A wellbeing standard being developed in working group 4.
What is Wellbeing? How to promote individual wellbeing to improve quality of life and keep dignity through lifetime?
WHO defines Health “as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” in its constitution in 1946. WHO also defines healthy ageing as “the process of developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age.” OECD presents framework for measuring wellbeing with three distinct components: current well-being, inequalities in well-being outcomes, and resources for future well-being.
We can find several important dimensions of wellbeing from these definitions and a framework such as individual-social, current-future, state-process, inequality-diversity. WG 4 shall solve this multi-dimensional puzzle to create a standard for wellbeing promotion.
Japan, the proposer of this new work item, is a leading country of Ageing Society. The Japanese proposal, which is for promoting health and productivity, is based on practices in organizations such as companies that are well conscious of aspects of their members’ wellbeing.
The challenge of WG 4 is to expand beneficial parts of the Japanese practice in organizations to the world including local communities. WG 4 also seeks best practices in any organizations, governments, and communities to share their knowledges in the world.
The standard WG 4 developing will;
- provide accessibility to wellbeing promotion services, which shall be described in the standard, for diverse populations in a local community at the level that organizations provide to their workers.
- ensure accessibility to such services for residents in a local community by people who are capable to promote wellbeing based on their professions and their experience of leadership mastered in a organization.
- make more individuals actively accessing such services by sharing and internalizing wellbeing-promoting functions in a local community. This is a system that companies already have for their workers, but local communities are difficult to have it for their citizens.
- provide framework of wellbeing promotion with data and evidence-based approach