Wellbeing agenda at work is causing weird behaviour

[Waferbiscuit]

I work for a large charity which in the last 3-4 years has really embraced wellbeing and mental health (MH) at work. We’ve introduced new policies to support MH, have had MH awareness campaigns, MH first aid training, and staff wellbeing is always on management’s agenda. This is all good and I’m very supportive of it – on a personal level I had a suicide in my immediate family so am very much support this change.

However I am started to feel dubious about how this wellbeing agenda is playing out in the work environment and the changes I’ve seen in the large team I manage.

The first thing I’ve noticed is the number of staff coming to me and (over)sharing their problems in this more ‘open environment’. People are telling me about their relationship problems, health scares, detailed arguments with their friends, debt issues, boyfriend breakups, family conflicts etc etc. I’ve always had good relationships with my managers but never shared much, even in stressful times (divorce, pregnancy loss, illness etc) because I never feel it was necessary or professional. Now things have really changed and I have people telling me about their feelings and experiences on an almost daily basis. I am a good listener but not a trained therapist and I also don’t have the time or energy to handle all this.

Secondly, so many people have come forward with stress, depression or anxiety (more than 50% of my team) and are demanding adjustments – these range from more flexible working, WFH, different work set ups, buying lights to help with SAD and changes to their work programmes. This is fine but it’s hugely time consuming to sort. It’s also causing issues with allocation of work. Our work sometimes requires last minute activity and those who are more vocal about their wellbeing won’t do it so the work always then has to be given to the willing or ‘resilient’ staff.

Finally wellbeing upmanship seems to happening a lot more in the last year. This is where someone claims their problems are greater than someone else’s. I was required to furlough a portion of my team this year and some staff came to me saying they ‘had to be furloughed’ because they ‘couldn’t cope’ with the current environment and I felt pushed into furloughing them over others. I think people forget that while the stress they feel is real it doesn’t mean they are more stressed than someone else. As a manager I have to be objective and assume that the staff member who lost a relative to Covid might be more stressed than the person who didn’t. But apparently, nope, I’m wrong – someone else is always having a harder time!

In summary, I very much support the MH and wellbeing agenda but find how it’s playing out a bit odd. Has anyone else noticed this?

Before I am pilloried, and I’m sure I will be, my team have generally been happy, the environment is not too high pressured, and before someone says I’m a crap manager I’ve had positive 360 degree evaluations and positive feedback from staff.

I listened to a podcast by a psychiatrist about stress / anxiety in the current climate. Her take on it is that stress is a normal state of being some times. We have to experience stress in order to learn how to manage it. If workplace stress is occurring despite all reasonable adjustments being implemented, then maybe that person just isn’t suited to that job.

If someone is actually refusing to do their job, after all reasonable adjustments have been offered, (to the extent mandated by your company's higher-ups, as part of this fabby wellbeing policy of theirs), then you instigate disciplinary procedures against them.

Your problem seems to be that this so-called policy is not a policy. It's a nebulous notion that nobody has bothered to develop or implement properly
This ^^

There also needs to be some members of more senior management with a backbone to support middle managers deal with these situations too.

Your problem seems to be that this so-called policy is not a policy. It's a nebulous notion that nobody has bothered to develop or implement properly

Yes, I’ve seen this in some places I work which are the most ‘touchy feely’.

While OP’s case seems at the far end I’ve definitely seen an increase in a small group of members of staff (within and outwith my own teams) expecting their managers to solve all their problems by reallocating the work in a way that totally suits the staff member, but where the staff member is not willing to take on any responsibility for addressing the underlying issues - eg through taking up support and training to improve their resilience, access the EAP, etc. Their life is hard, and therefore it is their manager’s job to fix it for them (including, in a couple of particularly baffling encounters) by promoting them.

In my experience it’s often happened in teams where the boundaries for what’s ok to expect and what’s not aren’t well-defined —as the poster I quoted above notes.

What medical evidence would you be expecting?

A diagnosis of anxiety, depression, stress or whatever else.

Everyone feels anxious, nervous, sad, down and stressed sometimes. That's normal life. Felling anxious or stressed is a world away from suffering from anxiety (the illness). Likewise feeling sad or down from depression (the illness).

Sure, it's good to take a supportive, preventative approach and for a manager to be able to take account of people's ordinary ups and downs, as well as their bigger life events and illnesses but someone without a medical diagnosis cannot force 'reasonable adjustments'. That's a legal term with limited meaning.

If OP's company wants to go beyond their legal obligations and offer extra support and accommodation, they need to define the ways in which they can do that, how needs are to be assessed, how far they will be accommodated and when they might not be.

I can't help wondering though, whether all this workplace focus on people's struggles and inabilities, just creates a negative 'can't do' attitude that further enervates people and perpetuates itself. Surely far healthier to foster a positive 'can do, let's all muck in and get on with it' attitude, then be in a position to take an early Friday afternoon, a long lunch break (and go to the pub, post-covid) from time to time.

There seems so much wrong, ill-conceived and damaging about this 'policy' and very little competent or positive, from what OP's been able to tell us so far!

Loads of work places suddenly rolling out wellness drives. But actual, real changes to working practices so that people aren't over worked (and underpaid!)...nah. As long as they have an EAP & MHFAs, they've ticked the box and covered themselves.

Loads of work places suddenly rolling out wellness drives. But actual, real changes to working practices so that people aren't over worked (and underpaid!)...nah. As long as they have an EAP & MHFAs, they've ticked the box and covered themselves.
That's my experience of some places too.

In the last couple of years I'm aware of some schools having 'wellbeing' policies & some of the initiatives have been tokenistic. Whilst it's very nice to have cake in the staff room or Wednesday yoga after school, what would make a huge difference to stress and workload would be to stop insisting displays are double mounted, that every piece of work needs marking, and get rid of meetings that could easily be an email.

A meaningful wellbeing policy should have workload, ability for staff to manage their workload in reasonable time frame, appropriate flexibility for all and so on running through it, with operational and strategic support from senior management.

Totally agree and I see it in my workplace as well.

Let's be clear, mental health problems, PTSD etc are very real and I know a number of people who have significant issues with both.

However recently in work we have had a significant push on mental health awareness, which has resulted in a large number of individuals claiming they 'can't cope/are over stressed/overworked etc'

This has led to the burden of work being taken up completely by the more resilient members of the team and those with 'issues' doing very little or nothing. Also worth noting that they don't seem to be in any hurry to solve their issues, routinely turning down or rescheduling mental health counselling sessions, medical appointments etc.

Long story short, I feel a minority of people either deliberately take advantage of mental health awareness in order to make their live easier by claiming fictitious illnesses and/or conditions, or they are weak minded people who believe that any stress, no matter how small is not acceptable and they shouldn't have to deal with it.

As a previous poster has said, some stress is normal in any job, if you can't cope when reasonable adjustments are made then you are in the wrong business.

That's part of the point of the thread - how do we manage concerns about wellbeing/stress/anxiety that aren't medical diagnoses but for which staff expect flexibility/lenience/care?

What lottiegarbanzo and others have said. They can expect all they like, but that doesn't mean you give it to them.

Ultimately, the business must make reasonable adjustments for people with disabilities and it must consider flexible working requests. The organisation should have a policies covering both of these requirements. Beyond that, you have no obligation to give employees the working patterns or workloads they want; you're free to discipline them for not doing their job, and they're free to go elsewhere if the job isn't what they want.

This has led to the burden of work being taken up completely by the more resilient members of the team and those with 'issues' doing very little or nothing.

Again, this is not the fault of wellbeing agendas but of bad management.

@heydemonitsyagirl I don't think it's as straightforward as that, though. Employees are under the impression that they can expect flexibility/leniency because certain aspects of their roles make them feel stressed and it's then left up to managers to deal with the fall-out when that just isn't workable.

A well-designed wellbeing agenda won't create this situation but a poorly thought out one will.

I am also a manager in work and noticing the same. However for me I think the organisation is in some way at the heart of this problem, it's actually quite toxic , watch your back kind place but says it's brilliant , it's very weird.
The only way to get help is to say you have a mental health problem, and honestly during COVID how many of us is that ? I think the key is to forge a solid team in which everyone generally works to 70 - 80% which gives a bit of leeway when things go wrong.

Unless I've missed it, you haven't mentioned what your employer is actually doing to promote good mental health? If they're not doing anything, maybe that's something to think about in the hope that it will ease some of your stress! Do you work in a very stressful environment? From what you've described, it sounds like that's the case, so some intervention is perhaps needed. I work or a state school and the school have employed a counselor for staff use, it might be worth suggesting that your managers. Obviously there isn't a bottomless pit of money for that kind of thing, particularly in the charity/state sector, but there comes a point when the employer just needs to put their money where their mouth is and actually do something about the problem. That might be money for counselling, or extra staff to reduce workload etc. but just getting people taking about it amongst themselves, or with you, isn't really going to do much good.

I think the key is to forge a solid team in which everyone generally works to 70 - 80% which gives a bit of leeway when things go wrong. I suspect if we did this - everyone would have to take a pay cut. Certainly there wouldn't be any bonus - and I expect we'd lose our best staff who would find the lowering of their salary and expectations too much to compromise their ambitions on.

EmotionalEllie I don't believe there's any organisation with a wellbeing policy that says if you tell your manager you're stressed, they have to take away your work and give it to a colleague. So it is that simple - if a manager is loading excess work on quiet members of the team to avoid moaning, that's on them. It's bad management.

If the directors are telling managers that they have to do whatever their managees ask and load all the extra work onto quiet team members then sure, that's not the manager's fault. I don't believe that is happening.

A little bit of out of the box thinking about what really boosts productivity is in order, as that's what's important to the employer after all. Reducing workload has in many cases been shown to boost productivity. No point working everyone to the max if some people just fail to complete everything because they're so stressed or are off sick etc.

Hello Does any one work as a nurse assessor within CHC?
I have just been offered a full time post- I currently work part time in a clinical role- need to increase my hours and wanted to do something different I feel that I have the experience just worried about changing to a non clinical role and the variety of this role- any guidance appreciated

If I go to my GP and get his certificate that I am suffering from anxiety,depression and stress to the extent I cannot work and hand that to my employer,I am not paid for the first two days of absence but thereafter would be entitled to £95.84 per week Statutory Sick Pay. If instead, I self diagnose as suffering and report under my employer's Wellbeing initiative, I would have a good shot at being furloughed at a much higher rate of pay?

@Puff1975 You might want to start your own thread, as that's quite a specific question.

@EmotionalEllie

I completely agree with you OP and I don't really like it either.

Personally, I actually like keeping my work and personal lives separate. I don't particularly like sharing personal information with my colleagues (what I did at the weekend or where I'm going on holiday, fine - a recent family bereavement, not so much.) But this now seems to be frowned upon. We have to 'be authentic' which apparently means talking about our feelings and vulnerabilities to our colleagues.

I also get frustrated by the amount of work time we have to dedicate to mental health, wellbeing and resilience initiatives. If colleagues are struggling then without a doubt resources should be in place to help them and I fully agree with support initiatives like mental health first aiders, employee counselling etc.

However, I've got a busy week ahead and the most stressful part is how I meet all my deadlines when I'm having to dedicate half a day to a mandatory workshop about wellbeing and protecting my mental health.

We have to 'be authentic' which apparently means talking about our feelings and vulnerabilities to our colleagues.

We had 'being your authentic self' training at work last week funnily enough.

It's funny how being your authentic self doesn't apply to just wanting to do a good job and go home or not being particularly career driven. If I told my boss that I wasn't interested in the constant drive for continuous professional and personal development she'd have a fit.

I agree with you op, there's a lot to be said for a bit of British reserve and professionalism although I know that's unfashionable.
Maybe Americans have a better process, if they need support they discuss it with a therapist and not with anyone at work.
More expensive but less demanding of colleagues.

I agree that constant disclosing takes its toll on staff, and I'm trained in counselling skills.

There are plusses and minuses and now is a hard time to assess the wellbeing agenda. Where I now work, we say we do wellbeing but what that really means is we all work super hard and sometimes get time off thrown at us in reward. Works for me.

say

I hear you OP.

Having been around a few years, I think a lot of the problem is the morphing of 'mental health' into 'wellbeing'.

In the eyes of the law and HSE they are separate things. Employers have a duty under the Equality Act to people with mental health problems.

That is an entirely separate issue from promoting wellbeing at work.

I do also think that people who have 'just managed' for years are now finding themselves 'not quite coping' which is driving more disclosure. The mental health impact of covid and lock down restrictions need a structural approach from organisations, not more and more being asked of managers.

I always direct convos about mental health into 'how is this affecting you at work?' and 'how can we help?' rather encouraging than long, personal disclosures tbh.