Employees and leaders in contemporary for-profit South African organizations are facing a complex array of challenges that negatively affect their mental health and well-being. Occupational stress, workplace strain coupled with broader socio-historical factors continue to shape South African organizational life. Despite these issues, many organizational practices, specifically well-being initiatives remain grounded in Western-centric, individual-based models that fail to consider the lived realities and cultural contexts of the majority of South African employees.
The persistence of intergenerational trauma, inequality, and psychosocial risks within these spaces underscores the urgent need for organizations to move beyond individual-based models of well-being and embrace healing practices that are culturally grounded. This necessitates the need for healing practices that embodies African understandings of well-being centered in values such as interconnectedness or Ubuntu.
This presentation will share initial findings and thoughts from an ongoing study exploring the facilitators and barriers to healing and flourishing within South African organizations. It will examine the key challenges faced by both employees and leaders, while critically engaging with the limitations of current organizational well-being practices and policies. Overall, the presentation advocates for the development of contextually relevant, culturally embodied well-being and healing models that consider South Africa's diverse social realities.