How do you develop a wellbeing framework?

There’s no single ‘right’ answer to this question. Generally, developing a framework involves the steps below. The Hub provides information to help you with each step. However, it’s how you go about each step that determines whether your wellbeing framework will become a central part of your community’s understanding of how it is going – or sits on a shelf gathering dust. This is why Step 5 shouldn’t be left until the end – at every stage, it is critical to think about how your framework can be designed to inform and support local discussions and decision making.

While some frameworks focus mostly on measuring and monitoring change in wellbeing, others set specific objectives for wellbeing, including goals for the desired state of each aspect of wellbeing. This is usually done when a wellbeing framework is specifically designed by an organisation that is seeking to identify goals for supporting quality of life, and track how well it is progressing in achieving these. Wellbeing frameworks can also be linked to broader legislation, policies or strategies related to supporting and enabling wellbeing.

Tips and tricks for developing a successful framework

To develop a successful framework, there’s a few things you should try to do. We’ve brought a lot of these ‘tips and tricks’ together into the Regional Wellbeing Frameworks Community Toolkit (coming soon!), which provides a guide for regional communities considering developing a wellbeing framework. Here’s some of the key tips:

1. Involve the people who need to see themselves in your wellbeing framework

A successful wellbeing framework is one that everyone in the community can connect to and see themselves in. To achieve that, it is critical to ensure involvement of all parts of the community in development of the framework, using a collaborative process.

Collaborating with the people a framework is intended to be about and for helps ensure the framework is both relevant and includes the right things, as well as ensuring it is used by those it is intended for. You can develop a wellbeing framework based simply on reviewing what other frameworks have done – but if you don’t involve the people the framework is for along the way, they may not feel a sense of ownership, connection, or interest in using the framework.

There are however some challenges in involving people in developing wellbeing frameworks. There’s a lot of consultation going on in rural communities, and many people are time poor. It’s important to collaborate – but equally important meaning to ensure the framework is developed in a way that doesn’t make unreasonable demands of people.

When developing frameworks in three Victorian communities, communities had been asked to participate in multiple consultation processes in a short space of time. Instead of jumping into an open consultation, we first reviewed what community members had said in past consultation processes that were asking about similar topics. We drew together common themes – and then consulted the community about whether these themes represented the things that mattered to their wellbeing. This made our consultation process shorter, and avoided asking community members to repeat things they had already told multiple other consultation processes. With many people having limited time, it’s important to identify when and how people can engage in co-design, collaboration and consultation processes.

2. Enable all people who should have a say to get involved

It’s easy to develop a framework that listens to the loudest voices in a community. Ideally, you want to identify the quietest voices, and ensure they are able to be heard as well. This means spending some time designing ways people can have a say about a wellbeing framework, that work for them. When beginning developing a wellbeing framework, spend time identifying who needs to be involved, and their preferred ways of being involved. Spend time talking to different groups to co-design how they prefer to be engaged, identify barriers to involvement, and identify strategies that work for different groups. You may find that some groups prefer to be involved by responding to text messages, while others want face to face discussions. Some may need verbal discussions, while others will prefer to provide written input.

3. Don’t ask for large time commitments

A fast way to burnout is to ask everyone in a community to spend a lot of time developing a wellbeing framework. Ensure that people can be involved without having to invest a large amount of time and effort. Typically, a core group of people will take carriage of developing a framework. It is important this group provides a range of opportunities for others to have a say, that don’t necessarily require a lot of time and effort. The following are just some examples of how you can provide opportunities for people to have a say and be heard in the development of the framework:

• Identify existing meetings and processes where you can add a ‘wellbeing’ item to the agenda and reach people without asking them to add an additional event; this means you can talk to people when they are already coming together, instead of adding another thing into their often busy calendars
• Organise yarning circles or community discussion groups, held at a range of times and locations to ensure different people can attend
• Spend time at aged care residences, schools and other places where specific groups are located
• Have a pop-up stall in local shops, or at sites commonly used for recreation, or at community events
• Send households addressed postcards with a stamp on them, asking them to write what is important to their wellbeing and post them back
• Develop a geo-fenced surveys where people have a survey request pop up on their mobile phone, asking 2-3 questions about wellbeing
• QR codes on posters at local shops and spaces, inviting people to scan and submit views online, or providing a phone number they can call
• Online discussion boards such as existing community online groups, or creating a new one for people to engage with.

4. Ask the what, why and how of wellbeing

Ask community members what is important to their wellbeing, why, and how. Ask them to describe this in their own words – and draw on these words to design the framework. By asking people to expand on why different things are important to their wellbeing, you can develop a richer understanding to inform developing the framework.

5. Draw on knowledge and ideas from other frameworks and wellbeing research

You don’t have to start from nothing when developing a wellbeing framework. Sometimes it’s helpful to draw on what others have done before you. There are hundreds of existing wellbeing frameworks – see some examples here. Sometimes, looking at what another community has designed can help trigger discussion in your community, about what is similar and different in your community. Similarly, when there is debate about which factors are most important to wellbeing in your community, it can be useful to identify what wellbeing research has found out about the importance of different wellbeing determinants, and how they influence personal and community wellbeing.

6. Include indicators in your framework even if data aren’t available

When designing a wellbeing framework, community members may identify factors important to their wellbeing for which there is no existing data. It can be tempting to remove these from your framework, because you can’t yet monitor them. However, this risks defaulting to using only the data currently available in your framework – which has often been collected for the purpose of tracking objectives not related to wellbeing, such as rates of economic growth. It’s important to include the things that are important to wellbeing  but which you can’t yet monitor as part of your framework. Doing this helps motivate action to find ways of collecting new information to help fill in the gaps you have identified.

A useful example of this is the Australian Capital Territory’s ACT Wellbeing Framework. When first developed, data were not available for several indicators identified as important to the wellbeing of people living in the nation’s capital. For example, ACT residents identified in consultation processes used to develop the framework that having access to arts and cultural events and activities was an important component of wellbeing. At the time, there was no agreed approach to measuring this indicator. However, the indicator was included, with work undertaken to explore and develop ways of measuring this indicator.

7. Make the framework a living initiative that is revisited over time

Communities change, and so does our understanding of the things affecting our wellbeing. After developing an initial wellbeing framework, make sure it can continue to be developed. In early stages, community members might review the draft framework and suggest improvements. After monitoring has started, there might be a review every 3 or 5 years, asking if any aspects of the framework need to be changed or updated.