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Making People Count : a

workforce bulletin

May 2018 Compiled by John Gale JET Library – Mid-

Cheshire NHS Foundation Trust

Commissioned by Health Education

England

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Contents

Leadership ................................................................................................................................ 4

Why we should be glad to be grey .................................................................................................. 4

How to grow your own leaders ........................................................................................................ 4

Learning and Development .................................................................................................... 5

Best of breed at the CIPD Crufts ...........................................................................................................5

Workers want Netflix but get magic lanterns ................................................................................ 5

Recruitment .............................................................................................................................. 6

Still a seller’s market when it comes to recruitment ..................................................................... 6

When crowdsourcing comes to recruitment .................................................................................. 6

Can I talk to you about conversational recruitment? ........................................................................7

GPs feel the strain ....................................................................................................................................7

Talent Management ................................................................................................................. 8

Being flexible and holding on to people ......................................................................................... 8

How to get the best out of KPIs ....................................................................................................... 8

Three questions managers should ask their staff ........................................................................... 9

Engagement – scratching beneath the surface ................................................................................ 10

Why continuous listening Beats the annual engagement survey ............................................... 10

The aging workforce. Wise old birds or Hotel California? ......................................................... 11

Performance management – the fine art of delegation ............................................................... 11

The gig economy comes to Tesco .................................................................................................. 12

The five principles of a good team ................................................................................................ 13

The five psychological factors for team success ........................................................................... 13

Wellbeing ................................................................................................................................ 14

Why be at home when you could be at work? ............................................................................. 14

Why be at home when you could be at work? Part II ................................................................. 15

First flexible working – now flexible pay? ..................................................................................... 15

Millennials feeling the strain at work ............................................................................................ 16

Graduates complain about lack of mental-health support ......................................................... 16

Changing the workplace to protect mental health ...................................................................... 17

How managers can help workers manage stress .......................................................................... 17

Making time for gentleness ............................................................................................................ 18

Using triage to crack employee mental health ............................................................................. 19

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When work and family come into conflict ................................................................................... 19

New toolkit helps employers tackle drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse ...................................... 20

How smartphones can damage your health ................................................................................. 21

Workforce ............................................................................................................................... 21

Big rise in working mothers ........................................................................................................... 21

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Leadership

Why we should be glad to be grey Source: change-effect.com

In a nutshell: Some people like to stay true to their principles and hope the world

changes to meet them. Other people grow up and realise, in the words of Sir Mick

Jagger, that you can’t always get what you want. In this article Neil Thompson sings

the praises of compromise and points out that running things is often the art of

balancing one good against another e.g. affordability and quality, fairness and

excellence etc. He quotes Nick Clegg’s reminiscences of his time as Deputy Prime

Minister when compromise was seen as a weakness and it was seen as better to be

stuck in inaction through a dogmatic and principled approach than to progress

through discussion, diplomacy and compromise. Leaders need to be aware of

incongruence and to be able to hold conflicting positions and be aware of the tension

this brings in order to move forward and progress. “Sometimes the smallest steps

towards improvement can be the most valuable, sometimes we have to embrace the

things we dislike in order to shape and improve them. Sometimes we have to be OK

with … OK.”

You can read the whole of this article here.

How to grow your own leaders Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: HR professionals have been discussing – among other things – how to

cultivate people’s leadership skills at the 2018 EMEA Perspectives conference.

Employers don’t often have a formal leadership-development plan in place. As a result,

poor leadership can take hold and end up becoming more costly to an organisation

than developing a decent leadership-training strategy in the first place. However,

leadership training should not be introduced without careful thought and employers

should align it with their business priorities to get the most out of their investment,

for both learners and employers. It’s important that learners are engaged in their skills

development and employers can offer their workers ‘bite-sized,’ learning resources to

target time-poor learners. Skillsoft – the organisers of the conference – use

scriptwriters to develop their leadership training content allowing them to tell a

compelling story meaning learners come back for me to see how the story plays out.

Employers should also relax about employees using their smartphones to access

training and when they think about their leadership learning and development

strategy businesses need to look beyond what they need today to what might be

required in years to come including leadership, collaboration, innovation, creativity

and design.

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You can read the whole of this article here.

Learning and Development Best of breed at the CIPD Crufts

Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Dog fanciers have Crufts and gardeners have Chelsea but learning and

development professionals have the CIPD Learning and Development Show. The great

and the good turn up and do tricks (usually involving PowerPoint rather than fetching

a stick) and among them was the CIPD’s Head of Learning and Development Andy

Lancaster who argued that L&D professionals needed to stop operating in their own

bubble and acknowledge that their part of a wider organisational ecosystem. To do

this L&D people need to make the most of people’s smartphones – “our mission now is

to drive the self-directed learner.” Employees can now create their own video content

to share or try streaming services such as Periscope for one-to-one coaching as well as

seeking out information, making sense of it and sharing it with their peers. Companies

could also encourage workers to subscribe to podcasts for learning on the go or even

create their own content for workers. Now that headsets are cheaper employers can

start exploring apps that provide virtual-learning experiences. However, it’s also

important to ensure equality of access and opportunity as not all workers will own a

smartphone. Deloitte have developed a robotics academy to build robots and

understand how humans will work with machines. At the show Pash Reddy, the head

of L&D at Deloitte, said that to work effectively with machines humans will need to be

creative, innovative and entrepreneurial as well as being able to work in agile ways

(mentally, presumably, not on a trapeze).

You can read the whole of this article here.

Workers want Netflix but get magic lanterns Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Netflix is a way young people use computers to watch television whilst

magic lanterns employ rather more primitive technology to provide visual

entertainment. In this article Steve Wainwright, the managing director for EMEA at

Skillsoft argues that too often workplace e-learning is rather more like the latter than

the former. 60% of e-learning courses fail but a successful e-learning platform should

offer the intuitive, personalised characteristics of Netflix. Variety of content is

important but if it’s not organised and easily accessible it won’t serve its purpose. A

well-curated platform will:

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Give each learner personalised learning content that is relevant to their career

path and/or training needs

Make it easy for learners to discover useful information that aligns with their

interests

Use ‘elastic search,’ – as seen on Facebook and Netflix – so that learners can

quickly find the content they need

Steve Wainwright also suggest that learning platforms should work similarly to Netflix

in the way that you can pause a show, log-off and log-on again to pick up where you

left off and the most innovative platforms will learn about employees in the same way

that Netflix learns about its customers based on the shows they’ve already watched.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Recruitment

Still a seller’s market when it comes to recruitment Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: The CIPD have been asking more than 1,000 employers about their

recruitment plans. It found that seven in 10 organisations were planning to recruit in

the second quarter of 2018 with four in five public-sector employees planning to

recruit. The difference between the number of employers planning to recruit and the

number planning to reduce their workforce was +26 – a five-year high. This is good

news for workers who will find it easier to get a – or move to another – job but not so

good for employers who might struggle to find people with the skills they need.

Almost 61% of employers said they had found it difficult to fill some of their vacancies,

compared to 56% in the same quarter last year. More than a quarter of employers were

increasing wages to attract workers, and mean basic-pay-award expectations had

increased from 1.8% to 2.1%.

You can read the whole of this article here.

When crowdsourcing comes to recruitment Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Crowdsourcing is often used to finance new projects or gather expertise

on a particular project. But could it be used for recruitment? In this post Juliet

Eccleston from AnyGood? argues that it can create a fairer and more effective hiring

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process replacing agencies or adverts on job boards. 41% of people worry that a

recruiter will put them forward for irrelevant jobs. They also worry about lack of

feedback and lack of direct contact with potential employers. Meanwhile employers

often have to sift through a large number of irrelevant applications. The AnyGood?

platform allows professionals to recommend peers for jobs they think they are suitable

for. It taps into the power of networks allowing employers to identify the handful of

people who are perfect for the role. Peer-to-peer recruitment can help to improve

diversity as by tapping into professional networks HR teams can access a vast audience

that is more reflective of society itself. 95% of people say they wold be more likely to

apply for a role if someone from their network – as opposed to a recruiter –

recommended it to them. Over 71% of people connect with their professional network

at least once a week so if employers don’t use it they could be missing a huge

opportunity to identify and attract talent.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Can I talk to you about conversational recruitment? Source: fistfuloftalent.com

In a nutshell: Conversational marketing is based on the idea of real-time

conversations happening on an ongoing basis. Conversational recruiting follows the

same philosophy and focuses on two-way conversations. Unlike traditional recruiting

methods conversational recruiting relies on instant, personalised communication via

text, video, social media and chat platforms in order to keep up a relationship with a

candidate. Older recruiting channels traditionally flow in one direction whereas with

conversational recruiting the best candidate engagements involve a multi-channel,

back-and-forth dialogue often using different mediums. Recruiters can embrace these

trends by using smartphones, video interviews, social media and chatbots. In this

article Rachel Bitte Guest outlines some of the ways recruiters can use these new

technologies to engage young(ish) people and you can read the whole of it here.

GPs feel the strain Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Nearly four in ten (39%) GPs are planning to leave their profession in

the next five years according to a survey of 2,200 GPs by the University of

Manchester’s Centre for Health Economics. This compares to 35.5% in 2015 and 19% in

2005. 61.8% of GPs over 50 want to leave in the next five years. The biggest sources of

stress for GPs were increasing workloads (92.3%), increased demands from patients

(85.8%), having insufficient time to do justice to the job (85.3%) and paperwork

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(82.6%). Eight in 10 said the changes to meet external bodies’ requirements was a

worry while 73.7% said that long working hours had increased their levels of stress.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Talent Management

Being flexible and holding on to people Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Those of us of a certain age might remember a game called Twister in

which random turns of a spinner dictate which coloured circle various people put their

limbs on engendering plenty of slipped discs, social embarrassment and opportunities

to get to know the girl next door a bit more closely. Employers are also often called

upon to be more flexible so they can hold on to their workforce with demands for

more flexible working being as frequent and insistent as requests for more money for

the NHS. A website called mummyjobs.co.uk organised an event called

#Flexibleworking: The Big Conversation where speakers warned that workers could

move elsewhere if their employers didn’t offer them a position with the right work/life

balance. Only 11.9% of FTE jobs paying between £20,000 and £34,999 are advertised as

being open to flexibility, compared with 20.4% of jobs paid between £14,000 and

£19,999. The proportion of jobs that can be done flexibly decreases as wages go up

with only 6.9% of jobs paying £80,000 or more falling into this category. Flexible

working should be open to everyone, not just parents – for students, for instance, it

offers them the chance to reduce their hours as exams draw near. Organisations need

to offer a clear definition of what they mean by flexible and reliable technology is

needed so that people can work from home.

You can read the whole of this article here.

How to get the best out of KPIs Source: fistfuloftalent.com

In a nutshell: The problem with targets is that people try to achieve them. So, for

instance, while the Soviet Union might have produced (arguably) its targets for steel

and coal production in the 1930s it neglected other things like not letting people starve

to death and not murdering thousands of people. We live in more fortunate times but

that doesn’t stop targets from having unforeseen effects on people’s performance. In

this article Kris Dunn gives a few examples of this happening including:

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Murder detectives not wanting to take on difficult cases in case it affects their

clear-up rate

Heart surgeons refusing to operate on difficult cases in case it damages their

mortality figures

Call centre workers disconnecting people rather than letting their average call

time creep up

Salesmen who neglect existing clients because they’re only assessed on new

sales

To get round this managers can make numbers segmented and contextual so that,

for instance, really ill patients are counted separately in heart surgeons’ figures;

balance their statistics so that the customer satisfaction of existing clients is

measured as well as new sales and tell stories to reward risk-taking and team

behaviour at the expense of targets.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Three questions managers should ask their staff Source: fistfuloftalent.com

In a nutshell: “Questions are a burden to others, answers are a prison for oneself.”

Despite these wise words from The Prisoner employers often ask job candidates or

people leaving an organisation lots of questions in a bid, respectively, to find out more

about them and find out why they couldn’t resist the opportunities for personal

growth afforded by putting out traffic cones on an M6 road works. However, people

who are happily working and minding their own business get asked rather fewer

questions so in this article Kate Weimer suggests three bosses could start with. They

are:

How are you liking your job? This is a loaded question which can bring in all sorts

of underlying issues about what might be going right or wrong for an employee and

allows you to address them head-on

What can I help you with? This reminds employees that you’re there to help them.

Employees can think they need to tackle things on their own but asking this question

gets them off the hook and lets them know they’re not alone

What can I be doing better? Humility is important in a leader and can be vastly

underrated. This question tells your employees that you understand you can keep

getting better at their job and is a backdoor way of getting them to think about the

struggles they’re having

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You can read the whole of this article here.

Engagement – scratching beneath the surface Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Most employers are keen to measure the level of their workers’

engagement – how much they enjoy their job and how committed they are to their

organisation. In most cases this consists of sending a survey around once a year but in

this article Juha Huttunen, CEO of VibeCatch argues that organisations need to adopt

a more thorough approach. An annual survey might just record a snapshot on one day

of the year rather than revealing the real mood. Unhappy employees might be over-

represented whereas in other places workers might feel too polite (or scared) to

express their true feelings. Traditional surveys overvalue factors related to satisfaction,

leading to very high scores and no valuable improvement ideas. Pulse surveys attempt

to understand how pockets of people feel and sentiment analysis tries to find out

what’s really on people’s minds. Frederick Herzberg found that the factors that create

satisfaction at work are uni-polar i.e. they have hardly any link to those that cause

dissatisfaction and, conversely, those that create dissatisfaction also contribute little to

satisfaction. VibeCatch use a Quality of Work Life (QWL) index that examines five

specific categories – leadership, culture, skills, line management and processes – and

looks at the way they affect each other. QWL results can easily reveal precise areas

where there is room for improvement and where real productivity gains can be made.

Juha Huttunen concludes that there are two main questions managers need to ask

about engagement:

Are we measuring engagement so that if we improve it we will improve

productivity as well?

Can we estimate by how much productivity improves if our engagement score

improves by 1%

You can read the whole of this article here.

Why continuous listening Beats the annual engagement survey

Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Also looking at new ways of measuring engagement are Questback who

have developed a new way of measuring it called Beats. Beats is designed to help

employers with ‘continuous listening,’ – measuring their workers’ job satisfaction all

year round, not just in a once-a-year snapshot. Continuous listening provides an

almost real-time way of capturing issues experienced by employees in their infancy,

allowing for a much faster response time for remedial action. Beats software runs in

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the background, sending all employees an automated pulse survey once a week. The

survey prompts the user to rate the past week by using five emoticons (presumably on

the basis that the more work feels like primary school the happier people will feel) and

asking a few additional questions and is designed so that employees can complete the

survey within 30 seconds. HR and line managers can access the results at any time to

see current weekly engagement levels, along with an analysis of trends and topical

areas affecting engagement. When managers become aware of particular issues or

opportunities they can carry out a more detailed survey within a particular area of the

business on a specific topic.

You can read the whole of this article here.

The aging workforce. Wise old birds or Hotel California? Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: For every person who can’t wait to sample the delights of the garden,

kitchen or book-lined study there is about another eighth of a person desperately

clutching their name badge, having one last look at their emails and having to be

escorted from the building by security. For employers meanwhile the art of dealing

with an aging workforce lies in making the most of people’s knowledge while they’re

there and making the change easier for those reluctant to leave while not making the

whole process seem like Hotel California (‘you can check out any time you like, but

you can never leave!’) for those eager to go. A recent report by the World Health

Organisation revealed that by 2050 the proportion of the world’s population over the

age of 60 will nearly double from 12% now to 22%. In this article Ian Symes, from Right

Management, suggests talking to people and giving them ‘learnability tests,’ before

building and agreeing a programme around an individual’s skills and how they will

share them with junior staff over a phased period. Those reluctant to go can have

regular sessions with mentors and counsellors to help them prepare for the challenges

they face (sausage or bacon for breakfast, elevenses before or after Homes Under the

Hammer etc). The mentors can identify next steps in our out of the workplace,

whether in the form of volunteering, self-employment, consultancy or other personal

endeavours.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Performance management – the fine art of delegation Source: fistfuloftalent.com

In a nutshell: Every so often somebody writes an article proclaiming the death of the

annual performance review although – rather like Dracula – it’s a creature that seems

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remarkably reluctant to die. In this article Paul Hebert takes a different tack arguing

that performance management is just one more task for managers to do poorly –

managers who are trying to do a job they should never have been selected for, aren’t

skilled at and aren’t adequately trained to do. In Paul Hebert’s view employees should

be responsible for their own performance management while managers should ‘just’

communicate to the employee the things the organisation wants to get done; know

what the employee wants to accomplish and understand the impediments the

employee may find working to accomplish the goals. Employees themselves,

meanwhile, should be responsible for:

Deciding where they can add the most value and articulating that to the

manager

Communicating to the manager the skills they want to gain and the

experiences they want to have

Listing their personal goals

Documenting the things they will do in a SMART fashion

Sharing all of the above with their manager

Creating a schedule of events around their goals

Scheduling time as required by their list

Scheduling ad-hoc meetings as things arise and need to be discussed

This leaves the hard-pressed manager to manage the environment in which all this is

to be achieved making it easy for employees to improve their performance and fulfil

their potential.

You can read the whole of this article here.

The gig economy comes to Tesco Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: A cynic might say that the ‘gig,’ economy is so-called because a select

few – the band – can turn up when and where they want, while everyone else (the

audience) is left with a thumping headache and feeling slightly short-changed. At

Tesco’s – home to 1.3% of the working population – they call this optimising the

workforce and in this article Nigel Pritchard (Tesco’s group HR transformation

director) explains more. Increasingly people will end up working for more than one

organisation but flexibility can be beneficial for staff because it allows them to

organise their work around their life, and favourable to Tesco because it helps them to

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improve productivity and optimise the workforce. Tesco’s new scheduling system

allows staff to look for overtime from home, meaning that getting it isn’t dependent

on being in the store at the right time. People can swap shifts from home and even

work extra hours in shops in a different part of the country.

You can read the whole of this article here.

The five principles of a good team Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Most of us work in a team of some kind or another. The effect of bad

team leadership can be severe and in healthcare research shows it’s significantly

associated with increased clinical errors and patient mortality. 96% of NHS workers

say they work in teams but only 53% say they work in an “authentic,” well-structured

one. In this article Professor Beverly Alimo-Metcalfe and Juliette Alban-Metcalfe

outline five principles for good teamwork which are:

1) Identify ‘what unites us.’ Actively engage all team members in building a

shared vision and find ways of encouraging them to co-create it. Explore

frustrations, tensions and anxieties but also make suggestions about how they

can make team working more satisfying and fulfilling

2) Work together on how to achieve the shared vision. Provide opportunities

for members to contribute their ideas, suggestions and expertise. Inviting team

members to discuss how best they work together in achieving team goals can

strengthen a sense of interdependency, collaboration and mutual respect

3) Build team potency. Produce a strong sense of team potency – the belief and

confidence that the team can cope with challenges and setbacks

4) Be clear on roles and responsibilities. In a study of multi-disciplinary teams

it was found that being clear about people’s roles had a positive impact on the

quality of team outcomes, team improvement in performance and wellbeing

5) Create a culture of learning and psychological safety. Research has found a

significant and positive correlation between well-led teams and the number of

mistakes they make. Well-led teams are more likely to report their errors and

have a culture of openness, support and of learning from mistakes

You can read the whole of this article here.

The five psychological factors for team success Source: Personnel Today

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In a nutshell: Five is obviously the magic number as far as teams go (at least in May,

maybe we will be up to 12 by December) and in this post psychometrician Kerry

Schofield sets out five psychological qualities that lead to team success.

1) Respect. “A shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for

interpersonal risk-taking … a sense of confidence that the team will not

embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up.” Respect allows each

person to contribute fully to the group – to ask questions, give their perspective

and learn from their mistakes without fear of being judged, criticised or abused.

2) Efficiency – the ability to solve problems, show initiative and balance the big

picture with the fiddly details

3) Adaptability. Not just flexibility in the face of the unexpected but also

resilience – the ability to handle criticism and setbacks with grace

4) Communication. Communication underlies respect, efficiency and

adaptability. It builds relationships, helps people know what they’re supposed

to be doing and enables people to discuss changes and challenges openly

5) Teamwork. The sum total of all of the above, which turns base metal into gold

and the team into more than the sum of its parts

Wellbeing

Why be at home when you could be at work? Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Given a choice most sane people would rather stay at home when

they’re feeling poorly rather than struggling into work. However, more and more

people manage to delude themselves that the world couldn’t possibly manage without

them and the problem of presenteeism is on the rise according to the CIPD’s annual

survey of health and wellbeing in the workforce. The CIPD surveyed 1,000

organisations and found that 86% said they had seen staff coming into work while

they were poorly in the last year but that only a quarter of organisations had taken

steps to tackle presenteeism. 69% of organisations said their staff came into work

while they were supposed to be on annual leave but only 27% said they had taken

action to deal with this problem. Employees are now taking, on average, 6.6 days off

sick a year, compared to 6.3 days last year. 22% said that mental-health problems were

the main cause of long-term absence (up from 13% in 2016) and 55% said that they had

seen an increase in mental-health problems over the last year. 18% of employers were

not doing anything to improve their workers’ health, compared to 8% in 2016.

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You can read the whole of this article here and the CIPD’s Health and Wellbeing at

Work report here.

Why be at home when you could be at work? Part II Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Also asking people about what they do when they’re ill are employee

benefits and insurance provider Personal Group and online doctor service videoDoc

[sic]. They asked 2,496 people about this topic and found that three-quarters of them

went to work last year when they should have taken sick leave. Half of women felt

pressured to work while ill, compared to only 38.5% of men. 52% delayed going to the

doctor because they did not want to take time off work while 38.8% discovered that

they needed treatment after delaying a trip to a health professional. Many employees

avoided taking time off work to see a GP: 15.7% took unpaid leave, 17.5% took annual

leave and 22.4% left work early or arrived late in order to go to a medical appointment.

Those aged between 16 and 24 were more likely to go to work ill than other age groups

with 86.6% having done so. A quarter of those in this age group had taken unpaid

leave to see their GP or had lied to their employer about it.

You can read the whole of this article here.

First flexible working – now flexible pay? Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Flexible working – at least in theory – gives people more choice about

when they work but could flexible pay be the answer to improving workers’ financial

wellbeing? In this article Simon Draper, from Hastee Pay outlines some of the ins and

outs. Only 16% of employees say they are financially savvy and secure and financial

stress can lead to poor performance, attendance and punctuality as well as strained

relationships with colleagues. Some employers are introducing workplace pension

schemes and free financial advice but the high costs of overdrafts, credit cards and

payday loans can cause financial stress as people use them to pay for life’s necessities

when their monthly salary doesn’t stretch far enough. 43% of people say they rely on

credit cards to deal with excess spending while 20% use both credit cards and

overdrafts to help make ends meet. New technology could now allow people to access

their pay as they earned it although limits can be set and employees can only access

what they have already earned. There are obvious advantages for employers, such as

increased attendance and punctuality as well as greater productivity and workforce

retention and those that rely heavily on casual or seasonal workers could find that the

ability to pay new employees the wages they’ve earned immediately as they complete

their first day of employment works heavily in their favour.

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You can read the whole of this article here.

Millennials feeling the strain at work Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Depending on one’s outlook Millennials are either desperately hard-

done-to, shut out of the housing market and saddled with huge student debts or

narcissistic snowflakes who should stop moaning, do their porridge and quit messing

about with their mobile phones. The Mental Health Foundation and Mental Health

First Aid England carried out a survey of 4,000 people to mark Mental Health

Awareness Week which found that 28% of Millennials said that working through

stress was expected in their workplace. A quarter said that they put their health at risk

to do their job, compared to 18% of Baby Boomers (presumable Generation X either

weren’t asked or couldn’t be bothered answering). 34% of Millennials said that they

had been less productive at work due to stress, compared to only 19% of Baby

Boomers. 60% of workers have experienced a mental-health issue because of their

work and 84% of managers accept that the wellbeing of staff is their responsibility but

only 24% of them have received mental-health training.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Graduates complain about lack of mental-health support Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Graduate careers app Debut has been asking 1,000 21-25 year-old

graduates about their mental health and how much support they feel they get from

their employers. Only 15% described the mental-health support provided by their

employer as good, whereas a third said it was poor. 70% said they would be too scared

to admit they had a mental-health issue but within this group 83% said they would be

more inclined to speak to their employer if they were offered an ‘off-the-record,’

service – something only a third of employers had in place. When asked what form of

off-the-record support they would prefer 61% said they would prefer a face-to-face

meeting; 19% preferred using online chat programmes like WhatsApp and 10% said

they would prefer speaking to someone over email. 88% thought that there was still a

stigma attached to telling other people about their mental-health condition. Four in

ten said they had left university with mental-health issues and 65% said they did not

think their universities did enough to support people with mental-health conditions.

You can read the whole of this article here.

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Changing the workplace to protect mental health Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Mental Health Awareness Week took place in May and lots of articles

talked about how to deal with workers’ mental-health problems. Fewer talked about

changing workplace culture to prevent them happening in the first place but this

article by Vicky Wilson-Theaker, from employee-engagement specialists like minds,

tackles this issue. Her top tips include:

Conduct a stress audit. This should identify the roles of parts of the organisation

where stress levels are a particular concern

Review your organisation’s work culture. Is it a long-hours and presenteeism

culture? Studies show that flexible and supportive cultures focused on individual

achievement have happier workplaces

Promote a culture of good mental-health within your organisation. If employees

know it’s a topic that’s openly talked about, there’s less stigma attached to it and

employees will know there’s support available if they do have problems

Introduce a mental-health policy with enforceable measures that support it.

These may include company-wide anti-bullying and discrimination policies, flexible-

working arrangements and budgets for stress-busting physical activities and social

events

Work with line managers. Train them to spot problems and know how to lead the

conversation to help team members open up and then look for solutions

Nominate mental-health ambassadors. These can be people who have experienced

a mental-health problem themselves or who have an interest in this issue – they are

someone for people to go to who aren’t their immediate manager

Signpost your support services. Make sure people know about your programmes so

they know where to go to find help

You can read the whole of this article here.

How managers can help workers manage stress Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Also chipping in as part of Mental Health Awareness Week was Jaan

Madan from Mental Health First Aid England who wrote about how mangers can help

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stressed employees. Only 14% of workers are comfortable talking to their managers

about stress which is the body’s natural response to perceived danger. One in six

adults experience depression, anxiety or issues relating to stress at any one time and

12.5m working days are lost every year due to work-related stress, depression or

anxiety. Nearly a third of people worry about work in their own time and it’s easy to

slip into bad habits such as checking emails late at night and over the weekend. HR

teams can play a role in tackling this culture by issuing regular communications that

encourage healthier working habits. They can remind employees to take regular

breaks and share tips to help them switch off from work and can even prohibit (or

prevent) employees from sending emails outside working hours. Employers can also

give their workers incentives to travel to work on foot or by bike. Managers have a

vital role in spotting signs that workers might be struggling and persuading them to

take the first steps to recovery by offering initial support – at WHS Smith, for instance,

90% of office line managers are trained in mental-health first aid.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Making time for gentleness Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: One might think there would have been a fair amount of work on the

topic of gentleness in health care but one would be wrong. There hasn’t been much up

until now but in this article David Holman, the Professor of Organisational Psychology

at Alliance Manchester Business School outlines some of his recent work on it. A

central characteristic of gentleness is a soft, slow and patient approach to caregiving,

involving speaking in a soft and quiet manner, the use of soft touch and generally not

rushing care delivery or decisions. Health care staff aren’t too controlling, provide

support for practical tasks when needed and help people manage their emotions to

reduce anxiety and increase contentment. Low workloads, high discretion, few

interruptions and high staffing levels are all things that make it easier for care-givers

to spend extended and uninterrupted time ‘being gentle,’ with clients. Ways of

fostering gentleness include:

The importance of developing a shared belief in a person-centred care approach

across the full team

Allowing staff discretion to decide what tasks to do when, and for how long, so

that client needs can be met

Having supportive colleagues and managers who will redistribute care and

other tasks when caregivers need to spend extra time with clients

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Sharing knowledge of clients at handovers and team meetings

Low workloads with few interruptions to allow caregivers to spend extended

and uninterrupted time with clients

You can read the whole of this article here.

Using triage to crack employee mental health Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Triage is often used in A&E departments. Patients are ranked in order

of severity from ‘Have you thought about a good undertaker,’ through ‘Let’s find a bed

as quickly as possible,’ to ‘Take a couple of aspirin and come back in a fortnight if you

don’t feel better.’ In this post Charlotte Duggan, from the employee wellbeing and

mental-health-solutions provider Validium, argues that the same approach can be

adopted to dealing with mental-health problems in the workplace. At the moment

employers wait and see what happens to someone with a mental-health issue before

offering any support. However, most mental-health problems can easily be prevented

or managed before an employee even goes off sick as long as they are given the right

support at the earliest possible opportunity. At the same time managers don’t know

who to direct people to when they do develop a problem so a ‘do nothing,’ approach

tends to be adopted until the problem typically becomes so bad, or goes on for so long,

that it gets to a point where it can no longer be ignored. With the support of Validium

train operator GWR divides people being referred into three groups: those who are

likely to recover without any support; those who are unlikely to recover but might be

fit enough to come back into the workplace in some other capacity and those who

need treatment to recover. The company assigns help as appropriate and has been able

to rehabilitate many valued employees with significant savings around direct absence

costs, even after taking into account the costs of the programme and treatment.

You can read the whole of this article here.

When work and family come into conflict Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: It can be hard to balance the demands of family life against those of the

workplace and the Working Families charity has been examining how the two come

into conflict. Their 2018 Modern Families Index found that 34% of parents felt

resentful about their employers’ approach to work-life balance with more fathers than

mothers (37% vs 32%) feeling resentment. Younger workers felt particularly strongly

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with 46% of Millennial fathers feeling resentful. Many people said that they had either

refused a promotion or taken a pay reduction to cut down their working hours. 36%

said they would be happy to take a pay cut, while 41% of Millennials said they were

thinking about ‘downshifting,’ to a less stressful job. 81% of parents who said they

worked flexibly still ended up bringing work home at evenings and weekends and 37%

said that changing company culture to make work-life balance more acceptable should

be a priority for employers.

You can read the whole of this article here.

New toolkit helps employers tackle drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Business in the Community (BITC) and Public Health England have

launched a toolkit designed to help employers help their workers to make healthier

choices when it comes to their consumption of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Workers

who smoke are a third more likely to take sick leave and cost employers £5.3bn a year

through increased sickness absence and time lost to smoking breaks. Drugs and

alcohol misuse are particularly worrying for safety-critical industries as they can

impair judgement and concentration – staff who misuse drugs or alcohol are more

likely to take time off work, perform poorly and have an accident than those who do

not. Things employers can do to tackle the problem include:

Making a clear commitment from senior leadership to tackle the use of such

substances

Assessing the health and wellbeing needs of employees and developing

objectives

Encouraging employees to measure if their consumption puts their health at

risk

Nurturing a culture where employees feel comfortable in asking for support

Training line managers to support their staff

Making adjustments for workers who have taken time off to deal with their

alcohol, drug or tobacco use

Providing a confidential support service to help people come forward with a

problem

You can read the whole of this article here.

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How smartphones can damage your health Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: Smartphones can ruin dates, disrupt dinner parties and get between

parents and their children. But could they also be bad for your health? Some people

argue that businesses should encourage their workers to make adjustments to how

they use their smartphones or laptops to minimise their chances of developing a

musculoskeletal disorder. A study published last year by the University of Gothenburg

found that there was a link between texting on mobile phones and short-term

musculoskeletal conditions in young adults and, to a lesser extent, long-term effects

on musculoskeletal disorders in the neck and upper body. Another survey conducted

by Thumbtel found that six in 10 full-time workers aged 25-34 were experiencing

‘smartphone fatigue,’ because they were unable to completely disconnect from their

work.

You can read the whole of this article here.

Workforce

Big rise in working mothers Source: Personnel Today

In a nutshell: The Institute of Fiscal Studies has been keeping tabs on the number of

working-age mothers in paid work. This has increased by almost 50% over the last four

decades with almost three-quarters (72%) of women with children having paid jobs in

2015, compared to just 50% of women in 1975. The rise was particularly large among

single mothers and mothers of pre-school and primary school-age children. In 2017

almost eight in 10 (78%) mothers aged between 25 and 54 were in work, compared to

57% in 1975. The proportion of mothers in full-time work also increased, from 29% in

1985 to 44% in 2017. The proportion of couples with children with only one adult in

employment was halved from 47% to 27% in 2016 and the share where both parents

were in work rose from 49% to 68%.

You can read the whole of this article here.