Wellbeing@Work

Emotions affect our performance and productivity and they're contagious. 

Happy energy is helpful to innovation, customer service, relationships and productivity, but unfortunately negative emotions and low morale are contagious too. As we settle into new rhymths and patterns, it’s a time to keep even closer contact with your team as they may be struggling with motivation and focus.

Some things to try

• Prioritise supportive listening 1:1s
• Encourage your team to share their experiences and strategies in your daily or weekly catchups - it will help to grow personal and team peace of mind, mental wealth and resilience
• Plan positive projects and tasks, recognise achievements and celebrate successes to help grow more of a ‘can do’ energy
• Support staff home-schooling their children to help them avoid burnout
• The opposite may be true for staff without so much to do - 'rust out' (where skill and capability outweighs demands) can be just as stress inducing and problematic for productivity

Investing some time in building positive morale will support people right now, and pay dividends in the future.

Not the fatigue that might be part of experiencing the Covid virus, but fatigue with the current situation?

• Tired of worrying
• Tired of news about the pandemic
• Tired from being endlessly resourceful with food, children, entertainment and more
• Tired from being alone
• Tired from not seeing relatives, friends or colleagues, and maybe too much of some members of your family
• Tired from trying to adjust expectations, plans and dreams as we absorb the implications of what is happening to us personally, organisationally, nationally and globally

The resulting overload presents as ‘brain fog’, fatigue and maybe other symptoms. It's called allostatic load, and living in a state of continuous worry and alert is not good for our health now or in the future. We need to dissipate the stress hormones by completing the resting and relaxing phase of the stress cycle.

Trauma specialist Hannah Smith suggests 4 things we can do to reduce the load and look after our wellbeing and energy -

1. Schedule worry time – so it doesn’t seep through the whole day

2. Limit right brain overload – reduce intake of news and other stimulus

3. Lots of mental and physical breaks – rest more

4. Collect happiness – do things every day that you enjoy

Getting enough quality sleep, eating healthily, exercising and avoiding unhelpful coping strategies like excess alcohol, passive relaxation will all help as well - the NHS Live Well pages have helpful information and resources.

Tuning into what’s positive helps to counter-balance some of the current pressures and worries, proactively looking after ourselves makes it easier to find positive things in every day and situation.  For example -

• Nourish your body - sleep well, eat well, exercise well, spend time in nature
• How to fall asleep faster and sleep better is new from Every Mind Matters
• Exercises to do at home if you're currently not so fit
• Be kind and compassionate
• Keep up meaningful social connections
• Write small lists for each day – tick things off as you do them
• Create distinctions - draw some boundaries around working time, media time, exercising, family/friends time, recreation (think re-creation) and relaxing time
• Rest and relax - immerse yourself in hobbies, reading, a project, things you enjoy
• Action For Happiness Calendar Joyful June suggests small daily actions
• Support from Mind to look after yourself during isolation

Keep (or get!) fit and help keep our city air clean and green.

See the My Journey pages for support for key workers, Love to Ride prizes, cycle maintenance, confidence and routes.

Buy your bike from pre-tax earnings with the Government Cycle to Work Scheme.

Build your skills to support your career and organisation with free digital and numeracy courses.

Solent University’s ‘Virtual Insight Series’ - free short interactive lectures and workshops on a variety of topics and themes. More information.

Free careers support for all adults from the National Careers Service.

A practical careers guidance booklet for you and/or to share with your staff from the Career Psychologist, includes links to videos.

Barclays offer a free Money Mentoring Service (you don't need to be a Barclays customer)

Managing staff returning into the workplace

• Guides to help get your people back to work
• Managing risk assessments
• XPert HR – templates for letters