This study addresses the persistent problem of employee burnout and high turnover (reported at 25–60% annually) in community behavioral health organizations (CBHOs). The authors argue that standard, top-down job wellbeing assessments fail to capture the heterogeneity of employee experience within these organizations and that community-based participatory research (CBPR) offers a more contextually valid alternative. Using exit surveys, stay interviews, workgroup sessions, and roundtable meetings, the research team collaborated with employees of a single Midwestern CBHO (approximately 300 staff) to develop 11 job wellbeing indicators. These indicators were then tested through an initial survey (N=168) and a 6-month follow-up survey using latent change score models. Key findings include significant declines in communication clarity, job fairness, decision-making involvement, expectation alignment, supervisory support, and career advancement, alongside increased stress. Wellbeing outcomes varied meaningfully by race, educational degree, clinical versus non-clinical status, exempt status, marital status, and tenure. The authors conclude that organization-specific, employee-co-developed indicators can reveal subpopulation-level wellbeing heterogeneity typically obscured by standardised instruments, informing more targeted organisational interventions. Key insights: Job wellbeing declined significantly across multiple indicators over a 6-month period, including communication clarity, job fairness, decision-making involvement, expectation alignment, supervisory support for work quality, and career advancement opportunities, while job stress increased — suggesting systemic rather than isolated deterioration. Wellbeing experiences were heterogeneous across employee subpopulations: employees of color rated supervisory support for work quality lower than White employees, while White employees rated communication clarity and decision-making involvement lower — a pattern the authors interpret through a structural racism lens, with minoritised employees potentially holding lower expectations of upper management access. Employees with longer organisational tenure showed smaller declines across several wellbeing indicators, and those who perceived the organisation was making visible wellbeing efforts reported less deterioration in job fairness, flexibility, and stress — suggesting that tenure-related resilience and perceived organisational responsiveness are moderating factors in wellbeing trajectories. Practical takeaways: Organisations that co-develop wellbeing indicators with employees through structured participatory processes — including exit surveys, stay interviews, and iterative workgroup validation — produce instruments with stronger face validity and contextual relevance than those adapted from generic scales. Periodic measurement of job wellbeing using brief single-item indicators stratified by employee characteristics (e.g., race, exempt status, clinical role, tenure) can reveal subgroup-level disparities that aggregate scores mask, enabling more targeted and differentiated organisational responses.