Executive summary. This chapter examines the importance of promoting employees’ wellbeing in African higher education institutions, where faculty and staff face particularly challenging working conditions, such as limited resources and technological disruptions. It highlights how building a positive work environment can help African HE institutions attract and retain the best talent and engage employees in pursuing their strategic goals. Using ESCA Ecole de Management as a case study, this paper demonstrates how the school has successfully leveraged wellbeing drivers such as culture, leadership, and collegiality to foster a positive and high-performing workplace. It also shows how the school has tailored its approach to wellbeing by considering the specific context and the aspirations of its stakeholders. In this regard, the article illustrates that wellbeing should be addressed through a combination of variables, including institutional purpose, strategy, culture, structure, and policies that the school’s stakeholders perceive as aligned with their personal values and benefits and as crucial for organisational performance. 

Key takeaways

• Employee wellbeing is especially critical in African business schools, where limited resources, rapid change, and demanding stakeholder expectations place significant pressure on faculty and staff, affecting performance, retention, and talent attraction.
• ESCA Ecole de Management shows that wellbeing can be strengthened through a systemic approach that combines positive culture, inclusive leadership, collegiality, professional development, and supportive working conditions.
• Effective wellbeing strategies must be context-specific, aligning institutional purpose, values, and policies with the needs and aspirations of employees rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions.

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Wellbeing in the workplace usually refers to employees’ feelings about their jobs and depends on the working conditions that organisations implement to ensure their mental, emotional, and physical health needs. De Neve et al. (2023) state that employee wellbeing at work is determined by three main dimensions, namely: 1) Job satisfaction (evaluative wellbeing) that is generally shaped by rational variables such as compensation (salary, benefits), job security, working hours, career development opportunities, etc. 2) The emotions we have in the workplace (affective wellbeing), based on the personal interactions employees have with others (supervision, support), the sense of belonging to their organisation, the inclusion and equity policies, and the stress related to their jobs (workload, risk, conflicts). 3) The purpose and meaning that we associate with our job (eudaimonic wellbeing), determined by the alignment employees perceive between their values and aspirations on the one hand and the company’s mission and culture on the other, looking for self-accomplishment and societal contribution.

Two main perspectives have determined the business response to such a dimension. The first one highlights the rights that employees should enjoy in their working environment as a response to regulative or normative pressures. This approach has focused on financial security and physical safety and emphasised the role that regulatory agencies and groups of interests play in shaping labour laws and rules to ensure job security for employees and in advocating for retirement plans and healthy workplaces. Ethical considerations have also encouraged organisations to meet social expectations and adopt responsible policies to avoid any negative consequences (talent loss, reputation, etc.). The second one, more proactive, emphasises the role of staff wellbeing in improving employees’ productivity and generating business performance. In this sense, organisations have been building working environments that ensure staff wellbeing at work, according to the happy-productive worker hypothesis.

According to Krekel et al. (2019), job satisfaction is strongly correlated with higher employee productivity, customer satisfaction, and business profitability. Organisations investing in wellbeing are noticing an increased productivity (up to 20%), according to the World Health Organisation (2022). They are also reporting a reduction in healthcare costs, as shown by the 2024 Society for Human Resource Management survey¹. A survey conducted in 2024 by SAP² among its employees demonstrates the correlation between its wellbeing initiatives and employee engagement and operating profits. Wellbeing at work also increases talent retention. In fact, 61% of employees surveyed by Gallup³ in 2023 said that wellbeing benefits were a major reason behind staying with their current employers. In addition, Ward (2022) argues that businesses with highly perceived workplace happiness are more able to attract job seekers. They are also more capable of building business relationships with their markets. 78% of consumers said that they have more trust in organisations that ensure wellbeing for their employees and are more likely to purchase their products and services, according to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer⁴. In the following, we focus on how business schools in Africa can leverage the concept of wellbeing to foster employees’ productivity, staff retention, and talent attraction, and successfully deal with the contextual challenges they face.

Why is Wellbeing in the Workplace Important for Business Schools?

Understanding wellbeing in business schools seems to be more important than in other sectors. Shen and Slater (2021) argue that working in higher education is one of the most challenging jobs. Universities and schools are characterised by high levels of stress and burnout (Jayman et al., 2022). The COVID-19 crisis has amplified this situation. Douglas et al. (2021) noticed that half of staff in HE have experienced poor mental health during the pandemic. Faculty and staff in business schools are experiencing significant and rapid changes in the nature of their work. They are dealing with: 1) a highly demanding and heterogeneous student body, 2) more technology-enabled learning experiences, 3) increasing corporate needs for up-to-date and best-fit business knowledge and practices. When unprepared, all these challenges expand faculty and staff workload and provoke further stress that leads to their fatigue and burnout in some cases.

First, faculty are teaching more challenging classes with academic disparities and learning losses that have been exacerbated by the Covid crisis due to unequal learning recovery. New generations of students are struggling with more stress and anxiety. They are also dealing with financial constraints and working longer hours to fund their studies. These challenges significantly impact student concentration, motivation, and participation in learning activities, and as a consequence, affect student academic progression and retention. Today’s students are also facing a digital overload that affects their focus time and leads to academic integrity issues related to AI plagiarism. Thus, faculty must be able to adapt their teaching content and methods. They need to leverage differentiated pedagogies with more engagement with students and to play additional roles as counsellors to effectively support students. In addition, faculty are delivering their courses to more global classes with students from various origins with different beliefs and academic backgrounds. They should be aware of cultural specificities and be able to facilitate intercultural integration between different nationalities. In some cases, they are also dealing with ethnic and religious tensions.

Secondly, educational technologies have brought novelties to the student learning experience by enabling hybrid and more engaging teaching methods through digital platforms, remote learning environments, gamification, simulations, etc. When these shifts are not well prepared and managed, they can be a source of uncertainty given the changes they bring to the faculty role. Knowledge is now instantly available in a more interactive and current format through digital platforms, especially with the arrival of artificial intelligence use. Thus, faculty are increasingly expected to play a facilitator role and act as a catalyst to ensure student engagement in the learning experience. They must align their pedagogical methods to the new student generations that are digital natives and more socially connected. They need to promote more experiential and active learning environments, keep updating their knowledge, and master digital tools as well. All these changes lead to uncertainties and doubts in faculty and staff mindsets and potential tensions between them and the incoming generations.

Finally, management practices are rapidly changing, and new roles are created within businesses, requiring new skills and techniques that leverage new realities such as digital transformation (data and AI, robotics, cybersecurity, etc.) and sustainability (ESG, diversity and inclusion, etc.). Employers, especially in emerging countries, are looking for high performing profiles and cutting-edge knowledge and techniques to solve complex problems and improve their global competitiveness. Accordingly, curricula are being reviewed, requiring a continuous professional and academic engagement from faculty. In this regard, applied research activities and corporate engagement are essential to faculty knowledge currency. To do so, activities such as writing business cases, conducting empirical studies on business-related issues, and contributing to continuous education are essential. In contexts such as Africa, this situation is difficult to deal with for faculty who should overcome the skills gap, teaching overload, and a lack of research recognition policies.

The need for wellbeing programmes is also becoming essential, given the new generation of staff and faculty who are joining business schools. The latter have a different perception of work and the workplace. According to Smith and Nicholas (2024), Gen Z workers prioritise mental health, diversity, and inclusion as well as work-life balance. The survey conducted on 1,234 individuals across four generations concluded that the Gen Z workers also experience higher levels of anxiety and burnout, especially due to the stress and insecurity generated by events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, political tensions, economic crises, etc. This is confirmed by LIMRA’s 2024 BEAT study⁵, which found that 91% of Gen Z workers face mental health issues from time to time. Also, new generations of workers are more driven by purpose and sustainability values, looking for more meaningful jobs and socially responsible organisations. The same study noticed that Gen Z workers are more sensitive to issues such as climate change and gender, and prioritise employers that foster diversity and inclusion.

In Africa, the situation is even worse, given the vulnerable economic and social conditions employees are living in, namely the lack of bureaucracy, unemployment, low income, lack of social protection programmes, gender inequality, poverty, unsafe working environments, and political instability, etc. Gen Z represents 70% of the population, among whom 71% are unable to pay their monthly bills, compared to 55% at the global level⁶. They prioritise fair pay, fulfillment, and a flexible and collaborative workplace. In Kenya, the Ministry of Health⁷ reported symptoms of mental health conditions among over 25% of individuals seeking outpatient services. According to the 2025 State of Global Workplace⁸, employee wellbeing in Africa appears as highly problematic since:

• Around 50% of employees experience stress on a daily basis.
• 72% are seeking a new job.
• 72% are struggling in their life
• 62% are not engaged at work

In African higher education institutions, faculty and staff are at high risk due to the heavy workloads and limited resources they need on the one hand and the lack of mental health programmes to support them on the other hand. The massification that African universities are facing makes working conditions for faculty and staff more difficult. The number of students in Africa has more than doubled between 2000 and 2021, and according to UNESCO⁹ is expected to significantly increase in the future. In addition to this, they are working in contexts where students are facing more mental health issues. A survey conducted among 17 universities in South Africa with a sample of 28,268 students reported a 30-day prevalence of 11 mental disorders among them, such as social anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and eating disorders (Bantjes, 2023).

African higher education institutions and business schools are also dealing with more complex realities, namely:

1. Highly demanding students looking for engaging learning experiences and for internationally recognised degrees, as well as a strong desire for study abroad and immigration opportunities. To attract and retain them, African business schools need to offer a high-quality education respecting international standards, which brings more complexity to the workplace by putting more pressure on faculty and staff. They are required to upgrade their competencies (teaching, research, services, administration, etc.) by leveraging more innovation, productivity, and engagement with students and peers.
2. Parents with a limited purchasing power but looking for a guaranteed return on investments and a social advancement for their children through high-quality education. To meet their expectations and budget, African business schools need to build internationally recognised HE quality while keeping the fees affordable. To reach academic excellence, they cannot import and imitate practices of Western universities, given the financial constraints and regulatory frameworks they have in their local environment. African business schools should implement context-related, effective and efficient operating models. They are requested to optimise their operations and reduce expenses with local qualified faculty and staff and best-fit processes.
3. A weak job marketplace unable to meet the incoming graduates in terms of number and quality of job offerings due to economic and political fragility. This puts a lot of pressure on African business schools, which are expected to ensure the employability of their graduates. They should prepare profiles with highly in-demand competencies to align with their professional community needs, and promote entrepreneurship education. In this perspective, faculty and staff should actively engage with businesses to maintain the currency/accuracy of their knowledge and, as a consequence, the operational readiness of their students for the business world. They should also contribute in a relevant way (applied research, consulting) to the development of their managerial practices to help businesses create more jobs and improve their competitiveness.
4. A lack of effective government agencies to support the local HE institutions’ educational offerings and control the quality of their programmes. On the one hand, African business schools are dealing with limited funding from their governments. For instance, research funding and scholarships in Morocco are still very low and not accessible to private institutions. To reach international standards, African business schools are required to do more with less, which leads them to ask their faculty and staff to be more productive and efficient than in other contexts. Additionally, business schools in Africa are often facing unpredictable regulatory conditions (changing norms, bureaucratic processes, etc.) that increase complexity in the workplace. Faculty and staff should show adaptability and flexibility to handle disruptive changes.

As a response, African business schools need to pay more attention to faculty and staff wellbeing needs to attract, engage, and retain the best talents.

• Wellbeing mechanisms are critical for business schools to acquire qualified faculty and staff, especially in a sector where job roles are specific and qualified profiles are rare. In the job marketplace, they are not only competing with other local HE institutions but also with international players, as well as commercial and industrial businesses, where compensation and benefits are more attractive. They need to fill positions that require specific competencies (pedagogical, research, etc.) with key and rare resources such as faculty.
• To sustain their competitiveness, business schools also need to put in place working conditions that help retain their best employees, especially for sector-related jobs that require a long-term collaboration relationship from faculty and staff to ensure a deep expertise and mastery of specific and complex tasks (enrolment, student and faculty management, research, etc.) as well as effective relationships with other stakeholders. Performing in business schools takes a longer learning curve from employees, and their outcomes need more time to be perceived. For example, a hired faculty member may need a few years to be highly productive in teaching and research activities.
• On the other hand, business schools should foster their employee’s wellbeing to ensure their motivation and engagement in their strategies. In this regard, establishing internal wellbeing mechanisms and programmes is key for staff and faculty productivity and business schools’ performance. These efforts are more critical given the emerging job-related challenges faculty and administrative staff should handle in African contexts.

Wellbeing Practices at ESCA Ecole de Management

ESCA Ecole de Management has experienced an impressive transformation journey since its creation, through multiple strategic projects and continuous innovation. Since its creation in 1992, the school has adopted an ambition to become a leading business school in Morocco and an internationally recognised African business school. One of the key drivers that the school opted for to succeed in achieving its vision is pursuing international accreditations (AACSB¹⁰, EFMD, AMBA¹¹). This pioneering strategic choice aimed to guarantee academic excellence for its stakeholders according to international standards by leveraging innovative pedagogies (experiential learning, gamification, etc.), research activities, internationalization strategies, cutting-edge technologies, modern facilities, etc.

Such a journey required key strategic transformations and effective change management practices as well as continuous capability building to guarantee business alignment, workforce productivity, process optimisation, and financial sustainability. Its human capital is one of the key determinants of the successful journey the school has. From this perspective, ESCA Ecole de Management has implemented various wellbeing mechanisms to not only attract new talented profiles but to essentially empower its existing workforce and align their performance to the newly established standards. More precisely, the school has built a configuration of dimensions that made its workplace attractive and supportive while being highly demanding in terms of standards to meet and objectives to achieve. In the following, we share key practices that the school has mobilized in a systemic way, such as culture, leadership, and collegiality, to build a positive workplace.

First, ESCA Ecole de Management has deployed a sustainable effort to develop a positive culture. According to Musaiger and Mosa (2022), a positive organisational culture is very important for individuals’ wellbeing at work by reducing uncertainty. It sets the values and beliefs that determine what is accepted and expected, and shapes employees’ behaviour within the organisation. A positive culture also fosters employees’ wellbeing in the workplace by reinforcing the sense of belonging and setting an inclusive working environment that promotes respect and collaboration, recognising individual efforts, and celebrating collective success (Musaiger and Mosa, 2022). In this regard, ESCA Ecole de Management has adopted, from the outset, a culture that promotes clarity and transparency about its purpose and requirements with the objective to reduce the uncertainty that could be related to decision-making and actions and guarantee psychological safety for its members.

On the one hand, by consulting its key stakeholders, ESCA Ecole de Management has defined and communicated a well-defined and relevant mission as well as an articulated strategy that sets clear expectations at the organisational and individual level. Clear guidance was also provided through detailed policies and procedures to share standards governing each process. An objective-based performance management system has been implemented to clarify the standards and outputs that each role in the school needs to reach. These efforts have allowed ESCA employees not only to associate their decisions and roles with the ‘raison d’être’ of the school but also to see meaning, consistency, and convergence in their actions; feel stability and security in their job roles; and make decisions and behave with confidence and trust.

In business schools, conflict situations generally occur due to a lack of understanding of responsibilities and communication between different units (IT, academic, student enrolment, etc.). At ESCA Ecole de Management, organising institutional events (strategic meetings, annual conventions, workshops, sports activities, etc.) and encouraging cross-functional committees for transformational projects helped reduce information asymmetry and divergence in strategy execution and promoted more collegial decision-making that ensures key stakeholders’ adherence and alignment. These initiatives promote wellbeing by minimising stress and conflict situations at work, which leads to employees’ psychological safety (Musaiger and Mosa, 2022).

On the other hand, when dealing with transformational projects, ESCA Ecole de Management has ensured an effective change management plan through active communication channels as well as effective coordination mechanisms (committees, minutes, etc.). By doing so, the school aimed at promoting the benefits of each strategic change and accompanying faculty and staff in delivering their tasks and achieving their individual objectives, in accordance with the shared mission and goals at the institutional level. For instance, to achieve its international accreditations, ESCA Ecole de Management has created a dedicated committee and associated documentation (handbooks, newsletters, etc.) to communicate the benefits of such a long transformational journey. It has also multiplied supportive mechanisms to equip faculty and staff with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively achieve their activities in alignment with international standards. Job-related training and coaching through live workshops and tutorials were offered to help faculty develop specific competencies related to pedagogy (digital learning, case method, business games, etc.) or research (PRJs, case writing, etc.).

In this perspective, ESCA Ecole de Management has reinforced its rewarding policies and professional development opportunities to recognise its faculty and staff achievements. Awards for activities such as pedagogical innovation, case writing, scientific publications, etc. Career progress opportunities and scholarships have been offered for faculty and staff looking to advance their careers and/or develop their skills. Exchange opportunities at the school’s level are also available to faculty and staff willing to live an international teaching and/or research experience. These efforts helped not only to motivate the school’s teams but also to strengthen ESCA employees’ sense of belonging to a community and being valued. For newly recruited members, onboarding processes have been offered to help them understand the school’s environment (values, programmes, policies, etc.) and meet with key stakeholders to guarantee a successful start within their new workplace. Well-documented communication and transparent information are key to building a culture that supports collegiality.

Having a gender equity policy and empowering women’s leadership at ESCA Ecole de Management has also been essential in establishing an inclusive workplace. Half of the school’s executives are women, which is not common in African contexts. Moreover, the school has succeeded in building a culture that encourages respect and support between individuals and allows them to positively interact and collaborate and manage working situations together with engagement and motivation. In this regard, the school adopted a code of ethics within ESCA Ecole de Management through a dedicated committee and specific activities (conferences, webinars, etc.) to help promote principles that ensure respect, solidarity, equity, and diversity and, by consequence, ensuring positive relationships between employees. This is very important in HE, where the outcome is the result of multiple human-human interactions (student-student, student-faculty, faculty-faculty, faculty-staff, etc.) as opposed to other sectors (commercial and industrial).

ESCA Ecole de Management has also deployed many efforts to reduce stress that could be related to its working environment. Implementing digital platforms played a key role in reducing time-consuming and stressful administrative activities by automating repetitive and standardised tasks and freeing up time for more valuable activities such as student support services and academic coordination. A student counselling centre was created to help students suffering from mental health issues and learning difficulties. This unit is also helping faculty deal with students having psychological and mental issues, as well as their parents. Parents in African contexts are actively involved in monitoring their children’s academic progress. In this perspective, staff in African business schools are handling not only relations with students but also with their parents, who ask for continuous interaction with the school throughout the different steps (admission, progression, grades, finance, graduation, etc.). These relationships are not always easy to manage given the parents’ expectations towards the school and the complex relationships they have with their children looking for more autonomy. Thus, a series of seminars and workshops is organised to share the best learning methodologies and techniques to help staff deal with stressful and conflictual situations.

Recently, ESCA Ecole de Management has built a modern urban campus in the heart of Casablanca Finance City, the most important financial hub in Africa. Thanks to the new campus, faculty and staff are enjoying very accessible facilities (public transportation, parking, elevators, etc.) with a dedicated lounge, meeting rooms, and coworking spaces. The campus is also surrounded by gardens, restaurants, entertainment places, and a shopping centre with sports facilities, a food court, cinemas, etc. Thus, the new campus has provided the school’s faculty and staff with not only a stimulating working environment but also an enjoyable life experience.

Finally, the school promoted work-life balance through flexible working conditions (remote, hybrid) for faculty and some administrative positions and allowed a flexible mode of collaboration through part-time contracts for some roles. Also, the school has improved social benefits for its employees, like private healthcare insurance and pension programmes, donations, access to sports facilities, scholarships, etc. This is very helpful in African contexts where social protection programmes and retirement plans are still weak.

The positive culture that ESCA Ecole de Management has promoted is reinforced by the leadership style of its top management. According to Hazzouri (2024), by fostering transparency, empathy, and communication, leaders can lower stress at work. Ayfer et al. (2022) emphasise that inclusive leaders promote wellbeing in the workplace by fostering employees’ uniqueness, sense of belonging, and recognition. Below are some examples of practices that the ESCA leadership team has leveraged to foster wellbeing at work.

• First, the Executive Committee of the school has promoted employee’s wellbeing by adopting a participative management approach to handle the multi-stakeholder reality they are dealing with. Involvement of various stakeholders and consensus-building is important for the school’s executives. The school’s leadership encourages bottom-up management and key stakeholders’ consultations. By participating in all key governance bodies (strategic council, academic committee, etc.), faculty and staff are actively shaping the school’s strategy and operations in terms of programme design, development and delivery, students’ services, etc. By doing so, the school aims to ensure stakeholder adherence and reduce divergences and tensions between stakeholders despite their different roles and expectations.
• Secondly, the ESCA leadership team has addressed diversity and inclusion as a positive attribute of the organisation by embracing employees’ differences (backgrounds, gender, etc.) and accommodating their uniqueness while building cohesive teams and strengthening the sense of community. To do so, the ESCA leadership team has been maintaining close relationships with the different teams and ensuring equitable and fair representation and reward systems. For instance, they have been promoting gender equity across different levels of the school. This dimension is very important in the African context and in Morocco in particular. Based on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index Report 2024¹² Morocco ranked 137th out of 146 countries in terms of gender parity. The ESCA Leadership team has also been attracting Moroccans with international backgrounds, which has brought a rich diversity to work. Finally, the school’s leadership team has adopted responsible management principles by promoting sustainability and ethical behaviours, in accordance with the values of the new generation of employees. They have been actively developing a culture of merit within the school to recognise individual contributions to the collective performance.
• Third, by being inspirational, the ESCA leadership team has been able to attract and gather diverse stakeholders (students, employers, staff, faculty, etc.) around the same ambition, being a leading business school in Africa, and helps them understand the importance of their respective roles in fulfilling it. In this perspective, the leadership team is actively communicating the school’s vision, advocating for a continuous improvement culture, and motivating the various key players. The entrepreneurial spirit of the school’s leadership team has been shared by most of the teams. The school’s leadership team has been promoting a culture where innovation and risk-taking with a Test-Learn and Improve approach are valued. For many members of the school, such an environment has been very stimulating, given the opportunities they enjoy creating value for themselves and for their community through various activities (teaching, counselling, research, consulting, etc.). They found in the school a context where their ambitions can be fulfilled, especially for those who studied and/or worked in Western countries and are used to more innovative, flexible, results-oriented, and supportive working environments.

Finally, the ESCA leadership team has continuously been supportive of the school’s members when they need guidance or emotional support and empowering them through professional development opportunities. So, they can deal with new realities impacting the learning methods, the students’ expectations, and business requirements. The school’s leadership team is continuously working with operational teams to ensure the effective and efficient delivery of the school’s strategic projects. They have encouraged continuous learning and improvement within the school.

Finally, collegiality in business schools plays a key role in supporting individuals to achieve their personal and institutional goals. It reduces the feeling of isolation that individuals can experience, especially when they are newly recruited or struggling with complex tasks. For instance, dedicating a space where faculty and staff meet with peers and multiplying events where they are gathered play a key role in developing collegial relationships at ESCA Ecole de Management. Also, offering knowledge-sharing opportunities through workshops and regular meetings helped its faculty and staff address their challenges and identify solutions to their problems. Processes that encourage peer mentoring and co-working were very effective in leveraging collegiality to ensure wellbeing in business schools. Initiatives such as assigning a mentor to a newly recruited colleague or encouraging joint research projects between senior and junior faculty also appeared very helpful.

To achieve research productivity according to international standards, ESCA Ecole de Management has made the choice to upgrade its existing faculty capabilities instead of only recruiting new faculty used to publishing in top-ranking PRJs. This process has required a strong transformational effort from faculty to meet the school’s requirements. In this case, collegiality has played a key role. In fact, the school has adopted a progressive approach, allowing its faculty to develop their skills through joint projects with research-oriented colleagues. This has helped to reduce the stress and resistance and empowered most of the school’s faculty, who have gone on to being highly productive by publishing in prestigious PRJs and impacting local businesses through their context-related research findings.

Conclusion

Building employee wellbeing in the workplace plays an important role in the performance of organisations, including business schools, by increasing employees’ productivity and adaptability. Dimensions such as culture, leadership, and collegiality determine the feeling of employees in the workplace by fostering psychological safety as well as the sense of belonging. This being said, the notion of wellbeing is context related, and as a consequence, it is determined by the conditions that faculty and staff currently experience outside their institutions as well as their perception of wellbeing in their environments. In African contexts, employees may pay more attention to some basic dimensions such as compensation and social benefits (job security, retirement plan), compared to mental health programmes or the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies of their employers or their CSR strategies.. HE institutions such as ESCA Ecole de Management that emphasise gender equity and sustainability as important values in the workplace still represent a minority in the African context. More efforts are needed to promote wellbeing in African HE institutions at both organisational and national levels.

On the other hand, building wellbeing in African business schools should not only consider the specificities of their context but also follow a systemic approach that leverages the different internal dimensions coherently. It should be shaped around the school’s purpose, strategy organisation, and culture. At ESCA Ecole de Management, the concept of wellbeing is addressed as a configuration of a vision, mission, values, strategic initiatives, structure, and policies that a group of people consider as appropriate for their work and perceive as positive for their personal feelings. Also, an organisation can certainly put in place the various mechanisms that are considered as basics for wellbeing such as salary, social benefits, etc., but not match all its employees’ wellbeing needs. The perception of wellbeing could be relative to each individual. ESCA Ecole de Management has succeeded in gathering a community of employees who enjoy entrepreneurial, international, dynamic, agile, risk-taking, and collaborative working environments. Those looking for public servant roles where changes and accountability are limited may not find their wellbeing in such an environment. In this perspective, talent acquisition strategies play an important role in ensuring the appropriate matching of individuals’ preferences with organisational identity, by attracting profiles that will appreciate the wellbeing configuration that the schools put in place, according to their context and strategies.

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Footnotes

1. https://www.shrm.org/about/press-room/2024-shrm-employee-benefits-survey–health-and-flexible-work-ben0

2. https://www.sap.com/integrated-reports/2024/en.html
   

3. https://www.gallup.com/analytics/644939/state-of-higher-education.aspx

4. https://www.edelman.com/trust/2024/trust-barometer

5. https://www.limra.com/en/research/research-abstracts-public/2024/2024-beat-study-benefits-and-employee-attitude-tracker/

6. https://www.pwc.co.za/en/publications/global-workforce-hopes-and-fears-survey.html

7. https://mental.health.go.ke/download/kenya-mental-health-action-plan-2021-2025/

8. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx

9. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/what-you-need-know-about-higher-education-africa

10. ESCA as first AACSB accredited school in Morocco and French Speaking Africa.

11. ESCA Grande Ecole Master Program is AMBA accredited.

12. https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2024/

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