Well-being through learning: a systematic review of learning interventions in the workplace and their impact on well-being

ABSTRACT

The view that learning is central to well-being is widely held and the workplace is an important setting in which learning takes place. Evaluations of the effectiveness of well-being interventions in work settings are commonplace, but to date, there has been no systematic review of the effectiveness of learning interventions with regard to their impact on well-being. The review synthesizes evidence from 41 intervention studies, and although no studies report a negative impact on well-being, 14 show no effect on well-being, with 27 studies having a positive impact. We classify the studies according to the primary purpose of the learning intervention: to develop personal resources for well-being through learning; to develop professional capabilities through learning; to develop leadership skills through learning; and to improve organizational effectiveness through organizational-level learning. Although there is an abundance of workplace learning interventions, few are evaluated from a well-being perspective despite the commonly held assumption that learning yields positive emotional and psychological outcomes. The evidence indicates an important gap in our evaluation of and design of workplace learning interventions and their impact on well-being, beyond those focusing on personal resources. This raises important theoretical and practical challenges concerning the relationship between learning and well-being in the context of professional capability enhancement, leadership capability and organizational learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Workplace learning
• training
• well-being
• HRM
• personal resources

Acknowledgements

This work is part of the Work, Learning and Well-being programme of the What Works Well-being Centre (www.whatworkswell-being.org). We acknowledge the support of our funding partners, administered through the Economic and Social Research Council. We also wish to thank Constanze Eib, Ana Sanz-Vergel and Mariella Miraglia for their help in reviewing non-English language publications and Elaine Farndale, Anna Robinson-Pant and Alan Rogers for providing feedback on our initial search terms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Supplementary material also includes harvest plots and succinct summary tables, which were developed from the original more extensive data extraction sheets and are available because they were too substantial to include in the review. They can be accessed at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322399495_Supplementary_material_-_Well-being_through_learning_A_systematic_review_of_learning_interventions_in_the_workplace_and_their_impact_on_well-being .

2. See Tables 2(a–d) in the supplementary material document for further detail on individual studies.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant number ES/N003586/1).