3 Whose responsibility is workplace wellbeing?

It was noted earlier that ‘Employers, managers, and leaders all have a role to play in workplace happiness’ (Finkbeiner, 2022).

However, when it comes to wellbeing, it is really important to be aware of your own status before you try to support others, and for you to feel able to seek support or take action to improve your own wellbeing if you need to. In safety briefings on aeroplanes, you are instructed to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others, and looking after your own wellbeing should be a similar priority in a work context, to equip you to be able to support colleagues at all levels.

In the video below, Sharon Mallon PhD, Senior Lecturer in Mental Health at The Open University, discusses how organisations and individuals can have greater awareness of monitoring wellbeing.

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Transcript

SHARON MALLON

The key concerns for me as we come out of the pandemic and we continue to work at home is how organisations and individuals respond to those changes and whether or not the changes that continue, so whether or not people who are still working at home or who are forced to go back into the office are comfortable with those choices.

It’s been a very, very difficult couple of years for everybody. And we’ve had to adapt quite fast to different ways of working. Some of those ways have worked really well for some people. People not having to commute, for example, gives extra time at home.

But similarly, there have been a lot of downsides. I know that social isolation is having a really big impact on people’s mental health. And it’s also really difficult to keep up some working relationships, particularly if there are difficult conversations to be had or tensions between individuals. These can be exacerbated by online meetings and not meeting in person, and having that kind of one to one informal chat that might repair relationships.

So, those are the key things for me as we go forward, learning the best ways to work online, learning how we can most take advantage of going back into the office if that’s what we need to do, and also being mindful that the pandemic has changed everybody. Some people are much more anxious about being in public spaces now, and that will need to be managed really carefully.

One of the things I would say about social anxiety is that it is completely normal as we come out of a situation where we’ve mostly been at home, mostly been on our own, perhaps with families, to then be anxious about going back into situations that once upon a time we would have been really comfortable in. But they’re new now. And we all have over the last few years really become very aware of the closeness of other people to us physically.

I know that when I first started returning out into the spaces that I had once always been in, I was much more aware of how close people were to me. I was uncomfortable. I didn’t really know how to have the conversations where I would ask people to, maybe, back off from me a little bit. And I think it’s important for us to normalise all of that.

It’s not a disorder in itself just to feel a little bit anxious. Those kind of feelings are perfectly understandable. And the way I personally manage it is through very careful self-talk, so reassuring myself, telling myself it’s OK, taking actions to move a little bit further away from people if I need to, asking people to maybe give me a bit of space if that seems appropriate.

I know that mask wearing is no longer compulsory, but I would encourage it if it makes you feel a little bit safer to do so, and to plan really carefully, think carefully about where you’re going, what it might be like, how you might feel like when you’re there, and not to do too much all at once so that you don’t overwhelm yourself or expect too much of yourself, to really be kind and compassionate to yourself as you re-emerge into the world.

I think the pandemic has really changed how we think about mental health. Initially, I was a little bit worried about people who were talking about a tsunami of mental health problems or that they were automatically expecting that there would be a pathological rise in mental health disorders.

The truth is people were quite divided. Some people really adapted well, and after an initial period of anxiety, find they like the new working situation and were happier to be at home. I think there’s also a degree now of us having gotten used to it. But I know that very recently there’s been reports of a rise in depression among certain groups.

So I think that it’s important that we continue to have those conversations about the impact that it’s had on us all. I know that the situation we were all in gave us permission to discuss aspects of how we were reacting emotionally to the situation.

It allowed us to reflect, maybe, on what we were coping well with and what we weren’t coping well with. And I think as we now are able to socialise a little bit more, it’s a really nice time for us to reflect on that.

There’s been quite a lot in the media focusing on wellbeing and mental health. And I guess my strong message would be that we encourage ourselves to think of it as something that we are able to manage and respond to, that we don’t just accept that it’s had a very negative impact on us, that we can use it as a learning experience and as a growth experience. And I definitely think that’s something that’s possible for us all.

There are a number of things that I think have emerged from the pandemic that are positive, one of which is that, I think, we shared vulnerability with each other. And we were much more open than I think we’ve ever been before about things being tough.

I think that we were able to talk about our emotional health in a way that perhaps we hadn’t really given ourselves permission for. And I think that we allowed a conversation of struggle and of fighting back to really emerge. There are some really nice examples of connections that I made with other people just by telling them that things were really hard. And those are the connections that I would like to take forward.

On a personal level, again, I think we don’t talk enough about the growth that can happen through really traumatic circumstances. And the circumstances were much more traumatic for some people than for me. But I know that there’s a great deal to be learnt over how we all coped over the last couple of years, what we’ve learnt about ourselves.

And even knowing that you can reach real lows, but come back from them is something that we can all take forward and just really celebrate in the resilience that can come about.

I’ve learned a lot about boundaries that I didn’t know before. And that’s partly because during the pandemic, all of the boundaries fell down. And I was working silly hours, and I was home schooling, and I was trying to keep everybody happy and really forgot about myself.

And one of the things I’m taking out of it is that especially now, we all work from home, and I am technically available via my computer screen at any time, that it’s important for me to place boundaries around myself that protect me and my mental health. I feel like I survived the pandemic and have learnt a lot from it. I wouldn’t repeat it, and I certainly wouldn’t repeat how all my boundaries fell.

But I think my boundaries are now stronger than ever. And I acknowledge that I have limitations. But I know that if I pull back when I feel like those limits are being close to reached, then I can make strong decisions and communicate those decisions to my employer that protect me and will continue to protect me, but that will ultimately enable me to be productive and achieve going forward.

So it’s not about dropping out of any kind of responsibility. It’s not that at all. It’s just about accepting that you can’t continue to work like that for long periods of time without there eventually being a consequence.

End transcript

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