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Positive health: Beyond the token fruit basket and workplace fitness

Positive health—it’s a term that crops up more and more often, including in relation to work. But what does it actually mean, and how can employers and employees put it into practice? Professor Tim Huijts studies positive health in the workplace. Here he discusses spiderwebs, self-management and the pitfalls of token gestures.

His father was a GP. Listening to his stories, Tim Huijts started wondering early on what it really means to be healthy. “Many people think it’s just about whether you’re physically ill or not. That’s what our healthcare system has traditionally focused on. But people are so much more than a diagnosis.”
 

Spiderweb

Huijts argues for a broader view of health. This ties in with the relatively new concept of positive health, developed around 15 years ago by the Dutch doctor Machteld Huber. “With positive health, the focus isn’t on illness, but on the person as a whole,” Huijts explains. “It’s mainly about whether someone can do what they find meaningful, even with life’s challenges and limitations. Self-management is key.”

In practice, it works like this: people fill in a questionnaire to map their own health. The results are shown in a spiderweb chart with six dimensions: bodily functions, but also mental wellbeing, meaningfulness, quality of life, participation in society and daily functioning. That spiderweb forms the starting point for a conversation, for example with a GP or coach, about what matters to the person and what might help them get there.

Walking

Until a few years ago, Huijts had heard of positive health but hadn’t experienced the approach first-hand. That changed after a coaching session at work that used the positive health framework. “The conversation showed, among other things, that I needed to build in more moments of reflection. My coach and I agreed I’d take more walks. To this day, that helps me create more calm in my life.”

He calls his experience “a small example of what positive health can do.” It also sparked his curiosity. When he got the chance to research positive health in the workplace as a professor, he jumped at it. Now, the concept is becoming increasingly relevant and topical, both in society and in the business world. “With rising workloads, staff shortages and absenteeism, employers are looking for new ways to attract and retain people. At the same time, employees—especially the younger generations—want more meaning, balance and autonomy at work. Positive health could help to align these interests.”

The Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) was founded at Maastricht University in 1986. The centre conducts high-quality research with a policy impact, focusing on labour-market dynamics and the acquisition and decline of human capital across the lifespan. ROA’s research is financed by government-backed agencies (NRO, NWO) and international organisations such as the European Commission and OECD. 

 Read more about the ROA on the ROA website.

Health washing

In practice, translating the concept into the workplace isn’t straightforward. “It requires open dialogue, and that’s usually the bottleneck,” Huijts says. “Unlike in our private lives, at work, hierarchies and power dynamics are at play. Employees don’t always feel safe to speak openly about what’s holding them back or what they need. Employers, in turn, may worry they’ll be saddled with extra responsibilities. That mutual caution can get in the way.” 

Huijts thinks this tension is one reason organisations still reach for symbolic health measures—often without consulting employees, and with limited impact. “Think fruit baskets, chair massages or a ‘green’ canteen. Well-intentioned, but standardised, top-down measures often miss the point of positive health, which is built around self-management. And if they’re mainly for show, it quickly starts to look like ‘health-washing’.”

Tim Huijts

No one-size-fits-all

So what does Huijts advise organisations that genuinely want to work with positive health? “It only really comes alive when it becomes part of your vision, culture, values and day-to-day routines. And involve employees. Have the courage to enter into a proper dialogue with them focused on cooperation, and take their wants and needs seriously.” What comes next will look different in every organisation. “There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. What works depends on the organisation, the people in it and the context in which they operate.” 

That context dependence is also what makes it hard to draw neat conclusions about the effects of positive health at work. Huijts sees this as an important area for future research. “There’s been very little research on positive health in relation to work. For now, practical experience gives us useful first insights, especially into how organisations are applying it. The Jeroen Bosch Hospital, for example, uses positive health in annual appraisals and in its flex-pool policy. By working with organisations over the coming years, I want to better understand why positive health works well in one setting and less so in another. Not to develop a standard approach, but to be able to give companies more targeted advice. For me, the key question isn’t so much whether it works, but what works for whom?”

 

Text: Milou Schreuders
Photograpy: Sem Shayne

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