If you’re a line manager, you have a role to play in setting the tone and expectations in your own team(s). This is especially important when many staff are working in a blended way, which can make it harder to know if anyone is struggling with their wellbeing.
Whether you’re on or off campus, there are some general good practice ways to promote a healthy wellbeing culture in your team(s). In particular, encourage staff to:
- Manage their workloads and share if they are finding their workload excessive or unreasonable: excessive workload is likely to negatively impact someone's stress or general wellbeing. Encouraging a more open and supportive culture when it comes to workload concerns is therefore a fundamental way in which you, as a line manager, can contribute to better staff wellbeing.
- Take regular breaks from screens. If their job doesn’t involve regular use of a computer, encourage them to take breaks from where they usually work – even if it’s just stepping outside for a few minutes, this can help to reduce or offset any potential wellbeing issues, e.g. posture.
- Take their lunch breaks – you can lead by example!
- Find some time to exercise during the day, even if it’s just for 10 or 15 minutes.
- Access advice about posture and general set-up of their work area, including workstation assessments.
- Know where to find the right wellbeing resources, tools and guidance that fit their circumstances.
It’s not always obvious when someone is dealing with wellbeing challenges (mental health or otherwise). This is especially true now that so many of us only work on campus for a few days each week, which means that much of the time we’re interacting with colleagues through Teams or Zoom. There may be times when you can spot the signs if someone is struggling with their wellbeing (see, for example, the tips in Spotting and addressing stress), but this won’t cover every situation. As a manager, you can help to encourage a more open team culture when it comes to wellbeing by:
- Never making assumptions about the reasons behind someone’s behaviour;
- Never assuming that a wellbeing issue will automatically have a negative impact on someone’s performance;
- Making wellbeing a natural part of work discussions, both in team catch-ups and individual one-to-ones (see the Professional Wellbeing webpage for more). New for 2024, new guidance has been developed to help managers have conversations with staff about wellbeing and mental health, so you can be sure that you're picking up on the key points and supporting staff in the best ways.
How to support wellbeing remotely
It’s important that members of your team feel just as supported when they’re working remotely as they would on campus. It may seem harder to support your team’s wellbeing (mental health or otherwise) if you’re not working in the same space as them. Working in different locations means that you may have to be more proactive about staying in touch. Here are some general tips:
- Stay in touch. Have regular team catch-ups (daily if possible): ask your team how they are doing and if they need any support.
- As well as team catch-ups, make sure that you continue to have one-to-one catch-ups with individuals.
- At the same time, remember that, because they aren’t having face to face chats, staff working remotely are receiving all of their communications as emails, messages and video calls. Communication ‘overload’ is a real possibility as many of us work from home, so it’s important to allow employees to ‘disconnect’ for periods so that they can concentrate.
- If you’ve not already done so, consider setting up a Teams channel for your team: it’s a good way to stay in touch and have the more casual conversations that might otherwise have happened on campus.
You can find more guidance about connecting and collaborating when working remotely on the Future Ways of Working (FWOW) webpages.