A prescription for entrepreneurial health

Amongst the discussions of employee mental health and well-being, less attention is paid to entrepreneurial well-being. In a paper they co-wrote, Shivani Mehta, Sarah Dodd and Alec Morton presented their thoughts on this area of research, outlined here in today's blog.

Issues of employee mental health and well-being receive considerable attention in the press. But much less attention is paid to well-being among entrepreneurs despite the combination of risk and anxiety which starting a business may involve.

Entrepreneurial well-being has been defined as “a positive and distinctive mental state that reflects entrepreneurs’ affective and cognitive experiences of engagement in entrepreneurship as the process of venture creation.”

We recently published research which looked at the existing evidence on different aspects of entrepreneurship well-being and identified gaps in the evidence base on this ‘darker side’ of entrepreneurship activity.

So how can entrepreneurs stay well whilst engaging in what is inherently a challenging, risky and very personal undertaking? Research has long recognised that entrepreneurship is a stressful experience but less attention is typically paid to wider issues of well-being, health and entrepreneurship, and to exploring specific causes of entrepreneurial mental and physical ill-health. This is surprising since physical, emotional and social health experiences can indeed by influenced by the characteristics of a given occupation.

It is surely considerably significant to ask whether becoming an entrepreneur has a positive effect, overall, on the wellbeing of those we train, support, educate and fund to follow this path. We argue there is a broader duty of care and we need to consider the entrepreneur as a whole person rather than simply a useful socio-economic development tool.

Some of the things which can make a start up experience highly stressful include the many obstacles and demands entrepreneurs face, uncertainty in outcomes, intense competition, lack of resources and more personal factors such as loneliness and lack of support from colleagues.

Entrepreneurship is associated with risk taking and intense work effort and entrepreneurs are often driven by a high need for achievement, placing pressure on themselves to perform well. Because of this, self-employed individuals work longer hours compared to employees and such a long commitment of time and energy is often at the expense of family and social activities.

Entrepreneurs typically perform a variety of tasks and fulfil a multitude of roles such as recruiter, spokesperson and negotiator and involve interactions with a variety of internal and external stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers, lawyers and investors, all of which can be an additional source of stress.

Entrepreneurial threats to well-being include having to work long hours, eating irregular meals, taking less holiday time per year and struggling to maintain a work-life balance.

Entrepreneurs’ working life impacts differently upon their well-being than that of employees or managers. Whilst many of these special characteristics can be positive in their effect, others appear to be quite harmful to overall well-being.

Yet not all is doom and gloom. Entrepreneurs often experience greater levels of job satisfaction and autonomy than salaried managers despite the fact that the self-employed spent more hours on the job. The self-employed may enjoy more self-fulfilment through their work, more control and resources that suit them.

Greater research is needed to explore this complicated issue on its own terms and not just as a comparator to other occupational groups. Funders and policy makers need to be more receptive to recognising the dark side of entrepreneurship and research is also needed to identify solutions to these health challenges. One suggestion is that, as educators, we embed well-being awareness and management into entrepreneurship training and education.

This blog post is taken from the Enterprise Research Centre's State of the Art Review No 29, first published in May 2019. You can find the article here

About The authors

Sarah Dodd is a professor of entrepreneurship and Shivani Mehta a doctoral researcher in the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship. Alec Morton is a professor in the Management Science department.