Contextual and Institutional Factors as Societal Influences on Employee Wellbeing: Examining Employee Wellbeing Practices in Response to the Pandemic in English Healthcare

ABSTRACT The COVID‐19 pandemic has negatively affected employees' physical, psychological, and economic wellbeing, leading to significant workforce challenges, despite practitioners' rapid implementation of several HR practices aimed at enhancing employee wellbeing. Based on surveys and interviews with 65 HR and Nursing Directors and employee representatives, and other qualitative data, this article aims to explain this puzzle by exploring which wellbeing practices were employed during and post the pandemic, and what challenges these responses generated for employees. While much scholarship has focused on organizational determinants of physical and psychological wellbeing, our findings show that the pandemic context and the healthcare sector's institutional characteristics influenced the wellbeing response and generated employee perceptions of staff inequality, and patient safety concerns. Furthermore, the wellbeing response addressed economic wellbeing only to a limited degree. The article contributes to the study of employee wellbeing by highlighting the importance of contextual and institutional factors as societal influences on wellbeing, and by conceptualising economic wellbeing as a significant wellbeing type.