Managers' Essentials
Promoting Wellbeing
Wellbeing is a changing state of how a person evaluates their life in a moment in time. Line managers can play an important role in supporting wellbeing in the workplace. There is no 'one size fits all' approach.
Increasingly, it is recognised that line managers have a central role to play in ensuring positive mental health and wellbeing for employees in the workplace. Discussing stress and wellbeing can be difficult to initiate with colleagues so we have drawn together some tools to support you. This support is vital especially during times of change and uncertainty in the workplace.
Preventing Work-related Stress
The Health & Safety Executive (HSE) provide guidance designed to help line managers hold initial conversations with employees as part of an employer’s journey towards preventing work-related stress. The following steps can help:
- Hold recommended regular 1:1s with your staff to allow space for discussion around wellbeing and work-related stress.
- The HSE toolkits listed below could help provide some questions and guidance on the common causes of stress and encourages you to consider strategies to address certain issues.
- These conversations can fit into an existing 1:1 or a new meeting could be setup solely to discuss wellbeing and work-related stress. They could focus on one topic, or cover all six areas of the management standards.
- Enrol on the wellbeing workshops (see below for details) to understand how to manage and prevent work-related stress.
The listed toolkits below are essential reads to facilitate your role as a line manager and manage wellbeing in teams:
- Understand your role as a manager and the six key areas of work design to prevent work-place stress: HSE Management Standards
- Raise awareness around mental health by having open discussions with colleagues: Guidance for Line Managers Supporting Staff Remotely – Having Open Discussions About Mental Health.
- Reflect on the actions that every manager can take to make sure stress doesn’t get in the way of success: CIPD 6 Steps to help your team thrive at work
- Practice having wellbeing conversations with colleagues to prevent work-related stress: HSE Talking Toolkit: Preventing Work-Related Stress
- Familiarise yourself with the support services available at Queen Mary, including our Mental Health First Aider List, for support and signposting
Managing Workplace Wellbeing
Organisational & Professional Development and Researcher Development offer wellbeing workshops specifically aimed at supporting teams and managing individual wellbeing.
Workshops explore the dimensions of wellbeing, common causes of work-related stress and discussions around preventing and managing individual wellbeing.
Enrol by searching for ‘wellbeing’ on the CPD booking system.
Resources
