(How) Can we measure wellbeing at work?

In autumn 2010, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, remarked: “It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money and it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general wellbeing” (Guardian 2010). Whilst it was intended to galvanise a more holistic approach to life (although it also deflected attention from the introduction of swingeing economic cuts), it glossed the fact that wellbeing is not easily defined and measured. Moreover, if “what a society measures will in turn influence the things that it seeks” (Dolan and White 2007: 81), then the very act of measuring becomes crucial in constructing the world we live in. This short paper is intended to introduce some of the problems encountered in defining and researching the measurement of wellbeing in the specific context of the workplace.