Last month, I spoke with a senior healthcare leader who was deeply frustrated. Her organisation had just introduced their third wellbeing initiative in two years. It included meditation apps, resilience workshops and individual coaching. Participation was high. Feedback was positive.

However, staff were still leaving in droves.

"What are we missing?" she asked.

There are several ways to answer this question. Some helpful thinking comes from Ann Wilcock, one of Occupational Therapy’s most influential thinkers, and from the recently released 2026World Happiness Report.

Belonging as a critical dimension of well-being

Earlier in my career, I was strongly influenced by Wilcock’s well-being framework of doing, being and becoming, which later evolved to include belonging.

Doing is the active, observable dimension; the meditation app, the workshop, the new process or well-being activity.

Being is about who we are and how we are able to stay present while doing our work.

Becoming is our sense of growth, possibility and movement towards something meaningful.

Belonging is our experience of connection. It is the feeling that we are accepted, valued and part of something with other people, not just performing a role alongside them.

Most workplace wellbeing strategies live entirely in doing. They ask a person to do something differently: breathe differently, think differently, cope more effectively.

These supports may be genuinely helpful. But they cannot, by themselves, create the conditions in which people feel safe, valued and connected.

That senior leader’s workplace wasn’t necessarily implementing the wrong initiatives. They were trying to address a relational and systemic problem largely through individual activities.

What the data is telling us

The 2026 World Happiness Report puts some hard numbers behind this occupational thinking and what a lot of us have felt for a while. Australia has fallen from 10th to 15th place in the global happiness rankings over the past two years.

The report focuses heavily on social media and youth wellbeing. It is not specifically a study of workplace belonging. However, its findings reinforce something happiness research has demonstrated repeatedly: trust, social connection and strong emotional bonds are deeply important to wellbeing.

Not individual coping strategies. Not personal resilience. Connection. Belonging.

For those of us leading in healthcare and community services, this has profound implications.

Think about your own teams. How many of your staff feel genuinely connected to their colleagues? How many experience true belonging at work? Not superficial team-building exercises or forced fun, but the deep sense that they matter, that they're valued, that they're part of something meaningful.

Naming the pattern

I have written before about the wicked problems of caring work.

When we respond to a systemic gap with an individual solution, we ask the person to carry what the system has not held.

We give someone a meditation app and ask them to manage alone within a workplace that may offer too little time, connection, recognition or psychological safety.

This individual focus also shapes what organisations measure. Ask many leaders what they are tracking and you will hear about stress scores, EAP utilisation, personal leave and participation in wellbeing programs. These things are relatively easy to count.

Belonging is harder to see.

Jennifer Moss has argued that burnout needs to be understood as a workplace issue, rather than simply a problem located within individual employees. Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety examines a related dimension: whether people believe they can ask questions, acknowledge mistakes, offer ideas and raise concerns without fear of embarrassment or punishment.

Psychological safety is not the same as belonging, but it helps create the conditions in which belonging can grow.

Australian research into psychosocial safety climate adds another part of the picture. Workplaces that prioritise psychological health are better positioned to reduce the human and organisational costs associated with distress, disengagement, absenteeism and presenteeism.

The cost of disconnection is real. It is simply difficult to see until people withdraw, become unwell or leave.

What belonging looks like in a team

You may not need another survey to begin noticing it.

At your next team meeting, observe who speaks and who remains silent. Notice whose ideas are explored and whose are quickly passed over. Pay attention to what happens when someone admits they are struggling, disagrees with a senior person or says they have made a mistake.

Consider when someone was last acknowledged for who they are and how they contribute, rather than only for what they produced.

Notice whether people check in with one another after a difficult day. Whether newcomers are actively included. Whether difference is welcomed or merely tolerated. Whether people feel they have a place in the team even when they are not at their most productive.

These small moments may tell you more about your team’s relational health than an annual engagement score.

The question is not whether we should stop offering individual wellbeing support. It is what becomes possible when we build being, becoming and belonging alongside doing.

Building belonging deliberately

The teams that thrive over the next decade will not simply be those with the most resilient individuals.

They will be the teams in which people do not have to earn their right to belong through constant performance. Where connection is not left to chance. Where leaders understand that belonging is built through everyday experiences of inclusion, contribution, safety and care.

What might change if your organisation measured belonging with the same seriousness that it measures clinical outcomes?

And what small relational moment did you notice this week that you might otherwise have allowed to pass?

That may be where the real work begins.

References

Becher, H., & Dollard, M. (2016). Psychosocial safety climate and better productivity in Australian workplaces. Safe Work Australia. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/psychosocial-safety-climate-and-better-productivity-australian-workplaces-costs-productivity
Chapman, S., Kangasniemi, A., Maxwell, L., & Sereneo, M. (2019). The ROI in workplace mental health programs: Good for people, good for business. Deloitte. Canada https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ca/Documents/about-deloitte/ca-en-about-blueprint-for-workplace-mental-health-final-aoda.pdf
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Helliwell, J. F., Layard, R., Sachs, J. D., De Neve, J.-E., Aknin, L. B., & Wang, S. (Eds.). (2026). World Happiness Report 2026. University of Oxford: Wellbeing Research Centre.
Moss, J. (2019, December 16). Burnout is about your workplace, not your people. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/12/burnout-is-about-your-workplace-not-your-people