Thriving teams: creating the conditions for a sustainable working life

What creates wellbeing at work?

Wellbeing at work is more than individual health habits, wellness allowances and occasional activities. Those can be valuable, but they don’t tell the whole story. How we feel at work is also shaped by how the work is organised, how we collaborate and how much influence we have over our working day.

Aumla’s perspective is that wellbeing needs to be understood through three dimensions. Physical wellbeing covers movement, ergonomics, recovery and habits that support the body. Mental wellbeing covers stress, focus, recovery and the ability to handle everyday demands. Social wellbeing covers belonging, relationships, support and psychological safety.

These three dimensions are affected at three levels at the same time: the individual, the team and the organisation. An employee can know their own needs and use tools for recovery. A team can create support and clarity day to day. The organisation needs to provide reasonable resources, working structures and leadership that make sustainable choices possible.

It is in the interplay between dimensions and levels that the conditions for wellbeing at work are created.

Wellbeing is created at three levels

At the individual level, it’s about understanding your own needs and signals – noticing when concentration drops, when the pace has been high for too long or when recovery isn’t enough. Individuals can practise regulating stress, making conscious priorities, communicating their needs and taking responsibility for what they can actually influence.

At the team level, much of the daily work environment is shaped. Communication, support and shared prioritisation affect how workload is experienced and handled. In sustainable teams you can say that there isn’t enough time, ask for help and discuss what needs to be done first. Psychological safety makes it easier to raise problems before they grow.

At the organisational level, the framework is set. This is where responsibility lies for clarity, resources, the work environment, ways of working, culture and structures – how goals are set, how responsibility is divided, how decisions are made and whether the workload matches the available time and skills.

A sustainable working life can therefore not be placed entirely on the individual. When an employee is expected to handle an unsustainable workload through better planning or more recovery exercises, the focus shifts away from the conditions that need to change. Individual tools are needed, but the team and the organisation must do their part.

What creates wellbeing in the workplace?

The talk Thriving Teams highlights five areas that together shape the conditions for health and wellbeing at work:

• Purpose and meaning: understanding why the work matters and how your contribution helps.
• Physical work environment: a workplace that supports the body, concentration and the ability to do the job well.
• How the work is set up: roles, priorities, responsibilities and resources that make the working day manageable.
• A supportive culture: people can ask for help, share challenges and show appreciation.
• Policies and guidelines: shared frameworks that support health, the work environment and clear expectations.

If one area falls short, it can affect the others. A meaningful mission can become hard to carry if resources aren’t enough. Clear guidelines matter little if the everyday culture makes it hard to express needs. That’s why wellbeing needs to be seen as a whole.

Meaningful, comprehensible, manageable

Three simple questions can help us examine the working day. Meaningful: why am I here? Comprehensible: what am I supposed to do? Manageable: how am I going to do it?

The questions show whether employees understand the mission, their role and how the work should be done. They also open up conversations about expectations, mandate, priorities and resources. When the answers are unclear, it creates uncertainty and unnecessary strain. When they are clear, it is easier to direct energy to the right things – and to notice when the conditions aren’t enough.

Stress at work: when demands exceed resources

Stress at work can be understood as an imbalance between the demands we face and the resources we have. Demands can be a large workload, time pressure, responsibility and complex tasks. They can also be frequent interruptions, conflicting expectations or situations where everything feels equally important.

Resources are what help us meet the demands: time, support from colleagues and managers, clear priorities, the right skills, influence and room for recovery. Knowing what can wait when time runs out is a resource too.

So workplace stress is not only about how one person reacts. Individual experience and strategies matter, but workload is also shaped by how work is planned, led and distributed. To prevent stress, we need to examine both the person’s needs and the organisational conditions.

Recovery as part of a sustainable working life

Recovery doesn’t only need to happen after the working day. It also needs room during the day. Short micro-breaks, a moment of movement, conscious breathing or presence can help break a high pace. Doing one thing at a time and protecting time for focus can reduce the sense of fragmentation.

Prioritisation is also an important part of recovery at work. When everything doesn’t fit, it needs to be possible to discuss what to do now, what can wait and what should be dropped. Employees need to be able to say when the workload is too high without it being seen as a personal failure.

At the same time, recovery mustn’t be reduced to yet another task on the individual’s list. An organisation that wants sustainable ways of working needs to ask: what conditions do we create for recovery during the working day? Part of the answer lies in planning, staffing, meeting culture, availability expectations and the chance to work with focus.

For organisations that want to work in a more structured way, Aumla’s offering on workload, recovery and sustainable working life describes how individual tools can be linked to working conditions.

How can teams reduce stress?

Teams can make a big difference through concrete everyday behaviours. It often starts with noticing each other and daring to ask. A colleague can offer support or ask: what can I do to make things easier for you right now?

Talking openly about stress and workload makes it easier to catch situations early. The conversation doesn’t need to be about private details. It can be about workload, interruptions, unclear assignments and tasks competing for the same time.

Teams can also help each other prioritise when everything feels important. Which tasks are most urgent? What can wait? Can something be redistributed or simplified? When prioritisation becomes a shared responsibility, it reduces the risk of each individual trying to solve an impossible equation alone.

Talks and workshops can create a shared language for those conversations. Read more about Aumla’s keynotes and workshops.

Psychological safety and social health

In Aumla’s model, social health is about the quality of our relationships, a sense of belonging and the chance to be part of the community at work. It isn’t created by a single activity. It is shaped in everyday conversations and behaviours.

Psychological safety

Psychological safety means people can express thoughts, questions and needs. We strengthen it by listening and showing understanding, sharing challenges and respecting stated boundaries. When it’s possible to say that something is hard or unclear, problems become easier to handle together.

Appreciation

Appreciation can be simple and concrete. We can notice each other’s efforts, give positive feedback and say thank you. It helps people see how their work contributes and shows that effort doesn’t go unnoticed.

Joy and community at work

Joy and community grow when the team notices successes, gives recognition and makes room for connection. Celebrating what works doesn’t have to be big. It can be pausing after a delivery, highlighting good collaboration or sharing what the group has learned.

A supportive culture is often built from small, repeated behaviours. How we listen, ask, prioritise and show appreciation shapes social health at work.

Wellbeing starts with me, but is created together

The individual knows their needs, regulates stress and takes responsibility for what they can influence. The team communicates, supports each other and creates safety. The organisation creates clarity, resources, structures and culture.

No level can carry the whole responsibility alone. A well-functioning organisation needs to give individuals room to act, teams ways to collaborate and managers the mandate to act on barriers in the work environment. At the same time, each person needs to contribute by expressing needs, showing consideration and taking responsibility in the shared work.

Wellbeing starts with me, but is created together.

That is the starting point for sustainable teams. It moves the conversation from who should solve the problem to how each level can contribute its part.

From individual stress management to sustainable working life

Individual tools for stress management and recovery can be valuable. They can help a person notice signals, pause, focus and make more conscious choices. Digital learning can also make knowledge and practical exercises available over time. Read more about Aumla’s digital programmes.

Long-term work also needs to cover the work environment, workload, how work is organised, leadership, culture and other organisational conditions. Only when individual tools meet working structures can wellbeing become an integrated part of everyday work.

So the question isn’t only what employees can do to manage their stress. We also need to ask what we can change in ways of working, leadership and the work environment to create better conditions for recovery and a sustainable working life.