I saw an interesting take this week that workplace stress management, wellbeing and resilience shouldn’t be necessary, that’s to say that the workplace or organisation should prevent the need for those things by making fundamental changes to be better for employees proactively.
Now I agree with this to a certain extent. Employers have a responsibility to ensure that their workplace is a positive and healthy environment and one of the focuses in recent years is psychological safety, which means that employees feel it’s safe to share ideas, concerns and feedback, and speak up without fear of retribution or embarrassment. Creating this kind of environment, particularly throughout large organisations, can be a challenge because it relies on everyone understanding it and behaving in a supportive way. The goal is worthy despite the implementation challenges because of the impact that not feeling psychologically safe has. Unfortunately telling someone that it’s safe is different to them feeling that it’s safe and that really depends on their experience and the culture of the organisation.
Past experiences are important in this situation, because anyone who has experienced bullying or conflict in a workplace, particularly with someone more senior, will take this experience and the personal impact it had with them throughout their career.
Similarly, even if a workplace is doing everything extremely well and employees feel they can do their best work and be fully supported, we don’t always know what’s going on in their personal lives. Great workplaces and organisations have supportive policies for major life events, but even these can depend on how they are executed and of course they also rely on the employee being open about their out of work struggles.
A really good example of this would be financial insecurity (not being able to meet financial commitments or a perception that they won’t be met) which is one of the major risk factors for mental illness. Often a workplace would know nothing about this, but conversely for the employee, holding on to their job and a regular salary becomes much more important, and therefore workplace issues are easily magnified .
So, if you create the most amazing and supportive place to work, it stands to reason you would enhance that by providing colleagues with opportunities to focus on their wellbeing, manage their stress, and build their resilience . These things go hand in hand, creating an environment where colleagues can thrive.
Where I don’t think these interventions have a place is a sticking plaster for an organisation that wants to get more out of colleagues and where these interventions are put in place to offset the impact of a higher workload and more stress. If you want to get more out of people, make them feel safe, valued and recognised and understand what motivates them. Yes it takes more time, but the outcome is better all round.
Employers aren’t on the hook for providing stress management, wellbeing initiatives, and resilience training, but unless you’re really confident that your colleagues have those skills already, there is a lot to gain. Helping colleagues build their skills and prioritise their health helps them to feel better and when you feel better, you can do better.