Workplace location and employee well-being
The geographical area surrounding workplaces has not been considered in research on employee well-being. Since those in work often spend a significant amount of their time at a workplace, the geographical areas in which they work are important spaces of exposure to physical, natural and social environments. In contrast, a large literature has studied place effects of where people live on health and well-being. Through focussing on area-level effects of where people work on employee well-being, the proposed research reconceptualises the workplace ‘environment’ or ‘context’ beyond the establishment level and fills an important gap of applying the notion of area-level effects to the geographical area where people work. This research will exploit the unique value of the UKHLS to capture the workplace/employer address (from Wave 11) and to enable linkage of individual data with geographical data. As area-level effects, this research will test natural environment factors (public parks/gardens, air quality) as well as built environment factors (e.g. density/urbanicity) all of which have been related with subjective well-being and health in relation to residential neighbourhoods. The area-level data will be generated from other data sources and linked to the UKHLS individual records. Employee well-being measures are selected as well-established measures of job satisfaction and mental well-being. A propensity score method is applied to evaluate causal effects on employee well-being. Findings will be of relevance for employers and employment organisations concerned with how to improve employee well-being but also stakeholders engaged in spatial planning and place-based approaches to mental well-being.
