Staff Wellbeing: Look After Your Team
Discover how managers can support staff wellbeing through healthy boundaries, workload management, supportive leadership and a positive workplace culture.
In Safeguarding, we can spend a lot of time talking about looking after other people.
We support children and young people, respond to concerns, manage difficult situations and sometimes deal with information and circumstances that are emotionally heavy.
But there is another question that is just as important: Who is looking after the people who are looking after everyone else?
Recently, after delivering safeguarding training, someone asked me what I do to look after my own wellbeing. It was simply a check-in after the training had covered lots of heavy and particularly triggering subjects.
I thought it was quite a powerful question because it made me reflect on something I believe is important to good leadership: Staff wellbeing shouldn't only become a conversation when someone is already struggling. It should be part of the culture of a team.
Wellbeing starts with the culture you create
I don't necessarily do something specific after delivering safeguarding training because the subject matter was difficult. That's not because I think I'm invincible or that difficult things don't affect people.
I've worked with safeguarding for many years and, for me, it has become part of what I do. I process it, I get on with it and I move forward.
I also realised something else. The reason I felt okay wasn't because I had some special strategy that I suddenly needed to put into action. A lot of my wellbeing is protected by the way I work every day.
I have boundaries in place. I don't routinely work late. I don't check work emails in the evening. I ensure that I take breaks. I even have breakfast...! When the working day is finished, I go home.
That might sound simple, but I think these things matter.
As a manager, I also want my team to see that these boundaries are normal. I want them to know that leaving work on time isn't a sign that they aren't committed. It isn't something they should feel guilty about.
There isn't an invisible expectation from me or my superiors that they should stay behind just to prove that they care.
If you expect it from your team, model it yourself
One of the simplest things I do is encourage my team to leave on time.
In fact, I've been known to go into the office and threaten to switch people's computers off if they're still there! They'll tell you themselves that I am the first to go in there telling them it's time to log off.
Obviously, there are exceptions. If there is a genuine emergency involving a child, that's different. But staying late shouldn't become the default because someone has another ten emails to answer, a report to finish or because something wasn't organised properly earlier in the day.
People have lives outside work. They have partners, children, pets, friends, families and personal commitments.
That time is important.
I don't think it's fair for people to continually sacrifice their personal lives simply because there is an expectation that work should always come first.
I also think managers have a responsibility to make that clear.
If you tell your team to look after their wellbeing but you're sending emails at 10pm, never taking a break and routinely staying late yourself, what message are you really giving them?
People notice what leaders do far more than what they say.
Don't just tell people to manage their workload. Look at the workload.
When I took over my team, one of the things I did was properly understand what their working day actually looked like.
I looked at their responsibilities and I looked at their workloads. I asked them where the pressure points were. Then I looked at it strategically as a manager.
What I found was that some processes were unnecessarily taking up people's time. There was duplication, some duties could be changed or removed and some processes were still paper-based when they could be moved online.
None of these things, individually, seemed enormous but collectively, they made a significant difference.
People had more time to focus on the work that genuinely required their attention. Other tasks became quicker and more efficient, which is important for wellbeing.
Sometimes the answer to staff wellbeing isn't another wellbeing initiative. Sometimes the answer is to fix the thing that's making people feel overwhelmed in the first place.
Ask why people aren't taking their breaks
If someone is regularly working through lunch, staying late or coming in early, I don't think the first response should automatically be: "You need to manage your time better."
I'd ask why.
There could be a completely legitimate reason. Perhaps childcare means coming into work early makes life easier. Perhaps someone has a personal commitment after work and chooses to stay for a little longer.
That's very different from someone feeling that they have to stay because they can't possibly get everything done during their working day.
If someone feels they can't take a lunch break, that could tell you something. Perhaps their workload is unrealistic or a process isn't working. Maybe they need additional support or training, or perhaps something could be done more efficiently.
Could it be they're struggling and are beginning to burn out? Or perhaps they've simply come from a workplace where working through lunch was normalised.
You don't know until you have the conversation.
A manager asking “Why?” can uncover something that otherwise would have remained hidden.
Give people permission to have boundaries
I also think managers can play an important role in helping staff become comfortable setting their own boundaries.
For example, I encourage my team (who have a great deal of autonomous working, by the way) to manage expectations around meetings. A meeting doesn't automatically have to take an hour just because an hour has been put in the diary. If someone only has an hour available, I encourage them to say so.
"I've got an hour for this meeting because I've got something afterwards."
That's a perfectly reasonable boundary. The important thing is that people feel empowered to communicate it. Otherwise, they can end up absorbing other people's poor planning or unrealistic expectations.
Good management isn't about removing every pressure from someone's working day.
That's unrealistic. It's about helping people recognise what they can reasonably manage, giving them the confidence to communicate their boundaries and making sure they know they won't be judged for doing so.
Wellbeing shouldn't be a box to tick
I think there is sometimes a danger that staff wellbeing becomes something organisations feel they need to demonstrate rather than something they genuinely build into their culture.
There may be a wellbeing app. Maybe some nice food for the team every Friday. Perhaps there are resources available somewhere on the school system. None of these things are necessarily bad but we need to ask: What's the purpose?
Why are we doing this? How is it actually going to help? Does it address something our team is experiencing? Do we know our team well enough to understand what would genuinely make a difference?
Sometimes a small act of kindness can have far more impact than an expensive initiative. Quote often, the most valuable wellbeing intervention is simply a manager noticing that someone is struggling and asking them what's going on.
It's about making wellbeing something people can relate to rather than another box that needs ticking.
Build a team that looks out for one another
This is most likely the key part that has stayed with me most from that safeguarding training.
Someone checked in with me.
Not because there was a formal process telling them to and not because they were trying to tick an invisible box. They simply recognised that we'd been dealing with some heavy subject matter and thought it was worth asking how I was.
For me, that's a sign of a healthy team culture.
People looking out for each other has become normal.
That's what I wanted to create as a manager and that's what I continue to promote within my team.
I manage a team where people know they can approach me if they need support. It's a team where people can challenge decisions respectfully and a team where people understand why decisions have been made.
It's also a team where people feel comfortable saying, “I can't do that today,” or “I need some help with this.”
It's a team where looking after yourself doesn't make you feel like you're letting everyone else down.
Ultimately, bring people on board with you
I don't expect everyone I manage to agree with every decision I make. I also don't expect people never to challenge me.
In fact, I think good teams should be able to do both.
For me, leadership is about bringing people on board with you. It's about being transparent, listening and understanding the reality of the work people are doing rather than simply looking at a job description.
It's about recognising that people are people. They have lives outside work. They need rest. They need time with the people and things that matter to them.
And ultimately, I believe people are more able to give their best at work when they have the opportunity to switch off from work too.
Staff wellbeing isn't something that should only be discussed when someone reaches breaking point. It should be built into the way we lead.
Look after your team. Give them permission to look after themselves. Where something is getting in the way of their wellbeing, don't just tell them to cope with it... look at what you can change.
That's leadership too.
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