Beyond Burnout: Why the Future of Work Requires a Salutogenic Approach
Photo credit: Declan Sun / Unsplash
Author: Elizabeth Bachrad, MA, MSc
For decades, workplace health and wellbeing has largely been framed through the lens of risk. Organizations have become increasingly sophisticated at identifying psychosocial hazards such as excessive workload, job insecurity, poor management, workplace conflict, and burnout. These approaches have transformed occupational health by helping employers recognize and reduce many of the conditions that undermine employee wellbeing.
Yet despite growing investment in workplace wellbeing programs, stress, burnout and disengagement remain significant challenges across many sectors. The World Health Organization’s guidelines on mental health at work highlight the scale of work-related mental health risks, while Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace research continues to document widespread challenges with employee engagement.
What if we’ve become very good at measuring what makes people unwell, but not nearly as good at understanding what creates health?
A growing body of research suggests that while reducing harm is essential, it is only one side of the equation. If organizations truly want healthier, more resilient and productive workforces, they must also understand the conditions that actively create health. This is the central idea behind salutogenesis.
From Preventing Disease to Creating Health
Salutogenesis, first introduced in 1979 by medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, asks a fundamentally different question from traditional health science. Rather than asking “Why do people become sick?”, Antonovsky asked “Why do people stay healthy despite adversity?” His answer became known as the salutogenic model of health, a perspective that sees health as a dynamic continuum, influenced by the resources people have available to navigate life’s challenges. At the heart of this model is Sense of Coherence (SOC): the extent to which people experience life as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. This has profound implications for the workplace. Instead of viewing work primarily as a source of stress to be managed, salutogenesis invites us to see work as a potential source of health, resilience and human flourishing.
Healthy Work Is More Than the Absence of Harm
For many years, occupational health research has understandably concentrated on identifying harmful working conditions. This work remains critically important. Some examples, like poor leadership, excessive workload, low autonomy, bullying, and insecure employment, all contribute to poorer mental and physical health. However, research on applying salutogenesis in organizations suggests that removing risks alone does not necessarily create the positive resources and experiences associated with healthy work.
Research integrating salutogenesis with the Job Demands–Resources model shows that positive workplace resources do far more than buffer against stress. They also contribute to engagement, wellbeing and positive health outcomes. In other words, organizations should think not only about reducing demands, but also about strengthening resources. These resources may include supportive leadership, meaningful work, opportunities to learn, participation in decision-making, psychological safety, autonomy and positive social relationships.
Sense of Coherence: A Different Way of Thinking About Work
Antonovsky proposed that people are better equipped to navigate stressors and maintain health when they experience three conditions. These have also been examined through research on Work-related Sense of Coherence.
Comprehensibility – People understand what is happening around them. Within organizations, this means clear communication, shared goals, transparent decision-making, and role clarity.
Manageability – People believe they have sufficient resources to meet the demands placed upon them. These resources include supportive colleagues, capable leadership, flexibility, appropriate workload, adequate skills and opportunities to influence how work gets done.
Meaningfulness – People feel their work matters. Research on the meaning of work links meaningful work with motivation, engagement and positive work experiences, including the willingness to invest effort when work becomes challenging.
Collectively, these dimensions provide a powerful alternative lens for thinking about organizational health:
Do people understand what they’re trying to achieve?
Do they have the resources to succeed?
Do they believe their work contributes to something worthwhile?
Measuring What Creates Health
Collectively, we’ll need to overcome the challenge that many workplace wellbeing assessments remain heavily focused on psychosocial risks, symptoms, and adverse outcomes. Many excellent frameworks, including the NIOSH Worker Well-Being Questionnaire (WellBQ), the OECD’s framework for measuring well-being and the Healthy Work Survey, have significantly advanced our understanding of working conditions and worker wellbeing.
Yet there is room to develop approaches that more explicitly examine the positive organizational conditions that create health. Research from the Harvard Human Flourishing Program offers a valuable complementary perspective by examining multiple dimensions of human flourishing, including happiness, health, meaning, relationships, and material stability.
This represents an important opportunity for future research to explore whether a complementary, strengths-based approach can help organizations better understand how work promotes health, resilience, and performance across different occupations and employment arrangements.
Leadership Still Matters
Although salutogenesis focuses on the conditions that create health, leadership remains one of the most influential ways those conditions are shaped. This is where the work of Kim Cameron offers a valuable complementary perspective. Cameron’s research on Positive Organizational Scholarship suggests that positively energizing leaders cultivate relationships characterized by trust, compassion, hope, and purpose. Research on relational energy at work also links energizing relationships with employee engagement and job performance. His concept of the heliotropic effect, discussed in his work on positive leadership, describes the tendency of living systems to orient toward life-giving energy. This resonates with salutogenesis. By cultivating clarity, connection, meaning and positive relationships, organizations can strengthen resources that support individual wellbeing and organizational performance. Leadership, viewed through this lens, becomes more about cultivating the workplace resources that help people thrive.
A New Agenda for Workplace Wellbeing
As organizations navigate rapid technological change, demographic shifts, workforce shortages, and increasing concerns about mental health, the conversation around workplace wellbeing is beginning to evolve. Risk management will always remain essential, but reducing harm does not necessarily create health. Salutogenesis offers a broader and more hopeful perspective. It encourages organizations to ask how work can become safer, more meaningful, more coherent, and more energizing.
This thinking also aligns with the Global Wellness Institute’s Workplace Wellbeing Strategic Framework, which emphasizes the organizational conditions, leadership capabilities, and systems needed to support human sustainability. It reinforces the importance of embedding wellbeing into the design and everyday operation of work. As the future of work continues to evolve, we need to collectively galvanize organizations to intentionally create the conditions in which people, organizations and societies can flourish. The healthiest organizations will not simply be those with the lowest levels of burnout. They will be the ones that understand how health is created and make that their competitive advantage.
Further Reading
Antonovsky, A. Unraveling the Mystery of Health: How People Manage Stress and Stay Well (1987).
Bauer, G. F., & Jenny, G. J. (2022). Applying Salutogenesis in Organizations. In The Handbook of Salutogenesis.
Bauer, G. F., & Lehmann, A. I. (2025). Salutogenesis in the Context of Work.
Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The Job Demands–Resources Model: State of the Art.
Brauchli, R., Jenny, G. J., Füllemann, D., & Bauer, G. F. (2015). Towards a Job Demands–Resources Health Model.
Cameron, K. S. (2012). Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance.
Cameron, K. S., & Caza, A. (2004). Contributions to the Discipline of Positive Organizational Scholarship.
About the Author
Elizabeth Bachrad is a Population Health Researcher and Strategist working at the intersection of health, work, and systems innovation. Bridging academia, government and industry approaches, she advises governments and organizations globally in human capital management to promote sustainable health, economic development and community-level impact across the business ecosystem. She also sits on the NIOSH Healthy Work Design Council, the Executive Leadership Team with the Work Futures Initiative out of UC Berkeley, and the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative for the Global Wellness Institute. With a Master’s degree in Sport Psychology and Population Health, she is a mission-driven advocate for achieving health, equity, and environmental sustainability – The Triple Win.
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The blog submissions featured on this site represent the research and opinions of the individual authors. The Global Wellness Institute and the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative are not responsible for the content provided. We serve as an outlet for workplace wellbeing thought leaders to share their insights. The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Global Wellness Institute or the Workplace Wellbeing Initiative. Readers are encouraged to consult with a qualified healthcare professional for specific health concerns.
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