Based on research and practical experience we can say that it is proven that good leadership correlates with most beneficial factors in working life like good work well-being, low employee turnover, low sick leave, less early retirements, high productivity, and good profitability.

KivaQ has for two decades used our short KivaQ W questionnaire with only 7 standard questions (scale 1-10).

1: Have you enjoyed coming to work in the last weeks?

2: How meaningful do you regard your job?

3: How well do you feel in control of your work?

4: How well do you get on with your fellow-workers?

5: How well does your immediate superior perform as superior?

6: How certain are you that you will keep your job with this employer?

7: How much can you influence factors concerning your job?

We looked at all questionnaires in our reference material during 2013-first half of 2022. We currently have 26414 answers in this reference material.

When cross tabulating question 5 with question 4 we get a correlation.

Employees deeming their superior a good leader get on much better with their fellow-workers than those deeming their superior a bad leader.

Therefore, KivaQ has actively for two decades assisted organizations to increase their work wellbeing through joint participation. We think that also leadership should be developed together in each team with all members and the immediate superior attending. Having leadership education for only the leaders is not enough for implementing good leadership because the behavior of every individual in the team strongly affects the leadership.

KivaQ recommends: Enable joint development of leadership in every team throughout the organization not forgetting the management team.

In Finland there seems to be an important consensus around the individual worker´s ability to influence his/her own work. Most employees regard their job more meaningful if they can influence factors concerning their work. Job meaningfulness has positive effects on the employees´ work wellbeing, it prevents burnout and adds to the favourable pull factors to stay with their employer.

KivaQ has for two decades used our short KivaQ W questionnaire with only 7 standard questions.

1: Have you enjoyed coming to work in the last weeks?
2: How meaningful do you regard your job?
3: How well do you feel in control of your work?
4: How well do you get on with your fellow-workers?
5: How well does your immediate superior perform as superior?
6: How certain are you that you will keep your job with this employer?
7: How much can you influence factors concerning your job?

We looked at all questionnaires in our reference material during 2013-first half of 2022. We currently have 26414 answers in our reference material

The degree of meaningfulness increases linearly throughout the scale 1-10 when the possibility to influence factors concerning your job increases.
Therefore, KivaQ has actively for two decades assisted organizations to increase their work wellbeing and meaningfulness through joint participation. Implementing the creative and innovative KivaQ workshop results in concrete, custom-made, practical actions for improving wellbeing at work and a strong feeling of possibility to influence your job and work environment.
The top management´s task is to allocate resources to make it possible for employees and their immediate superior to work together to develop their own jobs.

KivaQ recommends: Even in bigger organization it is important to delegate the improvement of work wellbeing in the daily working life to the team level and to implement scientifically proved methods.

In Finland as in most other countries we have due to extensive research a consensus that good leadership is crucial in all organizations. Good leadership correlates with all positive benefits like productivity, profitability, lower sick leave, longer working life, work wellbeing, motivation etc. This list would be endless if everything is listed. Has anybody seen any negative features resulting from good leadership? Probably not. Would it be clever to direct more or maybe all resources on implementing methods that have both scientifically and in practice been proven to improve leadership and less on new research?

KivaQ has over two decades used our short KivaQ W questionnaire with only 7 standard questions.

1: Have you enjoyed coming to work in the last weeks?

2: How meaningful do you regard your job?

3: How well do you feel in control of your work?

4: How well do you get on with your fellow-workers?

5: How well does your immediate superior perform as superior?

6: How certain are you that you will keep your job with this employer?

7: How much can you influence factors concerning your job?

We looked at all questionnaires in our reference material during 2013-2022 with at this moment 26402 answers.

The perception of leadership correlates linearly with work wellbeing. Interesting is that the work wellbeing did not stop improving when you had reached a very good level (9 of 10). The linearity continued to the top of the scale 10.

KivaQ recommends: Engage the whole team in developing leadership together with the immediate superior to reach a possibly high average in question 5 (How well does your immediate superior perform as superior?).

A new study shows: Åland’s health and medical care (ÅHS) project, which was realized with the KivaQ method, had a positive long-term impact (4 years) on occupational well-being.

Background
There have been many projects to develop work well-being , but very little is known about the long-term effects.
In Åland, the ÅHS welfare area has functioned since 1994. The area is small and the number of staff is about 1000 people. ÅHS
KivaQ Oy Ab was founded in 2002 and specializes in the development of work.
With the KivaQ method (survey and workshop), good results have been achieved in and among other things, the City of Raseborg’s FEELIT project 2011-2013 .
After the project in 2015, the entire city staff responded to the KivaQ W survey. The development of work well-being among those who participated in the workshops was clearly better than among those who did not participate (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The development of working well-being on the City of Raseborg’s staff, after the FEELIT project.

Project
In 2017, ÅHS initiated a project to develop work well-being using the KivaQ method. At ÅHS, 8 units participated in the workshop activities and the other 39 units formed a control group. The entire staff responded to a KivaQ W survey on work well-being before the project began in 2017, after two years in 2019 and after four years in 2021.

Results
The intervention units, work well-being measured with the KivaQ W index was 6.87 ( scale 1-10) in beginning of the project , which is significantly lower than the control units 7.75.
After two years the intervention units well-being improved significantly from the original the situation to 7.52, and the result after four years was at the same level 7.44.
There was No statistically significant change in control groups ( Figure 2 ) .

Figure 2. Development of the KivaQ W index

Figure 3. only shows the baseline value compared with the long-term result after the fourth year.

Figure 3. Comparison between intervention units (8) and control units (39). The figure compares the starting position with the long-term result after four years.

The summary can be downloaded here

Conclusion
This project shows that positive long-term effects of the development of work well- being can be achieved with a method that structurally involves the staff in both planning, implementation and follow-up, develops the work concretely in accordance with the workplace’s needs and where management is visibly involved.
If you are interested in realizing a similar project in collaboration with KivaQ, please contact info@kivaq.fi