Workplace wellbeing, Organisations and Social Value, Knowledge exchange, Public sector - inc. policing, Positive Change in Organisations, Business ethics, Social theory.

Video: Learning from the Research & Adapting Company Culture | Helen Fitzhugh - CultureShock

Video: Short Clips: Helen Fitzhugh on Learning & Leadership | CultureShock

Video: Short Clips: Helen Fitzhugh on Mitigating the Risks of Isolated Working | CultureShock

Video: The changing workplace, with FIG Norwich and Larking Gowen

Helen is a Research Fellow at Norwich Business School.

She has conducted diverse research studies and research-related activities that have explored why, how, and how successfully, different organisations work to create positive social change, or 'social value'.

She is known as an engaged scholar working on the topic of workplace wellbeing, helping bring evidence-informed resources direct to organisations via the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing toolkit (www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org).

She also has a long-standing research interest in social enterprises - i.e. businesses that trade for a social purpose. Her book 'Inside Social Enterprise: Looking to the future' - co-authored with Nicky Stevenson - was published in 2015.

The common thread that runs through all of Helen's research has been the exploration of why, how, and how successfully, different organisations work to create positive social change.

Helen's workplace wellbeing research has focussed on issues of implementation, initiative effectiveness and authentic dialogue. Projects in the public domain include engaged research with the UK police service (Mindfulness for Performance and Wellbeing in the Police: Linking Individual and Organizational Outcomes - ROPPA) and research on how businesses dealt with workplace wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic (Authenticity in the Pursuit of Mutuality During Crisis - BJM). She has also carried out evaluations, reviews and consultancy for businesses and UK Government departments.  

Helen's doctoral research explored the influence of organisational values on value creation processes in social enterprises. Social enterprises are businesses that trade for a social purpose. By exploring the beliefs embedded in a diverse range of these types of organisation, Helen was able to highlight the variety of different outcomes that social enterprise practitioners and beneficiaries saw as ‘of value’. By providing evidence of this diversity of intentions and experiences, her research demonstrated how creating social value could not be seen as a simply ‘neutral’ or apolitical act. Her work also identified reasons why some of the social change intentions within social enterprises appeared to translate more directly into valued stakeholder experiences than others.

Helen has experience of both quantitative and qualitative methods. She has often employed mixed methods approaches to investigate complicated issues around holistic value and lived experiences within organisations - whether those experiences are beneficiary outcomes in social enterprises or perceptions of workplace wellbeing in business and public sector employees.