If someone is in crisis - expressing that they have overwhelming thoughts and/or feelings to either hurt themselves hurt or somebody else encourage them to get urgent help. The webpages contains details of where to access urgent help if required.
The health, safety and wellbeing webpages provide guidance and information about Health and Safety, Occupational Health and wider employee health and wellbeing.
There are a number of steps you can take to ensure the health and wellbeing of your team. One of these is to ensure you look after your own health and wellbeing. The others are:
Learn about the potential signs so you can recognise potential wellbeing issues:
People are better able to manage demands at work when they have sufficient levels of personal control and good supportGetting the combination of these three things right is the key to managing your team’s pressures.
Control
Providing freedom over when and where work is done wherever possibleBeing outcome not process focused.
Demands
If possible, address the cause of the demands and reduce or removeTry to look at ways to change the situation to change the demands on an individual or the team, for example, looking at where strengths and preferences are within the team and aligning work with those.
Support
Look to provide informational, and practical support as well as emotional support and/or signpost to where it can be provided. Make more resources available to support the individual, e.g. more training, mentoring, manager support.
Team resilience is the capacity of a team to withstand and overcome stressors to enable sustained high performance. Team resilience can help reduce the impact of stressors on individuals. Team resilience is not the same as having a group of individuals with high levels of personal resilience (Alliger et al, 2015). It comes about through fostering certain capabilities.
Enable adaptability
Encourage connection
Have clear roles and purpose
Build confidence
The help and support webpages include some guidance for individuals which you can signpost individuals towards.
This checklist is designed to help you identify what changes you might be able to make in your team to proactively reduce the causes of stress.
There is also a dedicated section focused on managing stress at work which includes resources and information for line managers.
Relevant workshops and e-learning resources relating to stress can be found in the dedicated Health and Wellbeing section in the Staff Learning Portal.
Other resources
The employee assistance programme (EAP) is designed to help team members deal with personal and professional problems which could be affecting their home or work life, health and general wellbeing.
As a manager you can help ensure team members are aware of the services they can access, as well as accessing additional guidance and information to support to support you in your managerial role. This includes a management helpline staffed by trained advisors who can support and coach managers with a range of issues including stress management.
We have our own in-house occupational health team where managers can refer members of staff for assessment where there is concern that a health problem may be affecting attendance, performance or safety.
In addition to providing emotional support and counselling the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) also includes practical guidance across a range of areas including financial, legal, tenancy and housing, family and care. This can be accessed via the confidential helpline and there are resources available via the online portal.
If team members are experiencing difficulties relating to their financial situation as well as the EAP the University provides access to Financial coaching as well as the Staff Assistance Fund.
As a line manager you can help to signpost individuals towards these resources.
If you are concerned about the mental health of someone in your team there are a number of resources available to support you.
The Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) can provide direct support to an individual, including counselling, as well as providing guidance and support to you as the manager.
The Occupational Health team is also available where there is concern that a health problem may be affecting attendance, performance or safety.
Relevant workshops and e-learning resources relating to mental health can be found in the dedicated Health and Wellbeing section in the Staff Learning Portal including a Mental Health Awareness e-learning module.
Other Resources:
The mental health charity Mind also has a range of resources including advice to help you support other people which includes helping someone with a specific issue.
The Health and Wellbeing section in Staff Learning Portal offers a range of workshops and e-learning materials. This includes content aimed specifically at Managers to support the development of the skills outlined in this section.