MAP is a unique, scientifically validated wellbeing assessment and analysis tool for teams and workplaces
Critical. Think of wellbeing as a building, where personal wellbeing is the foundation - and workplace wellbeing is built on top of this foundation. As a result, it's much easier to experience high wellbeing at work if you also have high wellbeing in your personal life.
No, health in general or mental health in particular is just one of many objective factors that determine overall wellbeing for a person.
Others include safety, education, environment, governance and other quality of life factors; as well as income, jobs, housing and other factors of material living conditions.
Plus, there is subjective wellbeing (or Happiness), defined as how you feel about life, and psychological wellbeing, defined as how you assess the meaning and purpose of life.
Wellbeing is an investment, not a cost. The science shows a wide range of benefits including:
Personal Benefits
Better wellbeing has a strong association with the physical body systems underlying health, disease, resilience and living longer. It can also help improve our lifestyle behaviors.
Key benefits from the research include:
Social Benefits
Better wellbeing can improve a person’s ability to integrate information and broaden their focus of attention. This can improve behavior and decision-making and lead to positive personal and social outcomes.
Some standout benefits:
Happiness makes us more likely to donate blood, time and money.
Work and workplace benefits
Happiness can benefit work and workplace in many ways.
Mental benefits include feeling more motivated and an improved ability to integrate information. Social wellbeing benefits include better relationships and cooperation.
Key benefits from the research:
Yes. Life can be difficult like losing a job, discrimination, breakup, the loss of a loved one, an illness, or economic hardship. MAP was designed to speak to humans, not a role, race, colour, or cohort. The Wellbeing Measurement and Assessment breaks down information to make it easy to understand and cut through the noise. For example if you get a low wellbeing score, the MAP Assessment and Report is sensitive to that and tries to help in a way that will be useful to you. The Wellbeing Analysis also uses a mixture of words, images, numbers, and phrases and various types of measurements because everyone learns differently and needs different types of information during different times in their life.
MAP was created to help in the difficult times as well as the times we aspire to grow. Ultimately, there is no difference about better wellbeing, it helps us to actualise our goals and improve satisfaction with our lives no matter where our wellbeing may measure today with the Happiness and Wellbeing Assessment. MAP is a compass for wellbeing across all events and experiences and these include the trials as well as the triumphs.
These are, each in its own way, positive activities. For example, an employee survey can get useful quantitative data for a manger. Meditation can help with relaxation and have health benefits.
However MAP is much more. It is an approach that focuses on all factors for the individual and workplace as a whole entity.
Over the past 20 years many fields of expertise have come to realise that happiness and wellbeing is real and important for individuals and nations. These experts include economists, psychologists, neuroscientists, doctors and more.
In fact it's now a rich field of interest and insight in its own right, with academic departments and published journals. Private companies and governments all around the world are also investing time and funds into measuring and understanding happiness and wellbeing.
Better wellbeing in a workplace is not a guarantee of success for a team, organisation or company. Outside circumstances such as a loss of funding, an economic recession or epidemic are clearly crucial factors.
Yet the science shows better wellbeing in a workplace improves the likelihood of work-related positive outcomes.
At the same time, happiness, and wellbeing are not based on being cheerful, joyous and content all the time. They're about experiencing a wide range of emotions and experiences, and dealing with both the good and the bad. At MAP we see this as part of being balanced and centered in your life as an individual and a workplace, as a whole entity.
Read more about How it Works.Revenue and profits are important. But the science shows the limits of focussing just on finances. Studies of nations show, for example, that on average people have grown no happier in the last 50 years, even as their average income has more than doubled. Organizations and companies who experience high wellbeing are more likely to achieve greater success.
Genes are responsible for an estimated 40% of wellbeing (for example, the tendency for your personality to express happiness). However non-genetic factors that determine wellbeing can be improved and lead to positive outcomes. For example:
MAP is a unique scientifically validated wellbeing measurement, assessment, analysis that achieves better wellbeing by influencing the many different non-genetic factors.
Read more about How it Works.How Does MAP Work?
A number of programs are available to help improve happiness and wellbeing in the workplace.
MAP is different because it uses a scientifically validated wellbeing survey and assessment technology delivered in real-time that:
Easy to set up and simple to use, including a scientifically validated wellbeing questionnaire, secure online dashboard and real-time results.
MAP is compass for happiness. It points to improved health, productivity, performance and loyalty.
Of course, when you have better wellbeing as an individual, you experience benefits in your personal and work life such as being twice as likely to adapt to change, improved health, and increased longevity.
But in the workplace in particular you experience benefits through the contagion effect, where each individual influences the other. For instance, studies show that a supervisor's mood over a long period of time influences the mood of team members. The same applies to better wellbeing amongst managers being associated with higher levels of wellbeing for employees.
The workplace outcomes that come with better wellbeing are significant. For example, happiness can increase curiosity, creativity and motivation amongst workers. It also makes people more likely to engage cooperatively and collaboratively during negotiations at work.
Read more about Business and Science, including personal and health benefits.
What are some examples of the action items Team Leaders could take based on the aggregated workplace reports?
MAP offers limitless ways to discover areas for improvement and strategize initiatives to increase wellbeing. Here are just a few suggestions:
For Personal Wellbeing:
In certain cases an external facilitator may be a useful addition for additional objectivity and expert insight.
Typically, the action items are likely to revolve around improving the wellbeing of team members by focusing on the specific sphere where the aggregated score is weak. MAP points out the gaps and potential pitfalls.
It's quick and easy to set up and use MAP. A manager or team leader follows these simple steps:
The manager or team leader receives Wellbeing Reports for the workplace as a whole entity. For more details see How MAP Works.
No. The workplace wellbeing questionnaire is optional and the leader can switch it off on signup or anytime via their dashboard.
Any size from a minimum of five people up to the largest organizations, numbering in the hundreds of thousands.
It can be used by a team, any other discrete unit (department, division and more) or a whole company. A manager may start with a team and over time increase the number of participants in an organisation/company. Read Connector - Connect Accounts to learn about how this is facilitated.
It is delivered instantly, in real-time as soon as the questionnaire is completed.
Yes. Because the questionnaire answers are specific for each individual, the feedback is customized and personal.
Yes. MAP the wellbeing measurements, assessments and analyses are accessed on each person’s private dashboard. For privacy and security, the team cannot see the leader’s dashboard. Nor can the leader see the team members’ dashboards.
Yes. The Wellbeing Reports for each workplace - as whole entity - is made up of the sum total of all the specific individuals participating in that team or company. Because the questionnaire answers are specific for each individual, the feedback for the workplace is customized too.
Yes, one account can be connected to another using a tool called Connector - Connect Accounts that allows you to connect multiple MAP accounts across your workplace.
MAP is free indefinitely to support the post-pandemic recovery.
Individuals are invited by a team leader or manager to complete 2 MAP questionnaires - one each for personal wellbeing and workplace wellbeing. Each questionnaire takes 5 minutes to complete. What happens to the questionnaire answers? The answers for each of the MAP questionnaires - personal wellbeing and workplace wellbeing - are assessed by a scientifically validated algorithmic analysis. The algorithm makes calculations based on different happiness and wellbeing factors.
Then, MAP utilises unique mathematical equations to measure how much balance, centeredness, and wellbeing there is for each sphere and all five spheres.
When the calculations are completed, the algorithmic analysis produces a Wellbeing Assessment and Analysis - one assessment for personal wellbeing and a second assessment for workplace wellbeing - for: 1) Each person; as an individual 2) Workplace culture and performance. The Wellbeing Reports contain measurements in pictures, numbers, and words, analyses, and assessments.
Read more about How it Works.Never. All questionnaire answers are anonymous. Only the individual sees their Wellbeing analyses, assessments, and measurements, located in their own private dashboard. The manager or team leader can only access this information as encrypted and aggregated results in real-time. This ensures privacy and confidentiality for the individual.
MAP takes an assertive approach to privacy. It will never release the data of individuals to an organization or company. Nor will it release data to individuals under any circumstances. This commitment to privacy protects all MAP users and cements our commitment to both individual and organizational wellbeing. It also ensures that the wellbeing surveys are answered honestly and all users trust and embrace the experience.
All MAP online services are encrypted and its servers are housed in an environment that is carrier neutral, has halon fire protection, constant camera surveillance, multi-level security, connectivity secured, and earthquake proof.
In addition, the servers and also the network have around the clock maintenance, restricted access and high performance internet connectivity.
This is a tool that allows the manager or team leader to connect separate MAP Workplace accounts to help it get a broader view and deeper insight into the wellbeing of a workplace.
Connected Accounts provide the functionality required to manage the expansion of the experience across the entire workplace. The accounts stay aggregated no matter how broad the view becomes.
It means that your team, organization or company can deploy MAP at its own pace, rather than from the outset, which allows for organic uptake. If two different teams use MAP in a single organization, can those two accounts be connected? Yes, one account can be connected to another using the Connector tool that aggregates and expands the view across the organization. Read more about Connector - Connect Accounts.
Workplaces are hierarchical. How a member of your team, for example, sees the team and feels inside it will depend on where they fit in the hierarchy. In addition, how empowered a member of your team feels can be influenced by their role and responsibilities they have.
MAP uses Quadrants to identify and highlight hierarchy of your team or organization, without compromising the individual's privacy or the accuracy of the data.
MAP pre-sets 4 quadrants: sales, middle management, upper management and stakeholder. You can change these names at any time.
Read more about Quadrants and the mechanisms underlying hierarchy at work.It includes:
There's a difference between a happy feeling and happiness. You feel happy when you achieve a key performance indicator or the IT department finally fixes your computer.
Happiness is longer-lasting. It's how you feel about your life. It's more like a long term mood of contentment. It's also called Subjective wellbeing. Read more about Happiness and Wellbeing.
Wellbeing is about a whole entity - a person, organisation, or even a whole nation. This concept is based on the science. Research has found that income, profits and GDP are important - but they're not everything. Life is also about engagement, empowerment, support, creativity, motivation, meaning, purpose and so much more.
All the different factors in life connect to every other factor to produce wellbeing. Wellbeing factors are divided into 3 categories:
Wellbeing is experienced in every second of your life. Whether it's good or bad, it's always there. This is called personal wellbeing.
You can also drill down to understand wellbeing in specific areas of your life - such as at work, which is called workplace wellbeing.
However, both types of wellbeing don't exist in isolation from each other. What happens in your personal life and your life at work, interact and influence each other in a two-way flow.
The key dimension of this two-way flow is personal wellbeing. Wellbeing is like a building, personal wellbeing is the foundation - and workplace wellbeing is constructed on top of this foundation.
For example: when we're happier with our personal life, we're better able to contribute at work in positive way; when we have values that are in our personal life that are congruent with the values of our workplace, we experience better wellbeing; when we treat other people with care and kindness in both our personal and work life, we all experience higher wellbeing levels.
Personal Wellbeing measures and assess the happiness and wellbeing in areas of your personal life, like self, relationship, family, and community. Workplace Wellbeing applies MAP’s scientifically validated algorithm to the workplace and measures factors critical to workplace wellbeing like culture, operations, product (or services), market, and team.
Read more about Happiness and Wellbeing.Leading contributors to research and implementation currently include:
MAP is the acronym for Meta-Analysis Profile.
Meta = A level above and beyond
Analysis = Evaluation of individual factors and how they interconnect to make up a whole
Profile = Your happiness and wellbeing
Yes. MAP is a wellbeing assessment and analysis tool that measures and facilitates better wellbeing in a population of any size. Naturally, we started with companies because it is an obvious demographic to assist because current workplace wellbeing is low worldwide.
For example in the USA
Ultimately Communities and Societies can benefit enormously from MAP because of its systems-level understanding of wellbeing and how to facilitate it.
MAP began with a book called Freedom’s Way (2004). When it was shortened and re-released it became MAP Living a Centered Life (2015), available everywhere. The book became the foundation for the theories of psychological and social wellbeing that lead to the formation of the MAP team, then the MAP Wellbeing tool, and ultimately, the discovery of the new paradigm for mental health and psychosocial wellbeing called Centeredness Theory, published in the world leading journal Frontiers in Psychology| Psychology for clinical settings.
The peer-reviewed original research article was published in Frontiers in Psychology| Psychology for clinical settings. MAP supports open science, and the article is available to read online and download for free in a number of different formats.