Social Well-being and the Challenge of Connection
Flourishing, Languishing, and Social Well-being
Many employees in South Africa are not flourishing. Understanding why requires looking beyond mental illness and emotional distress to a third, often overlooked dimension of well-being: the social. Together with emotional and psychological well-being, social well-being shapes the mental health of individuals and communities. Social well-being relates to people’s experience of connectedness — their sense of belonging, contribution, and coherence in the communities and institutions they inhabit.
Research in South Africa consistently finds that four elements of social well-being — social acceptance, actualization, coherence, and integration — score lower than other dimensions of well-being. When people cannot trust others, cannot envision their organisation improving, do not understand what is happening around them, or feel excluded, cooperation is damaged at its roots. Mental ill-health can be traced, in part, to two social failures: isolation (egoism) and anomie — the loss of shared norms and direction. Individuals flourish when they are grounded in intimate communities with meaningful ties. Yet such communities have been eroding for decades and attempts to replace them with imagined communities of nations, parties, or digital networks have fallen short.
Four Profiles of Social Well-being at Work
Our research sheds important light on how social well-being manifests in the workplace. (Hennicks EC, Heyns MM & Rothmann S (2024). Social well-being profiles: Associations with trust in managers and colleagues, job satisfaction, and intention to leave. Frontiers in Psychology, 15:1157847. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1157847).
Studying 403 permanently employed individuals in a South African utility organisation, they identified four distinct social well-being profiles using latent profile analysis: socially disconnected (19%), socially challenged (31%), socially adequate (22%), and socially thriving (27%). You can watch a video of our findings here: https://vimeo.com/1186626084
What Organisations Can Do
Managers who listen with genuine interest, remove obstacles, and communicate meaningfully build the trust that underpins social actualization. Inclusive practices and shared social events strengthen acceptance and coherence. When workers experience support and feel their contributions matter, they are more satisfied and less likely to leave.By categorising social well-being into distinct profiles, organisations can move beyond one-size-fits-all approaches and develop targeted interventions — addressing the specific needs of each group to foster a more positive, inclusive, and productive work environment. In an era of social fragmentation and technological disruption, prioritising social well-being is not only a human imperative. It is a strategic one.
