Workplace wellbeing and firm performance

Working paper

We use novel large-scale data from Indeed, a major jobs website, to assess the relationship between workplace wellbeing and firm performance. Our measures of employee wellbeing include self-reported job satisfaction, purpose, happiness, and stress, which we aggregate to over 1,600 listed companies in the United States. Using company-level employee wellbeing measures to predict firm performance, we find that wellbeing is associated with firm profitability and that companies with the highest levels of wellbeing also subsequently outperform standard benchmarks in the stock market. Overall, these descriptive results show a strong positive relationship between employee wellbeing and firm performance. We discuss a number of limitations to the analyses and point to future directions for further research.

Authors: De Neve, J-E; Kaats, M; Ward, G

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: Wellbeing Research Centre
• Series: Wellbeing Research Centre Working Paper
• Publication date: 2023-05-12
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-bpkbjayvk
• Paper number: 2304
• Language: English
• Keywords: wellbeing; firm performance; subjective workplace wellbeing