Resources include a Health & Wellbeing at Work Survey

June 29, 2018
Posted by Amanda Furness

The four resources included in our summer 2018 newsletter:

Stress: are we coping?

The Mental Health Foundation published this report to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week 2018. Their recommendations take the form of a 7-point plan for a less stressed nation which includes calling for Governments across the UK to introduce a minimum of 2 ‘mental health days’ for each public-sector worker. They hope this would encourage self-care and help prevent stress escalating and turning into longer-term sickness absence citing the statistic, “45% of people will make up an alternative reason for work absence rather than report a mental health issue to their employer”.

Health & Wellbeing at Work Survey

Now in its 18th year, the annual CIPD Absence Management report has been re-branded to reflect an increased focus on health and wellbeing policies and practices. Their findings include presenteeism having more than trebled in the last 8 years, with almost 70% of respondents acknowledging that leavism (using assigned time off to get work done) has occurred in their organisation in the past 12 months. And yet the survey found that only a quarter of organisations are taking steps to challenge these unhealthy working behaviours.

How to Change Practice

Produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) the guidance states that, although it is focused on the healthcare setting, the general principles of change that it covers may be equally applicable elsewhere. It is divided into 3 parts and covers how to understand, identify and overcome barriers to change.

How to Disagree

Written 10 years ago when the author, Paul Graham, noticed that increased use of the web was leading to people responding more and many of their responses being in disagreement with what they had read.  If we were going to be disagreeing more, he felt we should learn to disagree well and his essay includes a disagreement hierarchy which can be visualised as a 7-level pyramid. With so much of our communication, both inside and outwith the workplace, no longer being verbal his disagreement hierarchy can be used to help us disagree with others without provoking anger or bad feeling.