#22 Eileen McNeely: Work and Well-Being During COVID

A shift toward care and empathy in the workplace, coupled with boosts in individual learning and creativity, could hint at lasting positive impacts on our post-COVID economy. In this episode, I talk to Dr. Eileen McNeely, Founder and Executive Director of the Sustainability and Health initiative for Netpositive Enterprise (SHINE) at Harvard University, about how the pandemic is affecting workers and the role of work in human flourishing. Eileen's research focuses on work as a platform to improve well-being, and she aims to shine a light on worker health and well-being in the business context.

Episode Video

Episode Audio

“Employers have such a footprint—not just on the environment but on people. The bright spots for workers during this pandemic have to do with relationships, this perception that management and coworkers actually care.”

— Eileen McNeely

Eileen McNeely, PhD, RNC, is Founder and Executive Director of the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an Instructor in the Environmental Occupational Medicine and Epidemiology program at Harvard. At SHINE, her team conducts research on the impact of work and business operations on individual, organizational, and societal well-being and flourishing. SHINE works with companies across all sectors as “living laboratories” to understand ways to positively impact the health of people and planet throughout the business value chain and is setting a bold vision for companies to factor their impact on health into all business decisions and business outcomes.

Dr. McNeely has extensive experience in the areas of environmental epidemiology, occupational and community health, health promotion, health services management and policy, and clinical practice as a nurse practitioner. Her research is currently focused on work as a platform to improve well-being, putting people and health at the center of corporate sustainability strategy and business culture. Using a rigorous and applied academic approach she aims to shine a light on worker health and well-being in the business context, and engages companies to understand the impact of workplace culture and practices on well-being. Her research is driven by combining mental, physical and psychosocial well-being metrics with business metrics such as retention, absenteeism, productivity, and performance to guide businesses to better understand the impact of the workplace culture on health. She has consulted both nationally and internationally on the impact of work on wellbeing and has authored many publications on this topic.