About Us

Elaborating our understanding of the role of need satisfaction in healthy workplaces, we have extracted from the scientific literature nine basic needs that, when satisfied, contribute positively to health and well-being.  Likewise, when satisfaction of these needs is impeded, the employee avoids that environment or it contributes negatively to health and well-being. The basic needs are: positive emotions, belonging, meaning or purpose, autonomy, competence or mastery, engagement or achievement, personal growth, safety, and physical well-being or vitality.  The Healthy Workplaces Model is a novel extension of existing needs-based models.  Christina Maslach and Cristina Banks published their findings connecting psychological needs to health, well-being and productivity in the Routledge Companion to Wellbeing at Work (2017).

The Model inspired us to develop a framework for identifying qualities in work and the work environment that “drive” need satisfaction.  This means that the presence of a particular quality in the work environment creates an environment where an employee’s need can be met.  For example, having flexibility in the workplace (e.g., where and when tasks can be performed) provides a sense of control over work demands and resources, and feeds the need for autonomy.  We identified seven such qualities (called “drivers” of need satisfaction): comfort, connection, predictability, flexibility, security, equity, and privacy.  The importance of these “drivers” is their ability to translate the satisfaction of needs directly into specific things—physical objects, workstation design, compensation and benefits, programs, policies, practices, and cultural attributes—in order to create a work environment that satisfies important employee needs.  The “drivers” also enable the development of assessment tools for evaluating the degree to which a work environment meets employees’ needs.