The Measurement of Employee Well-being: Development and Validation of a Scale

Employee well-being is always found to be strategically relevant to organizations and individuals and has developed into one of the focal areas of research in the study of organizations. However, researchers have shown lots of interest in this field due to the lack of a proper theoretical model and comprehensive scientific tools to measure employee well-being at work. The present study aims at developing and validating a multidimensional scale of employee well-being through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Based on literature and feedback received from academicians and HR practitioners, a 62-item questionnaire of employee well-being was developed for empirical validation. The samples consist of academicians and HR professionals, and they were interviewed to gauge their understanding of employee well-being. Initially, opinions from various experts were obtained regarding the instrument and its proposed dimensions. Forty-nine items were generated from the initial study for further validation through field surveys. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was carried out on the data collected from 316 employees of the Indian service industry to examine the factor structure of the scale. It was revealed through the use of EFA that the new instrument of employee well-being is formed by four discreet factors: social well-being, psychological well-being, subjective well-being and workplace well-being. Finally, CFA was carried out using AMOS 20, 31 items were retained for the new scale of employee well-being. The theoretical and practical applications of the study are discussed in the context of employee well-being.