Wellness or Wellbeing

I had an interesting request the other day to review a wellbeing policy. Great I thought, and loaded the document from Outlook. The reading was, I thought quite painful. Why I hear you ask, well, it was because the author had used wellness throughout the document, with an occasional wellbeing thrown in. For me they are not interchangeable, wellness is part of wellbeing. It's on the continuum of health from illness to wellness. The policy was aimed at a corporate client, but failed to understand many of the basics. Firstly policy sets out intention and direction, the "work" to implement follows and is the actions that result. Such actions follow the policy.

Making organisations responsible for wellness is a tall order, but it is possible within wellbeing.

The words we use are important, many words used in the wellbeing arena are of the wrong intention, they signal power and often show contradiction.

Be careful with the words!