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We all want more good days at work. So how can give ourselves more of the good days and less of the bad ones?
Caring for others is usually top priority for people working in the health and community services sector. So much so, that it’s often all too easy for us to neglect our own wellbeing. Workplace Wellbeing natters is the podcast that encourages us all to take care of the wellbeing of ourselves and the people we’re working with, whether that’s in primary care, mental health, disability, aged or community services, government, or any other part of the health and community services ecosystem. Hosts Linda and Danielle take you through some of their own insights from working in both the wellbeing, and health and community services sectors, and provide you with evidence-informed strategies to help foster wellbeing in your workplace.
Episode 5: How to enhance mental wellbeing at work. Part 2
Linda: Join us on this episode for part two as we continue our discussion on the aspects of work that can enhance our mental health and well-being. And on the flip side, those things that may at times pose a risk to our well-being. Explore what you can do to create a work environment that supports wellbeing and protect yours and others mental health. Hello, I'm Linda. Welcome to the Workplace Wellbeing Natters podcast, a podcast where we talk about wellbeing that works for the health and community services sector. I'm a facilitator, coach and trainer specialising in workplace wellbeing.
Danielle: And I'm Danielle and my pronouns are she her. I'm a wellbeing specialist and a psychology student. We would like to acknowledge that we are recording this podcast on the land of the Gunai Kurnai people and to pay our respects to the elders past, present and emerging. We would also like to acknowledge the demand for services currently being experienced by the sector and that this impacts everyone in different ways, including contributing to poor mental health and wellbeing outcomes. So we encourage you to be compassionate to yourself and to others.
Linda: In part one of this episode, we started unpacking how we can promote mentally healthy work environments, protect ours and our co-workers mental health, and manage factors that may be a risk to our mental health and wellbeing, which are sometimes called psychological risks or hazards. In part one, we focussed on the job design factors which include job demands and control, job resources, job characteristics, as well as exposure to potential trauma or occupational violence. And we also heard from two of our contributors from the sector, Karen and Brad. In this episode we will discuss the team or group factors and organisational factors. So thanks for joining us for part two. So let's dive right into the team or group factors which we can also call workplace support.
Danielle: And so these factors include support from colleagues and managers, the quality of interpersonal relationships and effective leadership and availability of manager training. Really important things there. Let's delve further into each of these. So starting with support from colleagues and managers, the support refers to the practical and emotional support to do your job. The research suggests that social support in the workplace, both the amount and the quality, may influence our mental health and protect us from harmful effects of jobs with high levels of strain. And so what might be an example of this, Linda?
Linda: So an example of poor emotional support might include working from home with limited interaction with your supervisor or your co-workers or the interaction that you have is really task focussed. So whilst you might be talking to them over the internet or phone, it really doesn't allow for that personal support. And I just wanted to mention just briefly again that high strain jobs are those jobs where that have a lot of high demand and also low levels of control.
Danielle: And I think another example is when we're working independently in people's homes, in the community. So a district nurse maybe or a disability support worker with limited contact with others, or if your manager or supervisor has a really big team and is limited in terms of providing one on one support or supervision.
Linda: So when it comes to interpersonal relationships, the quality of our relationships with co-workers and managers is essential. And we know that interpersonal conflict is frequently reported as a source of workplace problems and stress. So some examples of poor relationships might include relationships where there's unresolved conflict, there might be bullying or incivility. So incivility we're starting to hear about more and more. Danielle, can you give us a definition.
Danielle: So incivility can be defined as low intensity, deviant behaviour with ambiguous intent to harm the target in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect, which is quite a complicated way of saying
Linda: That's a mouthful Danielle.
Danielle: So a non complicated way of saying that is it's just when we're unpleasant, we're rude, we're not very nice to one another and we do that with the intent to harm someone else in the workplace. So maybe I say something really mean or offensive to you with the intention to harm you, to make you feel upset with what I'm saying. So that goes against the typical, the typical behaviour that we expecting in a workplace to be respectful and professional.
Linda: The word ambiguous there really interests me. So I think sometimes when I think about incivility, when someone says or does something so they might make a comment or they don't say good morning, which we interpret potentially as being rude, but we don't actually really know whether they meant it that way or not. So we just kind of really left with that unsettled feeling, trying to second guess ourselves.
Danielle: Right. It can be really unsettling, right? You're like, oh, why didn't they say hello? Like, Are they ignoring me? Have I done something wrong? And it can bring up all of these "what if" kind of situations? It could be low levels of trust or lack of compassion or lack of work and personal boundaries.
Linda: Absolutely. So when it comes to support and interpersonal relationships, creating a supportive culture is vital. This may include not putting results before respectful workplace behaviour, so setting clear expectations about behaviour and also giving practical examples of what this looks like in your settings. So I often work with teams to do what we call above the line and below the line behaviours and in doing that we're setting expectations for how we would like to interact with each other, but also giving really clear practical examples just to take the ambiguity out of what the expectation is.
Danielle: Another way to approach this is to be collaborative and be open to new ideas and to really discourage gossip. So it's about adopting a growth mindset or a no blame culture where we feel able to try out new ways of doing things without fear or failure.
Linda: And also being able to approach people directly if we have any concerns or queries. It's also about being inclusive. So setting a culture where we can be ourselves at work and we feel accepted and connected through that shared sense of belonging.
Danielle: And we can all treat others with respect and be friendly and civil. So if you're in a leadership role, show visible and genuine leadership commitment to a mentally healthy workplace. Can do this through role modelling, positive and respectful relationships, implementing policies and procedures, using appropriate language and normalising talk of mental health in the workplace. And we can all do these things and it's important that it also comes from the top.
Linda: Well said. And reflecting back on what Karen said. So our contributor Karen in the last episode we could see also elements of support coming through in what was important to her in the workplace and also from our contributor Brad as well.
Danielle: An interesting dynamic and an interesting thing to think about here with interpersonal relationships is lots and lots of people have been working from home at the moment and so they haven't had that connection with their team members or other people in the workforce. So some of those little niggles or those little conflicts that might have been there before have kind of been put to the side for a while. And now as people start returning to offices, if that's what they're doing, some of these things might be coming up more and more. So it's kind of really good to kind of getting there early and maybe even do some training around incivility like in your workforce and try and, you know, get on top of it before it becomes an issue and nip it in the bud is what was the word I was looking for.
Linda: So our last group, if we reflect back to Harvey's model, relates to organisational factors. So again we're not covering all the organisational factors here, but we are going to focus on a few key ones. So we're looking at poor change management, organisational justice, psychosocial safety environment as well as stigma. And then we'll move on to looking at leadership and some of the other things as well. So poor change management. Danielle, there's been so much change within our sector with COVID.
Danielle: Yes, there has been a lot of change in the sector with COVID. But even before that, with the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme being just one example, also the impact of various royal commissions and other changes throughout the sector as well. And so change management can include inadequate consultation and communication about major changes. It might be around not offering enough practical support for workers during the change. It could be changes in teams or restructures could be doing that without communicating to them that that's happening or letting them have any any input into the way that that happens. And it could also be changes to funding arrangements, which I think is especially important for people who might be relying upon funding to operate and kind of changing around what's happening with that and not knowing if they're going to be receiving that funding in the long term.
Linda: Moving on to organisational justice. So organisational justice is about fairness and I find this one really interesting because I think each and every person's perception of fairness is different. You know what I consider to be fair, you may not. Danielle So poor organisational justice can result in thinking the way resources or shifts or tasks are allocated is inequitable. It's unfair in some way, or it might be that policies and procedures are not consistently applied, or that people who are not performing well in their role are poorly managed.
Danielle: This is something that really resonates for me. We haven't spoken much about character strengths yet, but I'm sure we will at some point in time. And my number two or might have even made my number one is fairness. So I'm really passionate about fairness and so it's a good reminder to think about what fairness means to me might be different and look different to other people, but moving on, psychosocial safety environment. So this relates to the climate of mental health and psychological safety. And so that's about how comfortable we feel to contribute, to make mistakes without fear of repercussions. And it's about a management commitment to preventing stress and the mental health and psychological safety climate.
Linda: So stigma. So last one that we're going to touch on for some mental illness still carries a stigma within life in general and certain workplaces. So whether you're a person with a mental illness or mental health condition or you're caring for someone who has a mental illness, sometimes it can be really hard to disclose that within a workplace particularly. So, you know, having those open conversations is really important.
Danielle: Exactly. And I think it's not just for people who have a diagnosed mental health condition. There can still be stigma around. I might be struggling with my mental health right now and I feel like I can't talk to someone about it because how are they going to perceive me and what is that going to mean for my role? So I think it's just about mental health in a broad term as well, and especially for people who do have a mental health condition to feel comfortable to be able to disclose that and get support for that in the workplace.
Linda: That seems like a really big list.
Danielle: Danielle Yeah, I don't think it seems like a big list. I think it is a big list.
Linda: And we can see that there are lots of potential psychological hazards that may pose a risk to our workforce.
Danielle: We know that these do not happen in isolation, that the overall climate or workplace environment is also useful, as is leadership. So now let's have a look at some general strategies.
Linda: So let's start off with leadership. So positive styles of leadership may enhance psychological well-being through increasing trust, improving support and teamwork, enhancing job design as well as organisational climate. So making learning and development opportunities on how to identify, manage psychosocial hazards in the workplace available to workers is also critical so that we can identify potential risks upfront. And we also have the knowledge on how to manage hazards. And this knowledge doesn't just sit at the top, but again, it sits with everyone contributing to that shared sense of well-being for a team.
Danielle: If not managed well, hazards may contribute to poor mental health in the workplace. For instance, there is a link in the research between high strain jobs, and again, that's high demand, low control with mental health disorders. And so there was what's called a systematic review by Harvey and colleagues identified that external pressure to perform is more strongly linked to anxiety, whereas low control is more strongly related to depression or dissatisfaction.
Linda: So all of these elements at work can impact our psychological health and safety in different ways. And one of those ways is burnout. The World Health Organisation has classified burnout as an occupational phenomenon within its revision of the international classification of diseases. So this was back in May 2019. So burnout is being linked as a work hazard and there's debate whether it's a medical condition and how it might differ from other psychological conditions. Generally it's characterised by three factors. So feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from the job that you're doing. So that might be being negative or cynical related to the job that you're doing and reduced personal efficacy. So just feeling like you're not quite doing or performing as well as you could or should.
Danielle: Yeah, this is a really interesting one, Linda, and it's great to see that people are recognising that in workplaces finally. And it's really interesting the debate around whether it's a medical condition or not, I find that incredibly fascinating and something that's kind of strongly linked to burnout is compassion fatigue. And so this is particularly relevant in health and community services and it's about repeated exposure to secondary trauma or stress. And burnout can lead to compassion fatigue.
Linda: So compassion fatigue can arise when we give so much to others that we feel like we've got nothing left to give. It might be that we take on the stress or emotions of others, and it slowly diminishes our ability to be kind, be understanding, or to show empathy to others or ourselves at times.
Danielle: To Danielle And again, that's a really, really important point there, Linda, as well, to show it to ourselves. And there's some really interesting research around at the moment around burnout and compassion fatigue. And are we burnt out or do we have higher limits of compassion fatigue? And so the kind of suggest that sometimes people think that they have burnout when they might actually be compassion fatigue or empathy fatigue as well.
Linda: I think what it does indicate, though, and I think this goes back to kind of what they're saying in relation to how burnout might differ from other conditions as well. So it'll be interesting to see how that evolves in terms of the thinking around this space and in relation to recovery. So what does then recovery mean for people as well?
Danielle: All right, then. I think we're now moving on to a topic that's got quite a lot of airtime in 2021 and is kind of becoming more well known and more spoken about in health and community services and that's moral injury. It's kind of come to prominence in large part due to the pandemic. So moral injury refers to when either we act or we fail to act, or we witness an event which goes against our own moral beliefs, our values or our ethics. And it can have a really big impact on our mental health and wellbeing.
Linda: Moral injury can occur at work when we experience inconsistency between our moral beliefs and the way we or others might be directed to or either choose to work. So you might have a health professional during COVID. You may have a prevented family from being with their sick loved ones due to isolation requirements. Or you might be in a position of having to decide who gets medical resources and who doesn't if there's a lack of resources. So you can see that there could be some moral conflict around those. But of course, it's not just for people who work on the frontline either. You could be an HR professional and you might have to fire someone and you don't want to. Or maybe you work in accounts and you're told to allocate funds in a way that's not in line with funding requirements or to use funding to top up organisational shortfalls. So you can see that these can be really conflicting situations for people.
Danielle: Yeah. And so that's a really, really compelling reasons to manage risks and to promote wellbeing. And so Harvey and his colleagues identified six domains or evidence based workplace mental health interventions. So let's run through those now. So the first one is about designing and managing work to minimise harm by reducing known risk factors and enhancing the known protective factors. So that could be around flexible working hours and, you know, making sure that we've got good employee participation.
Linda: Number two, there is promoting protective factors at a team and organisational level and this is around helping people to develop their resilience. Organisational as well as team based interventions can be included here. So things like psychosocial safety and climate, having some really robust policies around anti-bullying or incivility that we talked about before, making sure that there's a sense of fairness and trust within the organisation, managing change effectively. So again, this directly relates to some of the things that we've already spoken about as well as providing mental health, education or training for managers as well as others throughout the workplace.
Danielle: In addition to focussing on those team and organisational levels around resilience, we can also focus on helping people improve their own resilience as well. And we can do this through stress management techniques or resilience training, particularly for people in high risk occupations, and we can do that as part of induction programmes or independent programmes. You can also do this through coaching and mentoring or through worksite physical activity programmes as well. So I think for me both of those work well together. You can't just focus on improving or wanting the people who work for you to improve their resilience without actually tackling the organisational resilience and the risk factors as well.
Linda: I think that's a really great point, Danielle, because it's not about putting the responsibility or burden onto the individual. I think it's that acknowledgement of that shared or joint responsibility between individuals and the organisation itself as well. Yes, number four is promoting and facilitating early help seeking. So this is around doing wellbeing checks or health screening. You might have employee assistance programmes. So we spoke about those in part one of this episode and we also spoke about responses to potentially traumatic events as well. So that was things again like your EAP or Mental Health First Aid, peer support schemes. There are a range of activities around that.
Danielle: So another thing that we can do is support workers who might be recovering from a mental health problem. So we can do this in lots of different ways, supervise the support and training, the mental health first aid that we spoke about earlier. So we're increasing the awareness of mental health at work and what that means people might have partial sickness, absence or other things that they can access could be returned to work programmes or individual placement support for people who might have a severe mental health problem.
Linda: Let's finish off with number six. So the final strategy suggested by Harvey and his colleagues, and that is increasing awareness of mental illness again and reducing stigma. And we did speak about. Reducing stigma. We will put a link to the systematic review undertaken by Harvey and his colleagues in the show notes. There's some really detailed, some great information in there for those who are interested. Now I'd just like to say as well that some of the evidence based strategies we've just talked about do take resources to implement, and they really require embedding into workplace systems and processes. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, you know, that's not really achievable for me, or it might be outside your role, it is helpful to recognise that there are still actions you can take to contribute to the shared well-being and safety of everyone at work. And one of those common threads that we've heard from our contributors and throughout the podcast is effective and supportive communication.
Danielle: Yes, having open, honest and effective communication is so useful, especially for remote or isolated work. Communication can be really difficult. So for those of us working remote or isolated or working from home, it might be about having a conversation about what type of communication is going to work best. Supportive communication might include actively acknowledging your workmates, noticing their strengths and calling them out and being optimistic and identifying any potential relationship problems early. And so it might be around developing specific strategies for how to do this with people who are working remotely.
Linda: Have you got any suggestions, Danielle, not to put you on the spot.
Danielle: So I think it's just about having a little think about how does your team work. Going back to the individual strengths that we mentioned, what are people's different skill set and going, okay, you like to work like this. So one of these potential problems might be, I don't know X, Y, Z, and so what can we put into place now to address that before it happens or to mitigate it or to prevent it? I guess one of the other ways to do it as well is to some people really have really good, strong team charters and kind of how they are not just thinking about what they want to actually do in terms of their task, but how they want to do that. What are their values, what's really meaningful for them and how do they want to work? Do they want to have a buddy system where menu chicken with each other this week and then next week we swap. So we're having kind of communication with different people and connexion with different people. So just thinking about what's the meaning for the team, what are the team values and how can we use that to work in different ways?
Linda: That sounds great Danielle. So being approachable, whatever your role can assist in facilitating communication as can having an open door policy if you're in a management role. So I'm not sure how an open door policy works if you're working from home. I really think the two go hand in hand in terms of being approachable and and also being available, I guess really is what it is, isn't it? I remember one manager I worked with, ah, this is years ago now who always talked about her open door policy. But when she walked through the office and she didn't really just stroll, walk, but she had this real kind of purposeful, you know, almost those. What did they use? Power walk, you know, kind of thing going on. And when she strode, let's call it stride, so when she strode through the office or engaged with staff, it was to tell them how busy she was. So, you know, her door might have been open, so to speak, but she was by no means approachable.
Danielle: I guess an alternative for the drop in might be like in the virtual world or hybrid world is maybe a manager or a leader has set times in the week where, you know, they're in a teams meeting and, you know, just doing their work, whatever they need to do, and then people can drop in at that time. So having some set times, you know, as well as your scheduled supervision and one on one meetings and things like that.
Linda: I'm also wondering like if for our listeners, if there's positive and productive things that they're doing, we'd really like to learn about them, so maybe we can share them with others on another podcast. So let us know what you're doing. That would be great. Another thing that I find helpful is the One Page Profiles, and they can be helpful in communicating to others around your own communication preferences, how you like to be acknowledged or supported in your role. Some people will be very, very familiar with them. They were developed by the Learning Community for Person Centred Practises and they're often used in the disability sector for people with disabilities now. If I'm working closely with a person or a workplace, I mostly forward them my one page profile. So that's got information about my strengths, what's important to me, how I like to communicate, how I like to be supported and also acknowledged or recognised in a work sense as well. So for instance, in terms of communication, if you want to shoot the breeze with me, so if you want to talk about ideas and concepts, then pretty much I'm ready to go any time. But if you want a considered response in relation to a situation, then I really need the heads up. So being introverted I like to think things through and then come back to you with a response. I'm not good on the spot with those sorts of things. I'm a bit of a kind of deer in the headlights sort of person. So the One Page Profile is a great way for me to actually communicate those things, and it takes the guesswork out of how we can interact with our workmates and to do so in a more person centred way.
Danielle: Yeah, it's such a great idea. Being on the receiving end of one of your one page profiles, it was so enormously helpful to be like, okay, well this is how Linda likes to work and then to go, Okay, this is how I like to work, and where do we work really well, where we might need to make some compromise. Where can we find what's going to work for well as us, as the team? So I think it's such a great idea to share that up front and then use that as a guide to how we work together. Opening up a workplace conversation about mental health, as we've spoken about a few times, is also critical, and there are a number of ways to do this. So you can include messages about mental health in your organisational comms emails or social networks like Yammer, pop up posters around the place or have it on the front page of the internet or client management system. And so this is just about normalising the conversation and decreasing stigma as well.
Linda: Another strategy is to model psychological self-care. So recently I sent an email to a colleague and received an auto reply saying they were taking some time out for their own mental health and we're away toasting marshmallows around a campfire. And that created a really nice image in my head. But this person was a General Manager of a company and I thought, what a great message that they're sending for their staff. But, you know, sometimes we can't take time off or getaway, so what can we actually do that doesn't take much time or resources?
Danielle: So before we get into that, Linda, I just want to say how much I love that the General Manager did that and modelled that for everyone else. I remember a number of years ago now in a job, and I knew that I was really stressed and I knew that I had to take the next day off of my own mental health. And I told my manager that I was taking the day off tomorrow because I needed some time now. They responded by telling me that I should wait and see how I feel in the morning and that I probably shouldn't say that the day before. I was just completely flabbergasted like, alright, okay.
Linda: Not a helpful response.
Danielle: You're going to feel the way that I feel right now anyway. So what do we mean when we can't take a break or we can't get away? So it's about taking a break when we can take a break.
Linda: I guess what we can think about in relation to that is sometimes we don't have a lot of time available to us and we tend to default to things that are numbing and not nurturing. So for instance, you might just have a five or ten minute break in the tea room or staff room or in your lounge room if you're working from home. And the tendency to just kind of scroll through the phone on autopilot really, you know, looking at social media or whatever you happen to be looking at and you know, that's okay. But I wonder about simple things like, you know, maybe having a nature based programme as a screensaver or playing on the computer visual images and inspire awe and restore our mental capacity. So doing something that's actually restorative to us from a psychological or mental perspective and I found this really interesting because Danielle, you know that one of my passions is nature based interventions and walking in nature particularly. Well, I changed dentists recently. And when I just, you know, they laid me back in the chair to give my teeth a good looking over instead of just staring up at a white, you know, kind of blank ceiling. They actually had nature based scenes playing on a huge screen. And I thought, Wow, that's just awesome. Like, I'm not sure if they meant it as a specific, nature based intervention, like knowing all of the benefits or whether that was something that they just did. But for me it was really helpful.
Danielle: Yeah, that's so great, Linda, that they kind of had that insight as well to put that there. There. Perhaps help help people who might be feeling stressed when they go to the dentist.
Linda: I should say they also have a dog. So they they have a Labrador that they call the Dogtor as opposed to doctor that can come in. You can pat or whatever if you're feeling stressed.
Danielle: Oh, that's excellent. I'd have to get their number. So something else, Linda, that can be helpful. If you like meditation, and this might be really helpful, is doing a short meditation. So it did one in the car recently on the way to a workshop, maybe 3 minutes, and I felt calmer and more focussed. So it's about paying attention to our thoughts and using attentional intelligence to focus on something like giving and nurturing as opposed to the niggly interaction we had a client or patient that's replaying in our head. I also have this meditation that I'd like to do. It's about two and a half minutes, but the language of it is a little inappropriate, but it makes me laugh. So instead of, you know, I feel calmer, but it also kind of gives me a positive energy buzz as well.
Linda: Nice. And one of my go tos is to just literally take a moment or two for self-compassion. So what I will do is just kind of place my hands over the middle of my chest so over my heart and just actually notice the warmth of my hands just sinking in through my chest. And and I usually try and say nice things to myself while I do that. And so that might be about, you know, just acknowledging that things are difficult. And I'm probably not the only one that's going through this or a similar situation. So just really acknowledging that I'm human and that I'm just doing my best.
Danielle: I love that. Linda That's great. So even if you can't get away, there are some intentional activities that you can do at break times that could make a difference. Or, you know, even if you're in between patients or in between clients, that you can just kind of do for a minute or two to give yourself some kind of kindness and some care as well. These are just some examples. I'm sure there are more, some which will be specific to your workplace. And so we invite you to think about what is relevant for you and your workplace. And also again to if you have some strategies that are working really well for you, please send them through. Please share them with us. We'd love to hear what's what's working really well for you.
Linda: So time to recap what we've talked about in this episode or part two of this episode. So we talked about psychological hazards. So just some of them in the sector, again acknowledging that each and every workplace and industry have them and there might be some that are particular to your job role or sector. We also looked at a range of strategies to minimise risk and promote a wellbeing at work and as we mentioned, we will provide a copy of that systematic review by Harvey in the show notes, if you'd like to delve into a little more detail around that.
Danielle: So as always, as we always do, we've covered a lot today and we would like to invite you to reflect on what makes a good day at work for you. Once you have identified specifics, if or when you can deliberately seek out more of those activities, interactions or experiences.
Linda: And if you're not sure, like if the days or shifts go by in such a blur, when you next get a chance, start to notice the good bits. So you know, when are you most happy, content or smiling? And also think about some of the risks or hazards. You know, what they are and how you can reduce them or at least reduce their impact if you can't get rid of them entirely.
Danielle: We also loved connecting with you and sharing insights into some of the mental health risks and protective factors in workplaces. So in our show notes, as always, we will have any links that may support your journey towards workplace wellbeing.
Linda: And we want to know what you think have been inspired by any questions you'd like answered. We would do our best or if you'd like to make a contribution to the podcast, so leave a review or contact us via matters@workplacewellbeingnatters.com.au And again, if you'd like to explore how we can help you on your journey, submit a case study or a comment for us to include in our podcast.
Danielle: We look forward to next time when we will be discussing the power of language to create a culture of well-being where we feel like we belong and matter.
Linda: Thanks for joining us today. Bye for now.
Danielle: Thanks for being here by.