framework for developing an organizational wellness initiative at a multi-state social service agency. This study sought to answer two distinct, yet interconnected, search queries:

1. How do direct-service employees conceptualize organizational wellness?  
2. Is there a difference in the way that administrators prioritize areas of the conceptualization, when compared to direct-service employees (DSEs)?  

Methods: Researchers employed Concept Mapping (CM) methodology. CM is a participatory, mixed-method approach that analyzes qualitative statements by coupling multidimensional scaling (MDS) and hierarchical cluster analyses (HCA) to produce visual depictions of data. This study utilized a sample of agency employees (N = 90) who were recruited via a purposive sampling procedure. Participants partook in brainstorming, sorting, and rating exercises. As a result, participants came up with 72 unique ideas (i.e., statements) related to organizational wellness. To assess priority areas, all participants rated each statement on one variable: importance.

Using a proprietary software, individual similarity matrices were computed for each participant. Then, these matrices were aggregated into a matrix representing all participant sort data. The aggregate matrix was analyzed using non-metric MDS. The MDS analysis was used as input for the HCA applying Ward's algorithm. The results of the HCA were superimposed on the MDS results creating a final cluster map.

Results: Analysis of the similarity matrix converged after 11 iterations, producing a stress value of 0.29. The final cluster map yielded eight distinct clusters conceptualizing organizational wellness: Access, Promotion, Employment Practices, Resources, Physical Wellness, Evaluation/Research, Social Wellness, and Benefits. Bridging values for these clusters ranged from 0.14 to 0.97, with the Benefits cluster showing the most cohesiveness and the Evaluation/Research being the least cohesive.

To examine priority differences between clusters, researchers initiated Welsh’s t-tests. This analysis detected significant differences in mean ratings for the Employment Practices and Employee Benefits clusters. In both instances, DSEs rated statements in these clusters significantly more important than did administrators.

Implications: CM proved to be an effective and adaptable methodology for conceptualizing organizational wellness initiatives in a variety of social service contexts. Key differences in priority ratings, particularly related to policies for implementing wellness initiatives, should be considered. Certainly, researchers should continue to examine wellness at social service agencies, with particular attention to implementing and evaluation. This study can serve as a framework for these endeavors.