Business of Wellbeing Guide 1 Year Anniversary

Last January, we launched ‘The Business of Wellbeing: a Guide to the Alternatives to Business as Usual’. It aimed to answer questions such as, “What exactly is a wellbeing economy and how can we put it into practice?”and, “What are the options and what is the path that makes sense in each particular business context?”  

Examples of Wellbeing Economy businesses outlined in this guide include:

Riversimple

A car manufacturer founded to ‘pursue, systematically, the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport’. Its business model aims to completely rethink the automobile sector, from open-source design to a circular economy approach to car use. The founders redefine ownership by including key decision-makers in their governance structure, not only investors but also the Environment, Customers, Communities, Staff, Investors and Commercial Partners. The Board’s duty is to balance and protect the benefit streams of all six stakeholder groups, rather than maximising the value of one.

Futuro Forestal

Futuro Forestal has become one of Latin America’s largest and premier providers of tropical hardwood, and worked on the reforestation of over 9000 hectares, the creation of 4,500 hectares of private reserves. Together with a number of local and international stakeholders and investors, Futuro Forestal developed the ‘generation forest’, a combination of the dynamics of natural forests and reforestation which absorbs carbon dioxide and ensuring biodiversity and recovers soils and water sources. It also helps to create income earning opportunities for locals. 

Throughout the year, we have used this guide to drive some of our engagement with our network. For instance, we hosted two events that presented the guide and discussed practical strategies that businesses could use to transition to a ‘Wellbeing Economy Business’. 

Currently, our Organisational Lead, Michael, is working with WEAll Scotland to deliver a training programme for Scottish businesses based on the guide. The first iteration of this training is concluding soon. We imagine this work will continue in other countries and hope to be able to adapt the training for their specific contexts. 

The guide outlines seven dimensions for ‘The Business of Wellbeing’, that Wellbeing Economic businesses embody: 

In addition to the celebration of the Business guide’s one-year anniversary and the work on Wellbeing Economy businesses it has helped move ahead, WEAll is also hosting a panel discussion on December 18th on the topic of the state of Wellbeing Economic businesses in the world today. 

The panelists are: 

Olga Koretskaya and Gus Grosenbaugh, the authors of an upcoming WEAll briefing paper called “Business in the Wellbeing Economy”. We will share the publication before the event.

Bonnie Clark is the CEO of This is Remarkable. She has hundreds of case studies of businesses in Scotland who have undertaken the initiative to become a wellbeing business. 

Michael Weatherhead is Organisational Lead and WEAll and spearheaded the publication of the WEAll Business Guide last year. 

If you’re interested in joining, please register for the event here.