Development and validation of employee wellbeing scale – a formative measurement model

• Date: 26 September 2019
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-12-2018-0161
• Published date: 26 September 2019
• Pages: 352-368
• Author: Puja Khatri,Pragya Gupta
• Subject Matter: Health & social care,Healthcare management,Hr & organizational behaviour,Human resource policy,Employee welfare

Development and validation of

employee wellbeing scale –a

formative measurement model

Puja Khatri

USMS, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India, and

Pragya Gupta

Jaipuria Institute of Management, Noida, India

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize a suitable measure for the employee

wellbeing construct and validate this tool in Indian workplace settings, especially with reference to IT/ITes

and BFSI sectors.

Design/methodology/approach –This study is descriptive and cross-sectional in nature. The literature

was first reviewed to identify the underlying probable dimensions of employee wellbeing and its

corresponding items. These items were then subjected to elaborate discussions with experts from industry as

well as academia. The index, thus, developed was administered to collect primary data from employees

working in IT/ITeS and BFSI sectors based in Delhi-NCR. PLS SEM 3 was applied as employee wellbeing was

construed as a first-order reflective second-order formative construct. Thereafter, it was subjected to suitable

assessments of reliability and convergent validity.

Findings –The findings reveal that employee wellbeing can be conceptualized as a construct having four

dimensions namely, purpose in life (PIL), work–life balance (WLB), job wellness ( JW) and physical wellness

(PW). It was also revealed that all the dimensions identified in the study capture different facets of the

employee wellbeing and collectively define the construct; omission of any items may lead to change in the

nature of the construct. This investigation is unique as it frames the index of employee wellbeing with

specifications of a formative measurement model. To the best of the authors’knowledge, no published study

so far has measured EWB as a formative construct.

Originality/value –Many earlier studies have incorporated a unidimensional approach to individual

wellbeing and lacked a crucial outlook of having multi-dimensional understanding of the employee wellbeing

construct in the social and work context. Furthermore, this paper contributes not only to the existing body of

knowledge in employee wellbeing, but also brings forth an important aspect of measurement model

specification, i.e. formative measurement model by bringing the specific reasons for taking employee

wellbeing as a formative concept.

Keywords Confirmatory factor analysis, Formative construct, Employee wellbeing, PLS SEM 3,

Wellbeing index

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

The recognition of the fact that employees of an organization are valuable assets is not

new but dates back to 1960s (Ortiz, 2006). Much later, Roslender et al. (2006) viewed

employee wellbeing as a valuable organizational asset, which can be construed as primary

intellectual capital. Organizations have realized the need to prioritize employee wellbeing

for high productivity and simultaneously strive to work on the quality of life of every

employee (Tandon, 2019). Employee wellbeing has been widely recognized as a feature of

healthy organizations (Wilson et al., 2004) having far-reaching outcomes in organizations

(Ilies et al., 2015) such as employee productivity. Ilies et al. (2015) noted that in the recent

years the academic interest in employee wellbeing has risen considerably and is now

recognized as an important topic in positive-based management research (Wright and

Huang, 2012). On a similar note, Zheng, Zhu, Zhao and Zhang (2015) asserted that

employee wellbeing is critical to the survival and development of organizations all over

the world.

International Journal of Workplace

Health Management

Vol. 12 No. 5, 2019

pp. 352-368

© Emerald PublishingLimited

1753-8351

DOI 10.1108/IJWHM-12-2018-0161

Received 22 December 2018

Revised 16 April 2019

27 May 2019

Accepted 6 July 2019

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1753-8351.htm

352

IJWHM

12,5

Radical changes in the labor market have led to loss of job-security, great stress and

general precedence of employer’s needs over employees’needs, health and wellbeing.All such

factors do affectthe employee wellbeing and organizations need to recognizeand take suitable

steps to address it. Pronk (2014) contended that a healthy, resilient workforce may be

considered a corporate asset in striving toward healthy bottom line. Guest (2017) identified

significant changes in the individuals’work profile owing to multitude of factors, including

positive factors such as rapid changes in technology, opportunities to work from home, easy

access to information, as well as negative factors like demand on time and resources and

work-home interference, increased stress, more work overload, job insecurity, etc.

Nevertheless, growth of flexible work arrangements offered by employers leads to

positive development in the work environment, which in turn leads to employee health and

wellbeing (Zheng, Molineux, Mirshekary and Scarparo, 2015). This further enables

employees to actively shape their flexibility in their working conditions, which helps them

solve the daily demands of integrating personal life and work demands (Kossek et al., 2014).

Kalliath and Brough (2008) identified the need for designing of workplace in such a way that

it promotes personal and family wellbeing coupled with high-performing caring culture,

thereby ensuring their employability for a lifelong career. The organizations have realized

that employee wellbeing. Such workplaces must incorporate employee wellbeing as a

culture and not a program, considering how physiological wellbeing on and off the job can

lead to healthy minds and healthy families (Wu et al., 2017).

Thetopicsofhealthandwellbeinghaveincreasingly become very important owing to

its significance for the employees and both the academic researchers and practitioners

equally acknowledge the fact. Wellbeing is identified as a complex, multi-dimensional

construct with significant cultural and contextual factors affecting it (Sandilya and

Shahnawaz, 2018). The purpose of this paper is to identify the key components of

employee wellbeing from the existing literature, conceptualize, and validate a robust tool

to measure the construct in the Indian context. The notion of wellbeing at work has

primarily focused on individual attributes rather than work environment, or other

external influences affecting employee wellbeing (Ravenswood, 2011). The earlier

researchers have identified factors like positive work relationships (Roche et al., 2014),

meaning in life and social relationships (Diener et al., 2010) as the focus of individual

wellbeing and mental health.

The employee wellbeing literature has been mostly focused on individual traits and

abilities rather than the other socio-political and organizational context of wellbeing (Guest,

2017). The dynamic nature of the wellbeing construct, which is in constant flux due to

various societal and global adaptations, has made its definition and measurement an

extremely difficult task. In the current research, we propose a framework, which draws

upon the quality of work–life literature in the context of employment relations and includes

consideration for personal aspects like meaning and PIL as well as organizational support in

the form of flexibility and control over work and other job-related factors. Most of the earlier

research studies have incorporated only a unidimensional approach such as subjective

wellbeing of individuals and lacked a crucial approach of having a multi-dimensional

understanding of the construct. This study intends to fill this gap by focusing on not only

individual wellbeing but also on the social context and work-related wellbeing to have a

holistic understanding of the construct.

In line with the theoretical analysis, wellbeing can be presumed to be an umbrella term

encompassing different constructs (Xanthopoulou et al., 2012). Ringle et al. (2018)

emphasized the need for detailing the type of measurement models used in HRM research

studies by accentuating the use of formative measurement for those constructs having

varied aspects depicting a range of different concepts unrelated to each other. Therefore,

this paper contributes not only to the existing body of knowledge in employee wellbeing,

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Employee

wellbeing scale