Employee Well-being Priorities in New Zealand Businesses: A Document Analysis of Publicly Espoused Human Resource Management Policies

Abstract

Employee well-being is increasingly presented as a strategic priority by New Zealand's largest organisations, yet little is known about what these public commitments actually encompass, how well-being is framed, or whose interests they primarily serve. This dissertation analyses HRM policy documents from all 200 organisations in the 2025 Deloitte Top 200 using Guest's (2017) HRM Wellbeing Analytic Framework and Warr's (2007) Vitamin Model.

Two research questions guided the study: which dimensions of employee well-being appear in these public documents, and how is well-being positioned within HRM, strategy, and governance? All 200 organisations had at least one relevant publicly accessible document, though depth of disclosure varied widely. Documents were analysed using the CARDA framework together with reflexive thematic analysis.

Three dimensions were universal: physical security, skill development, and social contact each appeared in all 200 organisations (100%). Mental health appeared in 140 organisations (70%) but was typically framed as protecting organisational performance rather than supporting employees. Cultural well-being, grounded in Māori concepts such as hauora, appeared in only 58 organisations (29%), highlighting a notable gap given Aotearoa New Zealand's legislative and demographic context. Overall, 60% of organisations framed well-being primarily as beneficial for organisational performance, 31.5% valued employee flourishing in its own right, and a smaller group presented well-being mainly as a legal compliance issue.

The study makes five contributions: Warr's model reveals a gap between the conditions that support employee well-being and what organisations publicly disclose; Guest's distinction between mutual and organisational gains holds well as a classification but many documents blend both registers; board-level oversight was associated with stronger public commitments to well-being; the model struggles to capture the relational and collective nature of hauora; and combining CARDA with reflexive thematic analysis proved effective for analysing employee well-being across a large document set. Together, these findings provide practical guidance for HR practitioners, policymakers, and organisational leaders seeking more authentic and culturally grounded well-being practices in Aotearoa New Zealand.