Deputy Principal (Kelly Anderson)
Staff Wellbeing
Staff Wellbeing is one of the priorities in the school's business plan for 2020-2022. Throughout the past three years, we have implemented a range of strategies to support the wellbeing of staff in the school. Some of these included:
- Setting up a Workload Advisory Committee (which meets once a term to discuss staff concerns)
- Moving to generic comments in our formal reports (identified as a major workload item)
- Adding in an optional Wellbeing Goal into our Performance Management documents
- Professional Learning - presentations (Brain Ambulance, Reboot Mindset Coaching), online programs (NESLI), individual coaching (Amy Coombes)
- Wellbeing activities - as part of our school development days (lawn bowls, swimming at the beach, canoeing, art)
- A Graduate Support Group (this group meets every fortnight)
- Future Leaders' Program - to support aspirants (we have a current cohort of 6 staff)
- New Staff Induction - Kylie has refined and improved this process over the years and we now have a comprehensive Staff Handbook
- Top of the Hill - an opportunity to recognise the work of your colleagues
- Special Morning Teas - something that we all agree to participate in and contribute towards
- Relevant wellbeing reading material purchased for staff - you can access these from the Teacher Resource section in the Library
- Social events - The Calamari Cup, laser tag (look out for the next event when I send out the agenda for SDD Wk8)
- Toiletries in the staff toilets - having some nice products is a small, but pleasant thing
I guess my question is - what's next?
Staff wellbeing is always going to be important in a school setting. The work we do is often onerous and exhausting. It is also very rewarding. Please have a think about what you would like to see next in our workplace, to support staff wellbeing. Lauren Dragon and I will be giving you an opportunity to share those ideas at our next school development day (Monday 5 September). We have a staff OneNote page dedicated to Staff Wellbeing – it has heaps of resources for you to access.
In the meantime, if you have any workload issues, please click on the link to our WAC submission survey. Any workload issues should be discussed with your line manager, and anything they can't solve can be submitted.
For those who aren't aware, we have free access to an Employee Assistance Program called PeopleSense. This organisation provides confidential counselling support to all department employees and their immediate family.