Staff wellbeing ideas

[QueenArnica]

Hi all,

Have posted this in The Staffroom but thought I’d be cheeky and post for traffic here too.
Have a zoom meeting on Monday as am
part of a group at school (primary) tasked with staff wellbeing. Minuscule budget and need to make it meaningful. Does anyone have any best practice/tips/ideas of things that work in their school. Need to cover current times (lockdown) and when we’re all back in school.

Alternatively anyone work in a business that has inexpensive ideas to promote staff wellbeing that I could adapt for school?

Thanks so much in advance.

What Saturday afternoon said : basically not worrying about work after hours.

Where I work we have 'sports day'.... WAIT! Which is a day off in the summer. If you do sports on that day, fine. It's basically an extra, paid day off in the summer. People love it.

@SaturdayAfternoon

I’d hate all these material things.

I just want to work at work, then go home and not think about work. To be with my family. That’s the best ‘well-being gift' that I could ever get.

I agree with this

The best thing for well being is going to be something that doesn't add to their to do list, a lot of the ideas on here are doing that.

One place I worked (emergency services) had a Wall of Awesome. If someone did something that deserved acknowledgment we wrote it on a post it note and stuck it on. The boss read them out in the staff meeting.
It was nice to browse while waiting for the kettle to boil too.

We're just introducing Wellbeing Wednesdays. Each member of the team will take a turn to come up with a wellbeing activity and carry it out with the team.

We've done various things including wellbeing boxes, staff meetings with an input such as mindfulness or laughter yoga (cost effective as less than£100 for input and benefits all attendees), but find a wellbeing hour to be utilised weekly helpful and weekly chats to connect with folk. Also, if you're in Scotland Do be mindful are currently offering free services to head teachers- not sure what this entails but my staff team has had training, and enjoyed, in past (disclaimer, not a school but do work with families)

@pinksunday

We're just introducing Wellbeing Wednesdays. Each member of the team will take a turn to come up with a wellbeing activity and carry it out with the team.

So extra work for all?

Ride to work scheme where you get lots of money off new bikes?

The thing is, there is no hour long activity that is going to impact wellbeing. Even if you could afford a team of masseurs and a harpist, if people are already stressed about their workloads then it is only going to be an inconvenience.

What is meaningful is to try to reduce workload - for example fewer meetings or briefer paperwork requirements. But that probably isn't within your ability to arrange.

If you are stuck with doing an activity despite this, I would probably do an appreciative enquiry exercise. An easy example of this is to have a load of positive qualities and ask people in groups to take turns expressing qualities they like or admire about each other and why.

@QueenArnica

Hi all,

Have posted this in The Staffroom but thought I’d be cheeky and post for traffic here too.
Have a zoom meeting on Monday as am
part of a group at school (primary) tasked with staff wellbeing. Minuscule budget and need to make it meaningful. Does anyone have any best practice/tips/ideas of things that work in their school. Need to cover current times (lockdown) and when we’re all back in school.

Alternatively anyone work in a business that has inexpensive ideas to promote staff wellbeing that I could adapt for school?

Thanks so much in advance.

Divide the budget by the number of staff, give them it as cash in an envelope.

@pinksunday

We're just introducing Wellbeing Wednesdays. Each member of the team will take a turn to come up with a wellbeing activity and carry it out with the team.

"All use this pointless waste of time to go home early?"

"Hide and seek last one found gets to throw the first stone at whatever hr idiot came up with this"?

@Stompythedinosaur

The thing is, there is no hour long activity that is going to impact wellbeing. Even if you could afford a team of masseurs and a harpist, if people are already stressed about their workloads then it is only going to be an inconvenience.

What is meaningful is to try to reduce workload - for example fewer meetings or briefer paperwork requirements. But that probably isn't within your ability to arrange.

If you are stuck with doing an activity despite this, I would probably do an appreciative enquiry exercise. An easy example of this is to have a load of positive qualities and ask people in groups to take turns expressing qualities they like or admire about each other and why.

take turns expressing qualities they like or admire about each other and why.

Can you imagine the passive aggressive responses to this?

Pre Covid, our Wellness Committee I. E. Me implemented initiatives such as free flu shots in the office. I realise this isn't relevant now though

@trixiebelden77

I work in ICU.

Stuff that works for well-being is: acknowledgment of extra effort (comes with a coffee voucher and a card), clear effort to make rostering more fair, recognition of the effects of constant rolling night shift, serious efforts to minimize fatigue.

Stuff that is an insult: posters about yoga, meditation apps/classes that imply working 70% nights with dying people is a matter that can be fixed with increasing our own personal resilience.

We definitely could not pass a bag between staff in these times!

Ooo we have posters in our toilets about how getting a dog and eating more fruit will help us stop killing ourselves!

Have you thought of adding a fluffy dependant to the household to help ratchet up the pressure?

So here you are - at 10.45 at night - in your own time - unpaid - lumbered with coming up with stupid ideas for a stupid initiative?
Does it make you feel any better? or more put-upon?

www.mhfa.ca/

Mental health first aid - interesting stuff on here, OP

We had free flu shots in pre Covid times too. We also had an ironing service who came in. It wasn't free, but it was convenient and I hate ironing! We also had a mobile mechanic who came in and worked on your car while you were teaching if you needed it. Again not free but very convenient. The business manager arranged everything so all you had to do if you needed one of them was to drop her a quick email and she sorted it all.

@RiverSkater

Ride to work scheme where you get lots of money off new bikes?

Only any good for people who can ride a bike, want to ride a bike and have the spare money to put towards it.

Well being Wednesdays sound a nightmare. Would hate "star of the week" or votes from pupils too, as becomes popularity competition.

Sorry, v negative here. Best well being stuff benefits all...do you want long term benefits, in which case it's about overhauling the working environment, or short term tokens of appreciation? In which case, maybe get the children every so often to secretly write positive notes or memories about a certain member of staff, to be left in a nice box on desk with something like a nice little note pad and pen, bar of choc, maybe a book token. Something like that. Must do all staff throughout the year, not just teachers. Must be random timings, not just "whose turn this week?"

Probably impossible in a School but, in the Autumn, we had two "Wellbeing Days", effectively additional holiday, where we were encouraged to do something which made us happy. Everyone from Directors down.

Would hate "star of the week" or votes from pupils too, as becomes popularity competition
We had something similar in a previous job, for "employee of the month". There were 4 teams on a rolling 4 on 4 off shift pattern. Supervisors were supposed to nominate, but only one team supervisors ever bothered, so that team won every month. Once it got to the final member of that team winning (who was always late and was generally poor at her job) there was almost a walk out by the other 3 teams. Everyone said the same thing... If she's the best worker this month the rest of us need to quit and find new jobs as she wasn't even achieving the bare minimum required... It was just she was the only one from the team that nominated that hasn't already had it.
Funnily enough "employee of the month" stopped after that!

Maybe I'm cynical, but if I got a card from my colleagues, or a bag of stuff, I'd assume it was because it was my "turn" to be the recipient, not that I'd necessarily done anything particularly worthy. It's a bit like star of the week at school - everyone knows that every kid gets it eventually for some spurious reason or other.

We’ve had star of the week type awards or secret treat to a member of staff of your choice and I really hate it. It tends to go to (in my experience) louder members of staff who are always casually telling the management what they’ve done. Those members of staff who get on and work hard don’t seem to get recognised

Divide the budget by the number of staff, give them it as cash in an envelope.

Knowing what the op means about miniscule budget, in my school that would mean about 28p per person!

My school set up a wellbeing team in September after feedback from staff during lockdown. We did a few bits last term - mostly setting in stone expectations about trying to get the work/life balance lance right, and escalating up (as far as the principal if necessary) if folk were struggling with that. We have bake-offs that contribute house points (and we get to eat 'clean' home baking if you know you know), mini sport events after school that the kids can hang around to watch. We have a healthy living ambassador that ran a kind of 'get out there' type thing - send a pic of your daily exercise which was uploaded to the school twitter feed, which actually encouraged lots of kids to get some fresh air.

Plans are now in place for virtual bake-offs as we're now on a rota, and it's not just cake this time. Someone is setting up a weekly new recipe challenge where we each make a meal for ourselves/our families that will broaden our regular meal choices. There's going to be a quiz (yes in the evenings, but really what else is there to do, and it's sooooo good to see familiar faces that you might not see for weeks on a rota) for those who are into quizzes.

NICE TEA AND BISCUITS IN THE STAFFROOM is a must, and relatively cheap

Our school has access to a free counselling service for all staff, would be worth promoting that if you have the same. I know a few colleagues used that last year and are feeling stronger going into this period.

Open feedback to slt is useful - we have a postbox type thing which has seen lots of subtle changes in the last few months - slt calling into offices and classrooms for a genuine 'How's it going' chat rather than just power walks and lesson observations.

Agree with those who say working conditions culture change. Though I appreciate it is not in your power to do this!

Makes me cross when managers decide that staff need something to perk them up, delegate this to someone who is prob already too busy, then pat themselves on the back for a job well done...

I dont work in education, so this might not work for you. But my thoughts are below:

Sometimes you just need to be straight and acknowledge that this is a really rubbish time and it is incredibly difficult for everyone.

You could ask your chair of governors to write a thank you letter to staff. (Via the head)

If your team are union members, you could do some research and see what support they are offering. (Telephone counselling etc).

Costa coffee voucher. They do them for £5.

Fruit in the staffroom once a week (you will need to think how you do this in a covid secure way).

I think it’s clear that different people respond to different things! So by all means offer mindfulness, yoga, whatever, but please don’t assume that appeals to everyone. I am finding the workload of balancing in-school teaching for keyworker children, remote teaching for my own class, and supporting my own DC really onerous and couldn’t cope with any additional workload (& yes I would see a team meeting as workload). For me, a note from the Head / HOY saying what I personally am doing right (as opposed to a generic thank you) would be appreciated most of all.