A healthy organization – isn’t that just about free fruit and Friday drinks?

Let’s answer the question in the headline right away: No, you don’t create a healthy organization just by arranging Friday bars and offering a daily supply of fresh organic fruit in the cafeteria.

But what is a healthy organization then?

The answer is complex, and that is exactly the purpose of this blog post: to dive into that complexity. So let’s try asking another question:

‍What matters more: performance or people?

Many will say it’s not that black and white, but still, we often see this divide in focus within organizations. Performance and well-being are often set up as opposites. One is prioritized over the other, and it can create factions among employees around what truly matters most.

Maybe you’ve experienced it in your own organization. It can lead to dilemmas like:
“How do I justify a team outing from a budget perspective?”
“Can I let go of an underperforming employee who’s going through a personal crisis?”
“What do I do when employees aren’t delivering, even though I’ve done everything I can to support them?”

That’s why, at Syndicate, we find it compelling to think of a healthy organization not as an either-or scenario, but as a both-and. We draw inspiration here from Canadian sociologist and labor market researcher Graham S. Lowe, who defines a healthy organization as:

“One whose culture, climate and practices create an environment that promotes employee health and safety as well as organizational effectiveness.”

In this article, we take a closer look at how a healthy organization can be understood, and how it might offer a more fruitful perspective on what factors really matter. We hope it sparks inspiration, dialogue, and perhaps even new initiatives for the organizations of tomorrow.

Strong interest in health – and many interpretations

Health fascinates us. Around 7 million Google searches each day are related to health and wellness (source: National Library of Medicine). That’s not too surprising, really, since health is closely tied to quality of life and overall well-being.

The concept of health has also spread to organizations. The idea that some organizations are healthier than others is gaining traction. This interest isn’t entirely new, but it has grown in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and new technologies that make remote work more accessible. More and more people are questioning traditional work life and what it means to live well. It is time for new perspectives on organizational health (Forbes). Julian Barling, for example, offers one in his book Brave New Workplace, where he outlines what is needed in a modern and healthy organization. His view focuses on long-term thinking and sustainability, both in terms of an organization’s impact on society and how sustainable working life is for employees.

McKinsey has also written about the advantages of a healthy organization and created its own Organizational Health Index to measure it. Somewhat paradoxically, they claim that healthy organizations “outperform” others. This reflects a view of organizations as being in competition, rather than adopting Barling’s values-driven perspective.

The terms “healthy organization” or “organizational health” are not new. Back in 1987, organizational researchers Wayne K. Hoy and Jay Feldman explored the concept in their Organizational Health Inventory (OHI). They concluded:

“Second, healthy organization is a poorly defined, but widely used concept. There is a considerable debate on exactly what these terms encompass, its measurement, how helpful they might be, and struggle to develop a systematic model for measuring healthy organization.”

Unfortunately, we are still no closer to a systematic model or a more precise definition today (The Healthy Organization Construct: A Review and Research Agenda).

This is partly because the word “health” has many different historical meanings, and your view of health is likely not the same as your neighbor’s. The same applies to the word “organization.” In his classic Images of Organization, Gareth Morgan described eight metaphors for understanding what an organization is and how these views shape leadership style, culture, structure, and more. Imagine the difference between seeing an organization as a machine to be optimized, compared to viewing it as a space in constant transformation.

Gareth was open to new metaphors. We think he would find it interesting to explore what seeing an organization as healthy might mean for leadership, employee satisfaction, and output. That’s what we aim to do in this article: take a closer look at what health actually means, and what it implies when we talk about a healthy organization.

What does health psychology say?

When it comes to human health, health psychology has provided important perspectives on how we can understand health, and how we can work with it. Here, we’ll walk through a number of key points and play with what they might mean for an organization’s health.

1) More than just the absence of illness

‍Health is often understood as simply the absence of disease. But in reality, we can be generally healthy and only experience illness once in a while. Or we might live with a chronic condition and still have a high quality of life. Just as we might be objectively healthy (not ill) but still live unhealthily through stress, overeating, or lack of exercise. And we can feel sick or unwell without being objectively ill in a medical sense.

That’s why it probably makes more sense to talk about health and unhealthiness, rather than health and illness as opposites. Health can be understood as a state of general well-being (with or without chronic illness), where we’re able to handle temporary sickness. Unhealthiness, on the other hand, is a potential for becoming ill more often than in a healthy state, and where we are generally unwell.

Translated into organizational terms, organizations can have lifestyles that are healthy or unhealthy. In a healthy organization, we may experience temporary periods of difficulty. In an unhealthy organization, we’ll typically see higher customer churn, more sick leave, greater staff turnover, more dissatisfied customers, more product errors, and so on, than in a healthy one.

But in reality, we can be generally healthy and only experience illness once in a while. Or we might live with a chronic condition and still have a high quality of life.

2) More than just diet

When we talk about health, many people automatically think of meal plans and running routines. That’s because health has long been viewed through a biomedical lens — with a focus on the body and disease. In this view, the goal is mostly to identify and remove illnesses.

But that perspective can become too narrow. It risks overlooking the fact that health is also about how we feel mentally and socially — not just what we eat or how many steps we take.

For example, WHO also includes other dimensions in its definition of health:

“A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being”

Health, then, is a matter of thriving across multiple dimensions — not just physical health. In fact, social relationships are better predictors of health than biological or economic factors.

WHO’s definition has even been criticized for including too few dimensions. Historically, health has also been tied to whether a person is able to pursue their goals. Think, for instance, of the top level in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: the need for self-actualization. The ability to pursue one’s goals is a source of life quality and motivation to live a healthier life. When a person feels a sense of purpose or has meaningful goals, it is associated with increased physical activity, better health, stronger communities, and many other factors known to support well-being.

WHO’s definition has also been critiqued for presenting an overly idealistic view — the idea that it’s even possible to achieve “complete well-being.” Instead, we can understand that different areas influence each other. For example, physical activity can affect mental health, mental health can affect social well-being, and vice versa. And we can see that different factors can compensate for one another. Being in good physical shape, for instance, can help offset a certain degree of social distress.

Translated into organizational terms, it’s not just one parameter we should use to assess health. It’s not just a question of pure performance, or purely about employee well-being — it’s both. And a focus on both areas will strengthen each other and help build a resilient organization. At the same time, we must understand that there are several key factors. These might include the quality of products, the organization’s values, its internal climate, its relationships with partners, and its reputation in society.

3) More than just removing illness

In the broader understanding of health, it is not just important to be able to diagnose illness, but also to work with ongoing prevention.

It is an approach where strengthening health (rather than simply getting good at removing illness) creates greater resilience for hard times, which will inevitably come. No matter how healthy we are, we might still fall off a bike or catch a virus. Instead of seeing that as a problem, we expect it, and we appreciate the moments when it is minimal. A preventive focus on strengthening health also has the advantage that surplus creates more surplus.

Translated to organizations, they should continuously invest in healthy behaviours and good conditions as a preventive measure, even if they are not currently facing challenges. This could, for example, be regular and ongoing attention to and investment in customer care, employee care, infrastructure, technology, leadership development, and so on.

In the broader understanding of health, it is not just important to be able to diagnose illness, but also to work with ongoing prevention.

4) More than just living a long life

In the 1980s, WHO expanded the concept of health to include not just living longer, but living more fully.

Health, then, is not only about surviving, but about living. About having experiences, creating good memories, and enjoying defining moments that bring a smile to your face and a warm feeling in your chest.

For WHO, a richer life means living in alignment with personal needs and in alignment with societal and cultural norms. There is joy in fulfilling personal needs, but also in being part of a larger community and feeling that you are contributing to it.

If we translate that into organizational language, a healthy organization is not just about delivering what’s on the plan. It does more than that. It creates moments where new thinking emerges, where employees experience something meaningful, and where there is a clear awareness of the difference the organization makes in the world around it. And most importantly: it celebrates the community and what is created together.

5) More than just lifestyle

There has been a shift from seeing health and lifestyle as the responsibility of the individual, to recognizing it as a societal responsibility to create good conditions for living. Frameworks like education, norms, and social belonging influence an individual’s well-being and ability to thrive — many of these are, to a large extent, a political matter. As an example of how interconnected we are, Christakis & Fowler found that your risk of becoming overweight increases by 57% if you have had a friend who was or is overweight. In this way, lifestyle can be understood through a network metaphor, where we “infect” each other.

Translated into business terms, it is also a political responsibility to ensure good conditions for companies. This is nothing new.

But organizations that want to be healthy should, on the one hand, be aware of how these conditions can make such a goal more difficult. Especially since there is a strong tradition of rewarding companies with the highest revenue. But imagine if politicians or shareholders instead rewarded those who made the greatest difference for society — the ones who started the most football clubs, offered the best skills training to Danish citizens, or supported work-life balance in ways that saved the state significant costs.

On the other hand, healthy organizations should also recognize that conditions can be changed. Just like illness can spread, so can health. And together, healthy organizations can stand stronger in shaping the conditions that support well-being.

Summary – this is what a healthy organization looks like

We’ve explored what health means, and in doing so, played with how we might define what a healthy organization looks like:

• A healthy organization recovers from crises, downturns, and difficult periods more quickly than an unhealthy one.
• A healthy organization recognizes that multiple factors matter, and that they influence each other. This could include product quality, customer satisfaction, employee well-being, infrastructure, company values and purpose, and its relationship to society.
• A healthy organization knows that crises will come and works preventively.
• A healthy organization is not only focused on delivery or survival, but also on creating memorable moments — for employees, customers, or society at large.
• A healthy organization understands that it is shaped by different conditions and constantly works to both adapt to them and challenge them. It finds strength in joining with others who share the same outlook.

Health is not just the absence of illness — not for people, and not for companies. An organization can look fine from the outside and still struggle internally. That’s why it makes sense to think in terms of an organizational lifestyle rather than just results.

We need to move away from a narrow focus on diet and exercise (the biomedical view) and instead understand health as a whole: physical, mental, social — and meaningful. The same goes for the workplace.

A healthy organization:

• Is resilient in the face of adversity and learns from mistakes
• Creates meaning and community
• Balances well-being and effectiveness
• Is oriented toward the society it is part of

In short: it’s not just about what you deliver — but how you deliver it.

And when that’s your focus, you can deliver as a healthy organization in the long run.