Blogs

How Can We Control Work-Related Stress?

How Can We Control Work-Related Stress?

Stress: so ubiquitous, the idea of preventing it altogether might seem a bit like trying to hold back an incoming tide.

But stress doesn’t need to be an inevitable part of life, and it definitely doesn’t need to be an inevitable part of work.

How can employers control work-related stress?

Can’t Handle The Jandal: Stress and Burnout - what’s the difference?

Can’t Handle The Jandal: Stress and Burnout - what’s the difference?

Burnout: the imagery in that word is evocative, and perhaps one reason why the term has become popular. Why? Because the picture that burnout conjures is so very much like the experience of it.

Burned out individuals keep going, like flames across a landscape, until they run out of fuel entirely and have absolutely nothing left to give. Not one spark remains. They are quite literally ‘burned out.’

How can we tell the difference, why does it matter, and what can we do about it?

Gender Microaggression - What is it, and how does it impact women at work?

Gender Microaggression - What is it, and how does it impact women at work?

During a panel discussion of women leaders that I recently attended, the panelists were asked ‘what do you consider to be your biggest achievement?’

Without exception, every panelist responded ‘just surviving.’ One added ‘just managing to get to where she was.’ They gave the sense of having managed to move forward and reach their goals, but of having to perpetually push through a current, whilst dragging a parachute, to do so.

What was holding them back and how can we recognise gender discrimination in the modern workplace?

One Way to Manage Psychosocial Hazards for Women in the Workplace

One Way to Manage Psychosocial Hazards for Women in the Workplace

International Women’s Day 2023 has been and gone but the challenges that women face to experiencing equity in the workplace remain.

What are those challenges, and what would an environment that successfully controls for psychosocial hazards at work that particularly impact women look like?

Psychosocial Hazards and Community Trauma

Psychosocial Hazards and Community Trauma

When Psychosocial Hazards are outside your control, but are impacting your people, what can you do?

What if everyone at work is dealing with the same trauma simultaneously? How can leaders equip themselves to support their people through traumatic events that are impacting entire communities?

Psychosocial Risk Assessment: Why Does It Matter?

Psychosocial Risk Assessment: Why Does It Matter?

Some of the greatest scientific discoveries have come about entirely by accident.

Penicillin was born when Sir Alexander Fleming took a two week holiday and returned to his lab to find that a mould had grown over elements of his research, and that the unexpected mould deterred the growth of bacteria.

It took another 12 years and the work of two chemists, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to isolate, test and turn the compound that Fleming had discovered into a useable product, and the urgency of the World War 2 effort to stimulate mass production. Penicillin saved many lives and changed the course of medicine globally.

Fleming, Florey and Chain were each awarded the Nobel prize in 1945 in Physiology or Medicine. From their efforts, we have antibiotics, and also a recipe for turning data into a useable, scaleable positive intervention.

How can we apply this to mental health in the workplace by way of Psychosocial Risk Management?

Psychosocial Risk Management and the Three Ghosts of Christmas

Psychosocial Risk Management and the Three Ghosts of Christmas

The weather is bitter, the poorhouses and the prisons are full, and a money-hungry employer is keeping a shrewd eye on the company’s heating bill while his overworked and shivering clerk tries to remain optimistic in the face of inflation.

The year is 1843, but it could as easily be 2022.

Cane Toads and Wicked Problems: Seven Golden Rules for Successful Psychosocial Risk Management

Cane Toads and Wicked Problems: Seven Golden Rules for Successful Psychosocial Risk Management

Psychosocial Risk Management and the Cane Toads of Australia are both what we call ‘Wicked Problems'.’ That is, a problem which is difficult to solve because of complex and changing requirements that interact with each other, to the point that there is no single solution.

Think about your Psychosocial Risk Management process (or any other process that has been implemented by your organisation as a way to solve a problem). Did it solve the problem? Or did it create other problems?

Psychosocial Risk Management Series - Part 1: What is Psychosocial Risk?

Psychosocial Risk Management Series - Part 1: What is Psychosocial Risk?

What does a shared hatred of bad parking have to do with Psychosocial Risk Management within a world-renowned aeronautical engineering company?

Recently, a friend told me about the staff communications channel within their new job role. The channel includes a multitude of totally non-work related employee group chats, on topics ranging from a love of cats to photos and commentary of terrible parking in their neighbourhoods.

Why would an organisation - especially one with a very serious image - encourage what some might consider frivolous oversharing of personal trivia during company time?

The answer - (in part, at least): Psychosocial Risk Management.

How to Face Your Fears and Manage Anxiety

How to Face Your Fears and Manage Anxiety

A couple of years ago, I tried out for the fire service.

Facing down the entry to a confined-space maze designed to test my response to claustrophobic conditions, I realised that I had spent far too much time focusing on my running speed and pull-up ability and nowhere near enough time practising the mental skills I would need to control my fear response and manage anxiety under stress.

I failed.

The good news is that you don’t need to be prepping to face down burning buildings to benefit from facing your fears or managing anxiety.

IS THIS IT FOR GRIT and RESILIENCE?

IS THIS IT FOR GRIT and RESILIENCE?

I love survival stories. Whilst often harrowing, they demonstrate the incredible power of the human mind and spirit in the most inhospitable conditions.

Laura Dekker, New-Zealand born Dutch sailor, pursuing her dream to be the youngest person to sail single-handedly around the world in the face of repeated opposition from Dutch authorities - grit.

Getting up and continuing to sail after being whacked on the head by a flying fish - resilience.

Yet, resilience and grit are perhaps now more readily associated with corporate wellness schemes, positive psychology, and psychometric testing in recruitment.

And yet, I began to wonder, is developing the ability to withstand trauma really what we want at work?

Wouldn’t it be preferable to create an environment where the capacity to avoid PTSD wasn’t a necessary quality?

Let's Make Some Noise about Quiet Quitting

Let's Make Some Noise about Quiet Quitting

What is Quiet Quitting?

In a nutshell, Quiet Quitting is simply doing what you are paid to do, and no more.

Oh the horror! Merely fulfilling your contract, as agreed at the outset with your employer? How entitled! How lazy! What is the younger generation coming to?

How can leaders manage Quiet Quitters?

Read on for more..

Psychological Safety: What is it, Why does it matter, and how can you create it for your team?

Psychological Safety: What is it, Why does it matter, and how can you create it for your team?

Feeling able to seek help, to admit mistakes, to speak up when something is wrong in the workplace, is less a reflection of the person doing the speaking and more of a reflection of whether their working environment enables them to feel safe to speak.

This is what we call Psychological Safety.

Ask yourself this - if one of your team members screwed up, would they feel confident that they could let you know, without fear of repercussions? Now dial-up the magnitude of the screw-up.

Eight things I learned on turning 40

Eight things I learned on turning 40

I’m not usually big on birthdays, but I turned 40 last week and it felt like a bit of a milestone.

I’m not depressed per se about almost being middle-aged (I intend to live until I’m 98, so I have a few years to go on that one), but I have spent some time reflecting on how it feels to be on the other side of four decades.

Without further ado, here are my thoughts on life.

Should I stay or should I go now? The science of quitting, and when to do it.

Should I stay or should I go now? The science of quitting, and when to do it.

We are celebrating Platty Jubes this weekend in the UK – the Queen’s Platinum Jublilee.

Seventy years of reign on the throne.

Whatever your thoughts on the monarchy, I think we can all agree that’s a long-ass time to be in the same job. Not to mention a long time to be working at all. Lizzy is 96 and still at it.

It raises an important question. How do you know when to play it like Elizabeth II and stick it out for the long haul, or make like Meghan and Harry and get the hell out of Dodge?