‘An army of our own’: Legitimating the professional position of HR through well-being at work

This article focuses on how HR practitioners legitimate their position in municipal organizations through the discourse of well-being at work. I show how HR practitioners draw upon the desirability and appropriateness of well-being as a value of work life in municipalities and the wider societal context. I also show how, as a result, they reflect and reinforce formal structures, individual choice and responsibility, performance, and the meaningfulness of work as discursive themes of well-being that require and justify the position of HR practitioners as ‘an army’ of management programmes, practices and resources.