For this week’s Inside Out I thought I’d share some wellbeing related observations from different roles including in the Library, on the Library welfare response team, being part of a school board and attending a recognizing signs of stress workshop last week.

The combination of layers of stressors.  Last month marked the third anniversary of the atrocity of the terrorist attacks.  There is the constant sad news from overseas with the war in Ukraine.  I’ve strongly suggested to one close family member recently they stop watching the news because of their worry/sleeplessness at nights about families and children impacted by the Ukraine situation.  There is a lot going on in the world.  The high cost of living, lockdowns over the past two years, Delta, now Omicron, everything keeps changing and just when we get used to one phase of response to the pandemic it all changes again.

Interacting with stressed members of our communities.  Teachers are concerned for their personal safety as they experience physical assault from a small but growing number of children – not an uncommon occurrence around the country.  Our school is putting more of our budget into providing counselling services onsite .. also very grateful for the support of two churches in the community who are helping with funding for this.  Irrational behaviour and/or anger from some parents/caregivers about restrictions in general presents as abusive emails and intimidating in-person behaviour towards teaching staff.  At the extreme end it is necessary to involve the police.  As the mental health poster says it is understandable for us to feel angry and overwhelmed at times.  It’s not ok for this to spill over and threaten others, but how do people get the support they need to work through their frustrations and emotions.

How to respond as a bystander or as a directly involved person to wide ranging views on many issues and feelings of division even within close friends and family members.  Having to wear masks/others not wearing masks, vaccine passes needed to keep everyone safe/vehement opposition to mandates for various reasons, my personal freedoms and rights vs others rights, feelings about the pandemic in general from the dismissive (“it’s just a runny nose”, “it will all blow over soon”) to more worry, anxiety and sense of being overwhelmed at the other end of the spectrum.  Fear of catching Covid and fear of loved ones getting ill or dying of Covid.

Many experience stress being onsite with Omicron around us.  Some are finding it hard that under Alert Level 3 lockdown that everyone was largely working from home compared to traffic light red phase 3 with 10s of thousands of cases a day and yet many restrictions are coming off.

Some people are doing it particularly tough but you wouldn’t necessarily know.

A few thoughts on responding to all of this:

• Much of it comes down to the key thing of being kind to each other. I was talking to a teacher friend the other day and they shared how much it made their day when one of the parents just said “thank you”
• People and Culture have been updating wellbeing resources on their Intranet, sometimes resources such as these can be helpful reminders. Check out their advice for this specifically in relation to Covid
• At school they have ‘guardian angels’ where each teacher takes on a role of being a guardian angel for a colleague, checking in with them, seeing how they are going etc. Is there someone each one of us can be looking out for today and checking in on them?
• They also do great morning teas at school. Really well.  We’re very much looking forward to when we can all meet back in the Library together over kai – stay tuned for more on that.

Tim S

This is the fifth event in this series … Leading for Innovation – Fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation.

Date: Tuesday 5th April 1pm (NZST)
Registrations close: Friday 1st April

More information about this event

UC Library has 10 registrations available for this event.  Please let me know (before this Friday) of your interest.  In the event we have more staff interested than logins available, we will share the logins between us.  I will then ask individuals to go ahead and register using a promo code to reduce the cost to $0.

Tim Stedman

**Slido for questions now available**

Further to my post (and thanks for voting), we have now arranged a time with Dr Tearlach McClean for next Tuesday, 22 March at 2pm.

Link to Zui:
https://canterbury.zoom.us/j/92044865551

Also we will record the session for those who would like to attend but cannot make that time.

Tim Stedman

Kia ora koutou, we’ve had an offer via People and Culture for one of the GPs in the Health Centre to come to a Library staff zoom session and be available to answer any questions Library staff may have or address any concerns we may have about the Omicron outbreak like a Q&A (could use Slido as well).  The Library welfare response team discussed and we would like to ask what staff think of this idea hence this very quick and crude poll.  Responses would be appreciated today.  We were uncertain about whether medical information would be useful and whether that was needed but on the other hand we thought staff may be interested to hear a medical perspective on the current situation.  If there is a reasonable amount of interest we will follow up.  Comments on this post also welcome.

>>  Link to poll​​​​​​​

Tim Stedman
On behalf of the Library staff welfare response group

Whenever there’s a significant event when our services are or are likely to be disrupted, the Library implements its Business Continuity Plan.

One of the roles in this plan is a Welfare response team.  The purpose of this team is to:

• Provide support for staff
• Check in about workloads
• Check if anyone isn’t coping
• Check in with staff who are self-isolating
• Understand any concerns
• Share major concerns and broader themes with managers.

Stuart and Tim will be heading up this team.  We are very grateful for the support of the following team members: Kim Hall, Maria Veronese, Anton Angelo, Glenna Wong, Kathryn Andrews and Hugh Joughin.

Over the next wee while you can expect a call /message / email from one of the welfare team.  They will be checking in with you as a friendly face/voice and asking how things are going.   They’ll feed back to the welfare response team any major issues or concerns and arrange for follow up if appropriate.

Confidentiality will be respected as far as possible however if the welfare team is really concerned about you they may exercise judgment (for example get in touch with your manager).

This team does not replace your normal communication channels with your manager.  You should still be talking to your manager about any issues or concerns, however we recognize as things get busy, more disruptive and disconnected this might not happen as often as we’d all like.

We also want to mention the availability of EAP Support Services at any stage.  You can contact them anytime (0800 327 669).  EAP provides a free counselling service to UC staff members and their immediate family members.  Some things EAP can help with include dealing with stress, pressure, anxiety, depression, child and family concerns, workplace conflict and financial or legal difficulties.  You do not have to ask your manager for permission to contact EAP.

Tim Stedman

Blurb from Springer:

Has a library team member or peer in your organization done something that deserves celebrating? Service excellence? Stakeholder engagement? Innovative research support? Tell us what has impressed you in the last year and you can nominee your colleagues either individual or a team. Nominations to mabel.tang@springernature.com outlining who and why in fewer than 400 words. $250 will be donated to the charity of choice of one worthy nominee and a certificate of Excellence will be issued after VALA2022.

The award is presented each year to recognize some of the outstanding work librarians around the region carry out that has been nominated by colleagues, peers and library leadership.

Don’t let the great work go silent. Nominate your colleagues before 31^st March 2022.

The Library will fund up to 10 people or groups of staff to attend each session in the CAUL Learning from bold minds in leadership series.

Please let me know which session(s) you would be interested in attending and I will register us with CAUL and book a room if more than 10 people are interested.

The next session is on Wednesday 16th February (The Leader Within – Create the culture that you want to be a part of).  We also have logins available for the previous sessions.  I watched the Quietly powerful session and found it really good.  I have heard that the Leading for Diversity session is excellent as well and I want to watch that.  Again let me know if you are interested in watching any of the previous sessions.

I would say don’t be put off by the “leadership” wording in the blurbs for these sessions – from my experience of the Quietly powerful session this would be of wider interest (not just those in leadership roles).  The upcoming session in February will also address how you can influence culture in your workplace regardless of your role.

Tim Stedman

https://virginia.libwizard.com/f/what-costs-more

Must do a UC version sometime … Tim S