Wellness as Capacity: Enabling Untapped Potential
Contributors: Dr. Victoria Verlezza , Carolyn Burr, Jose Francis Llenado
Wellness is more than just being free from illness; it is the ability to remain dynamic and adapt effectively, enabling a person to thrive in complex and changing environments.
Over recent years, the importance of wellness has become more prominent, shaped by global events (notably COVID-19) that highlighted wellness as a crucial factor for sustainable performance in organisations (Ateneo Cord 2020; Peters, Dennerlein, Wagner, Sorensen, 2022).
The shift in perspective - viewing wellness as a capacity rather than a static state aligns with contemporary biopsychosocial (BPS) thinking (Tripathi et al., 2019; Robinson, 2019). Rather than treating wellness as an individual’s private concern, contemporary approaches emphasize its integration into organizational culture and strategy (Peña et al., 2024)
Conceptualizing wellness as capacity
Wellness can be defined as the capacity to feel stable, safe, satisfied, and manage with the inevitable challenge that comes from day-to-day living (Holford 2008; 2012), Through this definition we can surmise that wellness is more a capacity rather than a state of being; this capacity enables one to thrive in the pursuit of the goals one is aiming at. Thus, it is a crucial element that enables one to draw out one's untapped potential.
The conceptualisation of wellness as an adaptive capacity comes from the paradigm that wellness is (1) an integrative constellation of biological, psychological, and social/environmental dimensions (Engel,1977; Tripathi et al., 2019), (2) wellness is a function of a person-in-situation and ecosystem, and the facilitation of each element allowing for harmony in their lived experience of a situation (Tripathi et al., 2019; Bronfenbrenner 1994; Crawford, 2020), and (3) the presence of resources that enable one to buffer and cope with the demands of an environment (Demerouti et al 2011, 2013). Based on these elements of conceptualisation, wellness enables one to find one’s reservoir of strength and capacity by securing or managing conditions that may limit strengths (i.e. lifestyle challenges, situational difficulties, general functioning etc), In principle, addressing these challenges frees the individual to pursue directions that enable them to actualise their potential.
The body of literature on organisational wellness programs
Classically, organisational programs that enable wellness have been generally known to reduce absenteeism and increase job satisfaction (Parks 2008). Though the effects are generally acute, the positive outcomes can be seen in a worker’s work ability, wellbeing, perceived general health, work performance, and job satisfaction. They enable the reduction of psychosocial stressors, burnout, and sickness absence (Shiri et al, 2023). Positive effects have also been seen in domains of mental health, physical activity, and weight management, (Ametabolian et al, 2025).
Overall, it has been well-known and documented in the evidence-based bodies of literature that fostering the practice of wellness in organizations has enabled members to foster engagement and satisfaction that the work. (Parks 2008; Richemond et al. 2020; Peña, 2024; Ateneo CORD, 2017; 2020)
Leadership in Wellness - Wellness as a Systems Outcome: Reframing Organizational Health through Ecological Layers
Employee wellness is often misconstrued as an individual trait or a workplace perk. However, a systems-oriented perspective reveals wellness can be understood also as an emergent property of a living organisational ecosystem - shaped by policies, culture, workflows, resources, and interpersonal dynamics. Leadership, in this context, is not about delivering wellness to individuals, but about designing and shaping conditions that make wellness sustainable. Drawing from Ecological Systems Theory (EST), this article presents how wellness is co-produced across nested organisational layers and how leadership can activate levers at each level to foster adaptive, equitable environments. (El Zaatari, Maalouf, 2022; Kemp, 2015).
At the microsystem level, wellness is influenced by immediate relational contexts such as team norms, managerial behaviors, workload clarity, and psychological safety. As Schein and Bennis (1965) notes when outlining the role of psychological safety in his work on personal and organisational change, “psychological safety reduces a person’s anxiety about being basically accepted and worthwhile” (p10). These proximal interactions form the bedrock of daily experience can be seen to directly affect an employee’s sense of stability and support. The mesosystem encompasses the connections between these microsystems, such as cross-departmental feedback loops, and the alignment between onboarding processes and performance management. These relational bridges may either reinforce or erode coherence across an organisation.
The exosystem includes indirect structures like HR policies, vendor benefits, technology constraints, and facilities decisions. Though not always visible to employees, these external elements shape access, equity, and operational friction. The macrosystem reflects deeper cultural values and power dynamics - norms around urgency, beliefs about productivity, and systemic influences of race, class, gender, and disability. Finally, the chronosystem captures the temporal dimension: change saturation, organizational restructures, cumulative stress-repair cycles, and career life stages. Together, these layers interact to produce or inhibit wellness.
Adaptability, often framed as an individual virtue, is better understood through a systems lens as a relational capacity enabled by environmental settings. When organisations provide clear role expectations, predictable rhythms, slack in staffing and tools, fairness in decision-making, and trauma-informed communication, individuals are more likely to adapt not because they are inherently resilient, but because the system itself is adaptive.
Leadership plays a critical role in tuning these layers. At the micro level, leaders can build stronger teams by modelling boundaries, normalising check-ins, clarifying expectations and supporting other with timely feedback. At the meso level, they can design clean handoffs, align incentives, and co-create shared awareness of urgency and completion. Exosystem interventions include co-developing policies with users, ensuring equitable access to benefits, and investing in accessible tools and spaces. As we move through the next wave of AI this also presents great opportunities for developing exciting and novel accessible tools. At the macro level, leaders must challenge hustle and hero narratives, and shift metrics toward quality, learning, and inclusion. Chronosystem leadership involves pacing change, embedding recovery periods, and conducting retrospectives that lead to upstream policy shifts.
Equity emerges as a defining quality of a well-functioning system. A system cannot be considered “well” unless it distributes predictability, agency and protection in equally. Wellness initiatives that ignore power dynamics - such as class bias in scheduling, lack of disability access, or caregiving constraints risk generating harm under the guise of care.
To move beyond superficial wellness efforts, organisations are well placed if they measure what matters. This includes assessing load (capacity vs. demand, meeting debt), clarity (role definitions, workflow documentation), safety (psychological safety pulses, speak-up rates), access (benefit turnaround times, tool accessibility), repair (policy changes retrospectively), and fairness (promotion equity, bias in feedback, distribution of urgent work).
Practical entry points include mapping one process end-to-end across EST layers to identify friction. The removal of noncritical work before adding new priorities, defining urgency levels and recovery protocols, standardising meeting-free times and feedback cadences, and ensuring retrospective leads to tangible change. Codifying care through trauma-informed communication norms, flexible modalities, and accessible defaults reinforces the system’s capacity to support human wellbeing.
Ultimately, wellness is not a perk, and resilience is not a personality test. Wellness reflects the system behaving well - and leadership’s responsibility is to design the relationships, rhythms, and resources that make adaptation humane and sustainable.
Wellness in practice
Untapped Talent: Wholistic & Capacity Builder
Across diverse global workplace contexts, Untapped Talent has embraced a capacityfocused approach to wellness by creating personalized resources, products, and selfregulation tools. Untapped Talent develops adaptable solutions. Their approach aims not only to unlock individual capacity but also to empower people, to engage more fully and authentically in meaningful work.
Microsoft: Work-life integration & data-driven wellbeing
Responding to burnout reported by over 50% of employees (Microsoft Corporation, 2023), Microsoft built wellness into culture via flexible work, mindfulness tools, and personalized digital resources through Microsoft Viva (Boyd, 2025). By integrating data insights, Microsoft was able to tailor wellbeing support to individual and team needs, making wellness both personal and measurable. This strategy led to tangible outcomes including reduced healthcare costs, higher employee morale, and sustained productivity.
SAP: Mindfulness & resilience
SAP’s Global Mindfulness Practice reached thousands. The SAP initiative provided mindfulness-based training, digital resources, and workshops to support emotional regulation and resilience. In its early implementation in 2015, Participants reported lower perceived stress and better emotional regulation. Specifically, the program bolstered employee wellbeing enabling an increase in happiness and wellbeing (by 8%), meaning and satisfaction (by 10%) focus (by 12%), creativity (by 11%) after the 4 week to 6 month course. The significant increase in working capacities though the program has lead to significant increases in productivity and innovation (SAP Mindfulness Workplace community; Bostelmann 2020) his was done with the intent of cultivating better emotional intelligence among employees, through proactively and deliberately adopting a culture of wellness with the goal of healthier and happier employees and shaping the work environment to allow people to thrive. (O’Keefe; Klose, 2023)
From Theory to Untapped Potential
Research and practice come together on one crucial insight, when wellness is conceptualized as capacity, it empowers individuals and organisations to flourish.
Organisations are now moving beyond wellness as a benefit and towards embedding capacity-focused approaches - helping individuals build resilience, self-awareness, and adaptability to thrive amid change.
This approach transforms wellness from being about mere survival to becoming a catalyst for unlocking untapped human potential. Thus, wellness goes beyond simply being free from struggle or illness. It is the subtle release of hidden abilities within each of us. In nurturing wellness, we create the conditions where untapped potential can truly emerge, take shape and flourish.
Contributors
Dr. Victoria Verlezza: PhD in Human Development, Masters in Education, Coaching Certifications
Carolyn Burr: Master of Leadership, Graduate Diploma in Counselling, Bachelor of Arts.
Jose Francis Llenado, Psychologist, MA in Organizational Psychology, BS Psychology
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