The Wellbeing Action Plan: An Essential Tool for Ensuring Staff Wellbeing in The Workplace

With jobs demanding more and more of us, many are struggling with high levels of stress and deteriorating mental and physical health. Now more than ever before, there is a growing demand for innovative and proactive approaches to managing the health and wellbeing of staff in the workplace.?

School employees and teaching staff are among the most stressed groups of any profession; the goalposts are forever moving – from managing student behaviour, parent demands, an ever-growing, unrealistic curriculum, and departmental directives. This pressure is not only reserved for teaching and Education; many employees across a range of industries struggle with physical, mental, and emotional health, especially since the dawn of the pandemic.

Staff retention and effectiveness largely depend on the leadership teams or a school’s ability to manage staff wellbeing in the workplace and encourage staff to attend to their own personal wellbeing - all of which influences school culture and the working environment.

Why Your School Needs a Wellbeing Action Plan

Focusing on people first makes us more likely to see progress, change, or new initiatives successfully introduced. Unhappy, unhealthy, and unbalanced staff will have a hard time keeping their heads above water, let alone be able to deliver the results that go in an annual report.

Plan the right initiatives. Too often, schools are quick to plan the outcomes they desire for their setting yet fail to consider how their people will have the capacity to get them there. Objective plans are all good in theory, but they often fall short.?

When reviewing schools’ annual action plans, I rarely see any mention of staff wellbeing. What an oversight! Without a high-functioning staff, the jobs rarely get done, and they certainly aren’t consolidated over time. This is why I urge schools and organisations to design a staff wellbeing action plan.?

A Staff Wellbeing Action Plan provides a strategy for a school or organisation to develop a healthy and happy workplace capable of ongoing growth and achieved outcomes.

This article will cover:

• What a Staff Wellbeing Action Plan is
• How to create a Staff Wellbeing Action Plan
• A step-by-step guide for implementing a Wellbeing Action Plan that makes a difference to your workplace culture?

What Is a Staff Wellbeing Action Plan??

Staff Wellbeing Action Plans are an evidence-based system used worldwide to manage staff health and wellbeing. They help identify priority areas and the actions needed to work towards school or organisational improvement. Staff Wellbeing Action Plans are a collaborative document created in conjunction with the staff that helps identify the culture-building, prevention, and intervention strategies and practices needed to ensure staff feel safe and content coming to work, even when times are tough.?

The Wellbeing Action Plan document provides scope for implementing a range of ways to promote a healthy lifestyle, access support, build relationships, build morale, and strategies for ongoing culture building.?

Wellbeing Action Plans allow you to set achievable goals, objectives, and strategies for your workplace health and wellbeing program.?

The concept of workplace wellbeing action plans isn’t new. Leading Australian organisations like Beyond Blue, Black Dog Institute, and Heads Up all recommend workplaces make these crucial considerations to preserve the health and wellbeing of all staff.?

The Most Effective Wellbeing Action Plans

A Wellbeing Action Plan must be developed following a clear and systemised approach and NOT behind the closed doors of a leadership team meeting or as a tick and flick wellbeing initiative.

In order for plans to be well-received by staff and effective at creating needle-moving change, they have to be supported by a few key considerations:

Effective wellbeing plans:

• Are developed to support the areas of need in your school: Before ever creating an action plan, we have to get to the source of the problem so it can be appropriately addressed. Well-thought-out action plans identify school or organisational priorities based on a review of staff voice and multiple data sources.
• Are complemented by your whole school vision for a positive culture and improved staff wellbeing: Co-creating a vision with your staff helps them to see why the actions are what they are and understand the direction of the school.
• Include actions, roles and responsibilities for leaders, teachers and staff: Recognising that it’s a joint responsibility of all school staff is an important aspect of carrying out your plan successfully. When everyone’s roles and responsibilities are clear, there’s more accountability and results.
• Consider the culture-building, prevention and intervention strategies required to address the priority areas: This means your actions aren’t all “preventative” in nature and actually address any staff at crisis. Culture-building requires strong and united leadership approaches that are received by staff.
• Outline the things you can do, skills you can master and things you can learn to influence change in your school culture and staff wellbeing
• Are structured using the 6 areas of the PERMA(H) Model: A plan that considers actions across each of the areas that contribute to wellbeing ensures you’re taking a holistic approach versus a more narrow one which may not adequately address all the contributing factors of our staff’s wellbeing and support staff psychological safety.?

7 Steps for Building a Staff Wellbeing Action Plan?

A solid Wellbeing Action Plan takes into consideration the unique needs of the school and staff. Mapping out this plan begins with a considered scanning process, where the management and staff review the needs of their setting. This scanning phase is vital for ensuring a successful health and wellbeing program. There is little point in creating a generic action plan that does not tend to your entire staffing body’s needs, voices, and contributions.

Step 1: “Scan” Your School to Identify Priorities For The Wellbeing Action Plan

A school scan is the process of gathering and reviewing multiple data sets alongside staff to identify what is going on with our staff, how they’re faring and what they need to be well at work.

This process enables us to be curious about our people and stay open to new kinds of information and insights about school culture, relationships, team formation, our leadership, strengths and areas for development. It also ensures a richer understanding of our staff experiences and helps us avoid the traps of our assumptions, biases, judgments or perceptions.?

Ways to do this:

• Discuss anecdotal observations of staff wellbeing
• Review staff absence, incident, injury and compensation data
• Review staff satisfaction or climate data
• Collect staff feedback about health and wellbeing (i.e., through a staff wellbeing survey)
• Have informal conversations with staff about their wellbeing and school culture
• Review current staff wellbeing practices and their effectiveness
• Review data and draw conclusions identifying 1-3 priority areas

Step 2: Map Out Your 1-3 Year Vision

Having a clear vision paints a picture of your goals, where you plan on going, and why. The action plan breaks down the who, what and when.?

Creating a vision begins at the top with the principal; middle leaders are then responsible for enacting the vision on a day-to-day basis, while staff also do their part to ensure their goals and actions are aligned with the school’s overall vision.

To create a vision staff can get on board with, we begin with these steps:

1. Envision the kind of school you imagine for you and your staff
2. Identify your core values as a school leader and why they matter
3. Break the vision up into smaller steps that address the 1-3 priority areas identified in your school scan
4. Identify specific goals and markers for success
5. Consider the roles of all involved
6. Communicate your vision and standards while consulting with staff to achieve buy-in

Step 3: Agree That The Success Of This Plan Requires The Joint Responsibilities of Leaders AND Staff

Staff wellbeing is a joint responsibility that requires effort from both school leaders and staff. Leaders are responsible for creating a workplace environment that promotes psychological and physical safety, trust and collaboration. While staff are responsible for contributing to a positive working environment, looking out for their own wellbeing, providing respectful feedback, and accessing provided resources to help them stay well. This ensures that both personal and workplace wellbeing are addressed and not just one or the other.?

Read more about the joint responsibilities of leaders and staff here

Step 4: Begin Drafting Your Wellbeing Action Plan By Brainstorming Objectives/Goals To Meet The Whole School’s Priorities.

Begin mapping out 1-3 yearly objectives/goals that link to your school priorities and vision. When thinking of these goals, it’s essential to consider which will have the most impact on school wellbeing or which will give you the most bang for your buck, essentially.

Ways to do this include:

• Consider some actionable objectives that will help move you closer to performing better across your priority areas
• Prioritise objectives and remove any that don’t align with school priorities

Step 5: Brainstorm Actions That Help You To Achieve Your Objectives Or Goals, Including Who Is Responsible For Each Action And How This Will Be Measured.

Once your objectives have been established, it’s important to break them down into smaller milestones we can work toward. In this step, we evaluate the actions we need to take to get us there, who will be responsible for each, and how we’ll measure whether we’ve successfully achieved the desired outcome.

Ways to do this:

• List the possible actions, new learning and skills required to meet the desired objective, e.g., plan a team-building event once a term, book a wellbeing presentation in week 5 of each term, or engage a facilitator to support staff with communication skills.
• Ask leaders, staff members and teams to nominate or delegate areas they will be responsible for working towards.Consider ways to seek external support via the department, governing bodies, other schools and principals, and networking opportunities.
• Assign suggested ways to measure the efficacy and success of implementing these actions.

Step 6: Communicate And Consult With Staff

Now that you have drafted your Wellbeing Action Plan, it is time to ask for feedback. Consulting and involving all the staff when creating your action plan will ensure buy-in and a greater commitment to carrying out the plan. Involving staff in this process ensures we’re not missing the mark and that their concerns are genuinely addressed.??

Step 7: Review and Update Your Wellbeing Action Plan Based On Feedback And Commence Working Towards Your Objectives

After consulting with staff, it’s time to review and update the Wellbeing Action Plan based on the feedback received. It’s vital that staff see their ideas and suggestions being considered to strengthen trust and build a sense of teamwork and collaboration.?

Get The Support You Need To Develop and Enact Your Plan

Here at Adrienne Hornby Consulting, we support schools over a 12-month period to tailor and embed a Staff Wellbeing Action Plan that fits into their existing strategic plans.?

Our approach to developing a Wellbeing Action Plan follows a proven framework that involves:

• Scanning your school
• Identifying the areas of priority
• Developing a vision
• Understanding and assigning joint responsibilities?
• Providing professional development to leaders and staff that sets them up with skills and knowledge to carry out the plan.
• Formalising and delivering your Wellbeing Action Plan for implementation?

What sets our Wellbeing Action Plans apart is the integration of Positive Psychology’s PERMAH Model, where actions correspond to each of the six areas of the model (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, accomplishment and health). This ensures that your approach to staff wellbeing is more likely to increase the psychological safety of staff.

Conclusion

Prioritising wellbeing in the workplace is vital for ensuring your staff is motivated and energised to take on the day-to-day work and implement the changes required to achieve the vision leaders have for their school.

A sound Wellbeing Action Plan will help your school or organisation focus more closely on improving and maintaining staff wellbeing in order to achieve desired outcomes and goals.

Therefore, when ideating a wellbeing action plan, particular focus should be placed on the six elements of the PERMAH model for workplace wellbeing to ensure a well-rounded approach.

Join Our Free Training?

We are currently running a free staff wellbeing training where you can get an inside look at our approach to addressing staff burnout and developing a culture where educators and students can thrive and grow. I’ll introduce you to our proven Staff Wellbeing Framework that can be adapted to meet the needs of your school. We’ll also cover some of the common mistakes schools make when addressing staff wellbeing and why an approach like ours, is the best for creating lasting, needle-moving change.?

Learn more and register for an upcoming date and time that works best for you here!