Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Male Privilege And Employee Wellbeing: A Call For Critical Wellbeing (#753)

Prasuna Reddy 1 , Ben Farr-Wharton 2 , Ace V Simpson 2 , Aglae Hernandez Grande 2 , Ros Prichard 2
  1. Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  2. University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

We problematize the notion of wellbeing particularly at the organizational level, by asking: Is high employee wellbeing a sufficient benchmark for positive organizational practices? To investigate we study a large, Australian-based, public organization. Using multilevel analysis at the divisional level the study explored the correlates linking psychometric wellbeing data with de-identified personnel data including leave, tenure, gender, age, pay and compensation data. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the results indicate that the highest reported wellbeing is found amongst those divisions with a greater proportion of male, fixed-term (specialist/higher paying), full-time employees. More specifically, these variables account for 76% of wellbeing reported across the organization. Further visualisation of the dataset highlighted that women, in the main, were relegated to lower paying roles with less employment security. This is problematic for the potential positive influence imbued with the rise of the wellbeing narrative. If the findings of this study were to be applied instrumentally, there is potential for such a tool to be used for employee exclusion (i.e. a person’s gender or other). This research seeks to qualify trends in wellbeing research and practice, calling for critical actions that seek to advance equity and social justice as important considerations for achieving organizational wellbeing.