Public sector effectiveness: the role of wellbeing, and inclusive working environment

With growing demands to improve public service delivery, public employees are under increasing pressure. To examine how organisational pressures and culture impact performance, we build on the happy-productive worker thesis and examine the influence of deficiencies in wellbeing (i.e., stress and burnout) and inclusive working environment (i.e., discrimination, harassment, and bullying) on the effectiveness of public sector organisations. Using survey data from Australia’s public sector (n = 117,263), we found that stress, burnout, discrimination, harassment, and bullying significantly worsen the effectiveness of public organisations. The results show that failures in wellbeing and inclusion come at the expense of organisational effectiveness.