What Does Community Well-Being Mean in the University Setting? Staff Perspectives on Connection, Compassion, and Culture

Settings approaches are vital for positive health promotion at scale, including mental well-being. These can be designed to fit the local context where people live, work and study. Universities are large employers, and there is a drive for settings-based approaches in the workplace. Community well-being is about “being well together” as a collective, and can be applied to communities based on location as well as communities of shared values, interest and purpose, such as an organisation. Designing well-being initiatives and interventions could be informed through the community well-being lens. This study aimed to explore what university staff think are components of community well-being in the workplace. Semi-structured interviews guided by photo-elicitation (n = 15) explored the concept of community well-being. Three themes were created through Reflexive Thematic Analysis of the data: Social and Connected University; Physical Environment; and Compassionate and Supportive Culture. Activities, events and spaces that facilitate getting together, a campus and spaces within it that fosters identity and belonging to the university community, and a culture that nourishes connection, collegiality and participation are all key components of community well-being in universities. Understanding these components has implications for designing well-being initiatives that go beyond the individual. The components identified here also give insights into how community well-being could be operationalised in the workplace setting.