PERSONNEL WELL-BEING AS RESILIENCE ASSET: INTEGRATING QUALITY AND RISK MANAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Keywords:
personnel well-being, PERMA, human risk, quality development, higher educationAbstract
Higher education institutions face challenges from siloed management of Quality Development and Risk Management, which emphasizes compliance over genuine improvement. This results in employee burnout and resistance to quality systems—representing Human Risk that is overlooked yet severely impacts organizational success. This paper has three main objectives: 1) to present a novel framework reconceptualizing personnel well-being through PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment) as the organization's most critical Resilience Asset rather than merely a perk, 2) to analyze causal linkages between PERMA, human risk, and quality in higher education, and 3) to propose practical guidelines for executives and Quality and Risk Management Offices to implement this framework. The literature review covers two main topics: quality development and human risk in higher education, and the PERMA framework with its organizational applications. The analysis reveals that investing in PERMA can mitigate four major types of human risk: Burnout, Reluctant Stayers, Change Fatigue, and Resistance to Quality Systems. This framework positions PERMA as a Leading Indicator that predicts risks proactively, rather than measuring outcomes after problems occur. Practical implications propose three-level guidelines: executive level (repositioning well-being budget as strategic investment), office level (developing PERMA Profiler and designing conversational audit processes), and unit level (organizing PERMA-enhancing activities and job crafting for Flow State). This paper contributes by filling the gap in integrating three disciplines (Well-being Science, Risk Management, and Quality Development) and offers practical tools for building organizational resilience and sustainable quality culture.
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