Workforce wellbeing From a leadership perspective you can


improve the happiness and healthiness of your team by trusting them. Being there when they make mistakes and encouraging them to learn from those mistakes. Stay around to celebrate their successes and let others know whose success it is. Enable people to be autonomous. If they are reluctant to be autonomous show them how to have confidence in their decision-making. The best leadership for health and happiness is one that is supportive and constructive at all times – quietly enabling and encouraging, there when it is needed, knowing when to stand out in front and when to stay behind. Present but never domineering. Employee wellbeing is about physical and mental health wellbeing. A team that never has time to decompress is more likely to be unwell. Similarly, team whose meetings are completely structured, without space for ‘idle chat’ and where talking about ‘home’ life is discouraged, where being at your desk or around the table are the only places that online or in-person meetings are allowed to take place, can be physically and mentally exhausting. To improve physical and mental wellbeing, make space for small talk. Encourage walking meetings. Get outdoors. Sit on the grass with others to make decisions. Have lunchtime meetings where you actually get to eat lunch. Make time to share ‘how awful’ something was and find the funny side of that too. It is ok to laugh at work!


Being present is not always productive Presenteeism and absenteeism might feel like Yin and Yang. While you might think you want workers that are happy to stay on shift for a few extra hours every day, getting things done for you at their own expense, and workers who come into work regardless of any personal issues such as being unwell or having a family matter to deal with, being at work all the time (or in work mode if you work from home) is exhausting. Being present does not mean that more work of better quality gets done. It just means people are there, all hoping that someone will be brave enough to go home or turn off the laptop.


When someone is unwell, get them to stay at home until they are well again. Do not expect them to work from their sick bed


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Absenteeism impacts on the person who is absent and the people who work with them. It is easy to avoid tackling absenteeism. If you fail to do so, it will cause resentment and unhappiness with the rest of the team. You need to understand what it is about the job that makes someone reluctant to come to work. Then do something about it. This might mean helping that person move on. To improve the happiness and healthiness of your team when thinking about presenteeism and absenteeism, make sure you model best practice. Only stay late occasionally, and refrain from sending emails late at night (or responding when others send them to you). When someone is unwell, get them to stay at home until they are well again. Do not expect them to work from their sick bed. If someone is consistently absent from work, find out why, look at what needs to happen to change their behaviour, and make sure they understand the impact they are having on the rest of the team – and you. Learning and development might feel like something people have not got time for during the working day. But many workers see access to good learning and development as an important measure of how much their employer values them. When people are expected to do all of their learning in their own time, pay for it themselves, or do learning that does not take account of different preferred learning styles, this can have a negative impact on health and wellbeing. Additionally, if training on a particular subject is seen as only being needed by one part of the workforce, this can quickly increase anxiety across the workforce.


Technology for technology’s sake To improve the happiness and healthiness of your team, when thinking about learning and development, take time to understand people’s preferred learning styles. Make learning work for each and every person. Some people will prefer to listen, some to read, some to discuss. Some will want the


basic facts, some will want time to look at the research and evidence, some will go to a trusted source. There is no right way to learn. Understanding people’s preferred learning style and enabling them to learn in the way that works for them will make the learning stick. Digital technology is not going to be something that makes people’s lives easier unless you have helped people to see the benefits and teach them how to use it properly. For example, giving everyone a smart phone so that they can download their rotas without having to go into the office everyday might sound like a great idea. Of course, it may make workers’ lives easier because they no longer have to trek into the office every day, but what if that fifteen minutes in the office is the only time those workers ever see each other, where they can ask questions, or simply share concerns or a joke? Remote working suddenly becomes more remote, workers feel they are being put under surveillance, and suddenly that great idea to use smart phones to share rotas no longer seems quite so great. To maximise the wellbeing benefits of using digital technology, make sure you have thought though the benefits that the technology can bring from three points of view: the benefit for the person with care and support needs and their family, the benefit for the worker, and the benefit for the organisation. If you cannot see the benefits from each point of view, double- check the rationale for investing. It could be that a simpler technical solution might be better than investing in a technology that never gets used. By shifting the way you support your team’s happiness and healthiness, you can also begin to think about productivity differently, too. A team that is able to discuss mistakes, safe in the knowledge that mistakes help us to learn how to support people better, is more likely to share concerns early. By sharing concerns early,


www.thecarehomeenvironment.com September 2022


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