<MOVED FROM ANOTHER POST>
WELLBEING - By Derek Mowbray
I have felt for quite some time that the wellbeing and health initiatives have broadly missed their target. There has been a tremendous amount of effort and focus on providing services to people who suffer from some form of ill health at work, and this focus has included medically inspired developments in occupational health, commercially inspired services such as physical health initiatives (gym membership, massage), legally inspired services such as employee assistance programmes. Whilst there is evidence that these services make a difference (just as the NHS makes a difference to people who are ill) the overall prevelance of psychological distress, for example, seems to be increasing with the level of incidence rising as a consequence. It seems to me that the way these services have developed is applauded by the very people who can abdicate their responsibility towards wellbeing - the managers. By the magic of coincidence, this seperation of management from wellbeing has been staring us in the face with the threatened strike by Royal Mail. Amazingly, the NHS has invited the Chief Medical Advisor of the Royal Mail to advise on wellbeing in the NHS. This demonstrates to me the misunderstanding of why wellbeing is so crucial to organisations - if you feel well you perform better than if you feel ill. At Royal Mail the level of psychological distress that led to people losing pay to demonstrate how badly they felt must have been massive. No amount of occupational health services did anything to improve the wellbeing and performance of the Royal Mail workers. A completely different approach to preventing psychological distress is required; an approach that would have meant that the prospect of a strike would not even enter the heads of anyone.
I'm passionate about tackling psychological distress before it has a chance of occurring. I am, therefore, passionate about the construction of positive working cultures. Once you've been in one of these you know instantly - they sparkle. The challenge that I and others face is how to persuade the managers that a positive working culture benefits them and their organisation just as much as their employees. In rising to this challenge I have tried most things, from free workshops, to free expert briefing sessions to endless writing, and conference speeches. They make some progress, and I'm pleased that the clients I have now would be instantly recognised by the public. However, I am only touching the surface of a massive 'iceberg effect' of psychological misery at work. Help came this week in the shape of the NICE guidelines, but these only relate to the NHS itself; but they do endorse the approach I have developed to prevention (just, and in a very minimalist manner) as well as continuing to support the essentially medical model approach to restoration of people already ill.
I am now pushing very hard with the Wellbeing and Performance Agenda - an agenda that has three interlocking aspects - the context within which managers are meant to behave, the behaviours that managers are meant to exhibit, and the actions than managers are meant to take. The context relates directly to the Positive Working Culture that I have mentioned above. The behaviours are described under five headings - attentiveness (the most critical behaviour of them all), intellectual flexibility, reliability, encouragement, and conflict resolution behaviours. The actions are under the classical heading of co-ordination, direction and control, but relate specifically to the behaviours required when performing these actions. The guiding principle in selecting the behaviours is the evidence the behaviour has in promoting trust and commitment between people, as it is trust and commitment that sponsors engagement, and engagement sponsors performance.
The model of performance that I use as the benchmark for assessing the impact of wellbeing, and use to develop the individual, is the Just a Minute Performance Model. The model has 9 performance criteria - clear aims, appropriate aims, clear timetable, efficacious action, no deviation, effective action, no repetition, efficient action, no hesitation. As you can tell, this performance model requires intense concentration, as well as appropriate skills, knowledge and experience. If any of the performance criteria are not met, the loop back is to the wellbeing component, to explore if any of the cultural issues interfere with performance or any behavioural issues interfere and so on.
Derek Mowbray
