Turning Worker Well-being Research into Actionable Insights for Organizations and their Employees

Achyuta Adhvaryu, instructor of "How to Create a Good Business" and co-founder of the Good Business Lab

The COVID-19 pandemic’s exacerbation of an already unequal labor market brought disagreements between management and employees onto center stage. Income declines combined with high unemployment rates have compelled workers toward collective action and firms toward defensive positions. Strikes at Czech tire plants and multinationals like Starbucks and Amazon seeing employees unionize in attempts for better wages and benefits. 

Businesses face a challenge in not only hiring but also retaining skilled workers. With increasing inflation hurting low-income workers across the globe, there is an urgent need to fight the deepening lines of dissatisfaction and frustration between labor and management. Hence, workers and employers alike are coming to realize that if firm growth is an important goal, much greater emphasis needs to be placed on worker well-being. 

In my decade as a professor at the University of Michigan teaching development economics, I saw the critical role businesses can play in advancing the wellbeing of their workers. Along with two of my peers, I co-founded Good Business Lab, a not-for-profit labor innovation organization that aims to make the business case for worker wellbeing. We believe that worker wellbeing and business profitability are not in contradiction and, in fact, the former has the potential to improve the latter. Often, businesses are not equipped with the evidence and tools required to properly promote workers' well-being. We generate evidence to change how businesses across the globe think about investing in their workers. In the past, we have partnered with private players in labor-intensive industries like apparel, retail, and automobiles in India, Bangladesh, the United States, and regions in Latin America and the Caribbean to make the business case for empowering worker well-being. 

My online course “How to Create a Good Business” allows me to bring what I’ve learned from labor and business leaders, and the worker well-being we push for at the Good Business Lab, to a global audience. It brings together Good Business Lab’s research and stakeholders from across industries and perspectives to show through case studies and interviews with academics, business leaders, and policymakers how a holistic understanding of well-being can support in creating sustainable, responsible, and profitable businesses.

This course is designed to provide comprehensive knowledge about worker wellbeing for a wide array of individuals. Management professionals seeking to improve business bottomline can learn to design, implement, measure, and scale up worker wellbeing programs so they can reach their goals. Students and graduates with an interest in worker wellbeing and sustainable business can learn from the real-world case studies to enhance their subject knowledge and gain practical skills. Essentially, the course is for anyone keen to learn about the why, what and how of worker wellbeing programs.

"Putting worker well-being at the heart of business is not just good for business, it is essential for business." -- Achyuta Adhvaryu

The course starts with a deep dive into the history of the relationship between labor and management and how we can learn from the lessons of the past to understand where we are today. We will also go through how critical but often ignored soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, and time management can help workers improve productivity and improve their lives beyond the factory floor as well. 

Next, we explore the key topic of worker voice and why it is so important for workers and consequently, for businesses. This module explores questions such as: What are the existing mechanisms for addressing worker communication with management, including grievances and complaints that workers may have? Do workers use these mechanisms? And if so – how effectively? If not – why? And why effective management is the cornerstone of good business. 

The course uses the study of the development of Inache, a two-way anonymized communication tool that allows workers to express their grievances anonymously to factory management. We go through the end-to-end process of researching worker and business requirements, designing a solution, evaluating the effectiveness of the solution in a real-world pilot study, and then adapting an intervention for implementation at scale.

Next, we tackle how management, worker well-being, and business outcomes interact. In all organizations, managers play an incredibly important role in supervising team members and their workloads, optimizing operations, making tough decisions, and overseeing the details on behalf of their managers. The quality of managers can determine the success and growth of the organization, and along the way, have a large influence on worker well-being as well. We go through multiple case studies from different industry settings across the globe to explore how managers can be better trained, supported, and utilized to be more effective in their roles and contribute to creating a good business.

The private sector can be positively enabled towards a model of employment that goes beyond productivity and includes in its scope well-being, as well. But this can only be achieved through generating rigorous evidence-based solutions that are scalable while also being context-specific. Distinctions between regions, industries, and individual workers too should be considerations taken into account when investing in and implementing interventions that improve worker well-being. This course takes you through the practical methods of accomplishing exactly that! It shows you why a better future of work is possible, and how it is absolutely necessary.  

I'd also like to thank the Good Business Lab team including Eshika Gombar, Shalin Gor, Apoorv Somanchi and Rochak Jain who have contributed to the design and development of this course, and this story.

How to Create a Good Business

4 weeks

Course

Prioritizing the wellbeing of workers is not just a good - or ethical - thing to do, but because it makes business sense. A happier, healthier workforce is a more productive…