Enhancing Psychological Safety and Creating Real Human Connections.
A guest blog by Phil Wolffe – Co-Founder, Kinex Health
No matter how tough we are, everybody needs a bit of support from time to time.
It’s human nature and that’s not changing anytime soon.
Basically, the stronger the support, the better health and wellbeing are.
This makes it a pretty important lever to pull when we’re looking at the health and wellbeing of our people.
So, what kind of support structures are there, and how do we make them available?
This is a great way to provide instant support from people who know and understand each other.
It can help to build a culture of trust amongst your staff, strengthen bonds, and add to the culture you want, which are all great things.
Be cautious when setting these up, however, as your staff are unlikely to be health professionals and may not have the skills to deal with some issues, and there can be instances where vicarious trauma becomes a problem.
It’s best to pair these programs with appropriate training for the supporters as well as access to professionals when needed.
They can be the most supportive, or the most destructive, of all of your systems, depending on how they’re set up and managed.
In my experience, putting time and attention into cultivating strong microcultures is one of the most valuable things an organisation can do.
This means upskilling leaders and their teams in wellbeing fundamentals, teaching them how to operate as a functional unit, and giving them the autonomy to execute what they’ve learned.
Do this for all of your teams and you’ll head off a lot of problems upstream.
We know from the research that managers are second only to romantic partners in their influence on wellbeing (for better or worse) so their importance can not be overstated.
Having caring, empathetic and skilled managers who know how to (and regularly do) support their teams is a godsend.
Similar to peer support programs, however, it’s important to note that managers are not counsellors, and it’s critical that managers themselves have access to support systems when they themselves need them, or when they feel their team needs someone with an extra level of skills to assist them.
However, like physical first aiders, they are there to lend a helping hand until that person can access other kinds of support.
They should not be relied upon to be the solution to a mental health crisis as, A. no one person or people can be, and B. they do not have the appropriate level of training.
An upgrade to mental health first aid that focuses more on how to support and talk to people (rather than triage or redirect them) is the Mental Health First Responders course (conducted by Sharetree), and it’s our recommendation for training of this type.
This is due to a number of factors (that you can find in other articles I’ve written on the subject) but suffice it to say that their engagement levels and outcomes could definitely be improved.
I could effectively summarise my thoughts on EAPs with this: An EAP is an important net that can catch a small portion of your people experiencing mental health crises, but it is not a fix for your wellbeing issues.
Providing health and wellbeing consultants for staff to proactively manage their health and wellbeing, rather than reactively trying to patch them up with EAP, is the clear path forward.
With this initiative, consultants of various disciplines (exercise physiologists, physiotherapists, dietitians, mental health experts etc.) are made available to all staff to work on different aspects of their health and wellbeing.
This is designed as a proactive approach to help staff to take control of their health and wellbeing before they reach a crisis point.
This is the future of workplace health and wellbeing and the initiative that, due to its effectiveness, is gathering the most speed.
Health and wellbeing are skill sets and the people who are healthy and well (relative to their circumstances) are the ones who have these skills and are able to apply them consistently.
Seminars, workshops, online courses, one-on-one consultations, group activities (or a mixture of all of them), however you want to do it, upskilling is one of the best ways to support your people.
Think of it as support before the fact.
In other words, don’t just catch them, teach them how not to fall.
When this is the case, all you need are the skills (see above), the time, and the space to do it.
Wellbeing rooms can be as simple as a quiet area where people can go to sit and think (or not think) away from all the noise and distractions of the office.
This is one of the simplest and most appreciated forms of support and one that often gets overlooked.
The important thing here is to look at what you might not have or might have let fall by the wayside and put some thought into whether that particular mode of support could use some time and attention.
It is absolutely possible and even advisable to have all of these structures in place to varying degrees as different people need different things at different times.
The thing these all have in common is that they are actually quite simple to set up and all have their place in any organisation.
So, if you want to promote psychological safety, create a culture of wellbeing, and build a place that people feel comfortable and able to do their best work in, establish and promote effective support structures and watch your people thrive.