CREATING A SUPPORTIVE WORK ENVIRONMENT

There are many ways to show you care about your work colleagues and to let them know that they are important and that you are interested in them and their lives. We do this every day in many ways.

It is likely that the most common way is the one we all do every day, with little consideration and automatically by asking: How are you? How was your evening? How was your weekend? How are you going? This is a normal, natural healthy interaction that we can all engage in with ease (mostly).

However, we can find it a bit more challenging and uncomfortable when we notice a colleague doesn’t seem to be their ‘normal’ self and the ‘usual’ approaches you would take to engage with them don’t seem to be working.

Beyond Blue – Be You is a fabulous National Mental Health and Wellbeing Resource tailored for the Education sector, including the Early Childhood Education and Care sector. They suggest that having a conversation with a colleague when they don’t appear their ‘normal’ self is a perfect way of showing you care.

They suggest having a Stop, Reflect, Act Conversation as a great way of showing you care and of demonstrating a willingness to provide support.

Stop: Make time to ask the person how they are going and pause and listen

Reflect: If there are concerns consider timing, space, policies, and professional boundaries before acting

Act: There are many ways to act, including – acknowledging feelings and experiences, offering practical support, encouraging self-care, promoting help seeking, following up and following through.

Life presents us all with bumps along the way and should we be experiencing one of those bumps how we cope can be influenced by our environments and the people in them. Having a workplace where you feel supported and where people show they care can make a tremendous difference to how we cope and how we recover.

Not being judged or made to feel ‘bad’ for what is happening for you and knowing your colleagues care about you, feeling supported and having a compassionate workplace can make a tremendous difference at a time when its likely to be needed the most.

Creating supportive workplaces where people know and feel supported is well known to be extremely valuable in maintaining positive mental health, recovery from a period of poor mental health and to our overall health and wellbeing.

We don’t need to have the answers, to be fixing or providing solutions for colleagues, yet by adopting the Stop, Reflect and Act Conversation approach and through building a caring, compassionate and empathetic working environment we can all make a huge difference at a time when a colleague might need it the most.

When supporting others please remember the importance of looking after yourself. You and your own self-care matter.

Beyond Blue – Be You Education is a National Program that provides Educators with knowledge, tools, and resources to enable people to achieve their best possible mental health. For more information on and to access the wonderful tools and resources from the Beyond Blue Be You Program please visit: www.beyou.edu.au.