When you address wellbeing, are you addressing the symptoms or the cause?

If we are going to truly address staff, teacher, and educator wellbeing, then it's time to look at what needs to change. This conversation, in all honesty, revolves around three key areas: workload, productivity, and time. Yet, we seem to be having conversations about these things separately from wellbeing or perhaps not having them at all.

What we know about wellbeing in the workplace is that it is reflected through our level of engagement, purpose, meaning, and growth. However, at the core of it is how someone feels. Ultimately, wellbeing is subjective; it depends on how the person being asked to complete the wellbeing survey or give their opinion is feeling at any given moment. Wellbeing is a reflection of who we are and how we're feeling as we navigate different moments in life and work, as well as day-to-day functioning.

While there is no endpoint we're trying to achieve, our goal is to create productive workplaces where time is valued, and workloads or stress-contributing factors are addressed. The three key areas here around workload, productivity, and time are significant when looking at the tasks our educators complete that detract from wellbeing. There's also an underlying theme of safe workplaces, positive relationships, meaningful connections, and building optimism to drive change which needs to be addressed.

However, what I want to emphasize and ask you right now is this:

When you address wellbeing, are you addressing the symptoms or the cause?

When we put on morning teas because staff needs a pick me up, or cancel meeting because everyone is tired, we are addressing the symptom when instead, we need to address the cause. Why do we need a pick-me-up? Why are staff tires? Sometimes, there may be a valid reason for this, and every now and then, a morning tea and a cancelled meeting is needed, but it can't be all we do.

We have to tackle the cause. If staff feel like they have no time, then we need to examine how we're allocating and spending time. If it feels like there's always something more to do, it suggests that productivity is not where it needs to be because we're not working efficiently or effectively. If there's a sense of overwhelm or constantly shifting priorities, it's a workload issue.

So, we need to review these things, and identify what's working well, and when it's not. This might mean completely overhauling and changing routines, systems, ways of organising time, teams, or the work we do.

We have to ask ourselves the following questions:

Does what we're doing really matter?

Is it connected to our vision or our current goals?

Should we stop doing x altogether?

How can we be more productive?

You see, the discussion concerning wellbeing should aim to prevent us from feeling stressed or overwhelmed, or as though our to-do lists are endless. It should focus on exploring how we can enhance our productivity, maximise time, reduce workload and approach our tasks in a manner that enables us to concentrate on what truly matters and release what doesn't.