Wellbeing as a priority for organisations
The link between productivity and employee wellbeing is clear and the role that organisations play – and are expected to play – in supporting the wellbeing of its employees has increased in recent years. Yet historically wellbeing has been difficult to qualify, and employers may not always understand the tangible, measurable ways they can help.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the link between working conditions and emotional health, and ongoing financial difficulties caused by rising inflation and global conflict have created additional challenges for organisations and for many employees. Yet the need to ‘build back’ may have put more pressure on individuals and teams to perform professionally.

In the UK there are currently record levels of absence from work with the number of days lost due to illness being the highest since 2004 (ONS, 2023). The Health and Safety Executive reports that current work absence rates are higher than pre-Covid-19 levels with stress, depression and anxiety accounting for the largest proportion of these lost working days in 2021-2022. Work stress and low motivation can lead to burnout, depression and physical illness with positive work outcomes, such as job satisfaction and work engagement, linked to feeling included and supported, and with freedom from stigma or overwhelming workloads (McKinsey Health Institute, 2022). Therefore, good wellbeing at work equals a healthy workforce in which individuals and organisations can thrive.

In 2021, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) reported that the top priority amongst employees is wellbeing, while organisational goals are to cut costs and boost productivity; inevitably demanding more on staff, not less. It was also reported that while wellbeing had risen up the agenda, not all organisations have a committed approach to supporting and helping employees. There needs to be a holistic approach to work and wellbeing, the CIPD concluded, where interventions are targeted at giving the most support (CIPD, 2022).

Effective emotional processing is central to wellbeing at work
It has long been understood that mental and emotional health are closely linked to wellbeing. Where there are difficulties experienced at home or at work, the likely root cause is likely to be emotional events. Emotional processing refers to the way in which we cope with, or ‘process’, these emotional events. Signs of incomplete emotional processing can suggest that some distressing event or events have not been properly integrated or absorbed. Unseen psychological ‘mechanisms’ help us to deal with hurts, frustrations and stresses and return us to normal everyday functioning. So, effective emotional processing is important to our health, quality of life and sense of wellbeing and protects us from the impact of stress, making us more resilient. In work settings this can help us to enhance resilience and wellbeing, improve working relationships, deal with change and develop decision-making processes.

By looking at an individual’s emotional processing style and potential deficits, the importance of experiencing and accepting rather than avoiding or suppressing emotional feeling is emphasised.

A good wellbeing initiative includes components that care for employees’ physical, emotional, mental and social state. A core element of this is looking at trying to achieve emotional wellbeing, linking to building resilience and helping with an individual’s mental state when dealing with difficult situations.

The role of psychometrics in emotional health
Psychological assessments or psychometrics may not seem a natural partner to looking at emotional health, but they are arguably better than ad hoc wellbeing interventions and can provide a robust way of measuring and monitoring wellness in workforces. Assessments can provide objective evidence to support employees, promote employee engagement by encouraging self-development, significantly reduce people costs and be used safely within the parameters of GDPR.

One such measure, the Emotional Processing Scale (EPS), was developed by renowned clinical psychologist and researcher Professor Roger Baker and his colleagues at Bournemouth University. It was first published in 2004 and has since been translated into 19 languages and used in over 70 published research studies. The EPS was originally developed for use in clinical and therapeutic settings, helping people suffering from panic attacks.

The realisation that emotional processing is important in occupational and business settings too has led to its development from a clinical to an occupational tool – the Emotional Processing Scale – Wellbeing (EPS-W). The knowledge gained from years of research and practice in interpreting the EPS has been built into the EPS-W.

Measurable impact with tangible results
The EPS-W measures how emotionally open we are, how successfully we deal with important emotional events, the amount of control we feel we have over our emotions, whether we avoid certain emotions and how aware of our emotions we are. It takes around 15 minutes to complete and asks individuals about aspects of their emotional processing. And so, the EPS-W is a rigorous, yet practical and efficient measure that taps into how people deal with changes and challenges in their working lives. It can provide invaluable guidance for improving wellbeing and building emotional resilience which are critical for everyday work.

The EPS-W can be used by managers who work in HR, people and wellbeing teams and this is what sets it apart from many other psychometric assessments. The EPS-W is a versatile tool which can provide important information about individuals or groups in work and can help as part of a wellbeing initiative. It can help with signposting to further support which a person who is experiencing difficulties either at work or in their personal life might need. The EPS-W can also be used by trained coaches and business psychologists to work in more depth with individuals to give them the tools they need to help to manage their emotional health.

With the EPS-W, employers and HR teams can take immediate, effective action
Ways in which the EPS-W can help employers:

• Identifying and quantifying healthy and troubled styles of emotional processing.
• Assessing the contribution of poor emotional processing to individual stress.
• Providing a framework to help employees understand and manage decisions.
• Assisting practitioners in incorporating an emotional component into wellbeing interventions or programmes.
• Give line managers insights into the emotional health of their teams and a steer as to how to help to manage difficult conversations.

Ways in which the EPS-W can help employees:

• To help employees identify and quantify healthy and troubled styles of emotional processing.
• To help employees understand the contribution of poor emotional processing to individual stress.
• To provide a framework to help employees understand and manage decisions.
• To incorporate an emotional component into wellbeing or wellness at work programmes or interventions, or coaching applications.

A measure such as the EPS-W can also look at change over time. During a period of individual, team or organisational-wide change, a person’s emotional experience is likely to change and there could be a positive or negative impact not only on their motivation or engagement, but also on their work performance. Providing check-ins by way of a tool such as the EPS-W can help line managers, leadership and HR teams to manage and assist, as well as preventing potentially problematic situations from worsening over time.

Emotional processing is not so much about measuring emotions at work but more the dynamics of how we handle emotional events. It can help to see where the employee is at the moment but their potential for handling stress in the future.

The EPS-W is a tool which can provide positive guidelines to help employees facilitate their strengths and in this sense it is a genuine tool for improving emotional wellbeing across the whole of the workforce.

Professor Roger Baker, author, EPS-W

Wellbeing as a path to engagement and productivity
Wellbeing at work has emerged over the past few years as a priority for employers and their employees. It is intrinsically linked with engagement and performance and has become a key part of an organisation’s value proposition. Yet, many workplaces are not providing sufficient support and the starting point for this must be to look at the most effective initiatives, rather than what might be a quick fix to a more complex problem. Only by doing this can real improvements be made over time and employees feel valued and supported.

The EPS-W is currently being relaunched in the UK market with these updated norms and additional materials to support its use. The EPS-W Guide to Interpretation and Feedback is an easy-to-read guide, a white paper published in May 2023 “Wellbeing at work – A new assessment for supporting employees” which outlines the new norm and data analysis in more detail.

We have also created a complimentary eLearning programme to help users, in particular those HR and wellbeing managers who can use the EPS-W with their employees. This interactive course includes an overview of the EPS-W; it explains how the test is administered and scored, provides examples of how to use the EPS-W in practice, and delves into the reports which help with interpretation of results when feeding back to employees. It also looks at ethics-related questions. The eLearning programme takes around one hour to complete and could be used individually or with a team, to develop a better understanding of using EPS-W in the workplace.

References

CIPD (2022) Health and Wellbeing at Work 2022 Reference: 8229 © CIPD 2022

CIPD (2022) Wellbeing at work https://www.cipd.org/en/knowledge/factsheets/well-being-factsheet/

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Working days lost in Great Britain (2022) https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/dayslost

McKinsey Health Institute (2022) Addressing employee burnout: Are you solving the right problem? https://www.mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/addressing-employee-burnout-are-you-solving-the-right-problem

Office for National Statistics (ONS) Sickness absence in the UK labour market: 2022 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity