Job design and managing the multigenerational workplace are repeatedly mentioned as two of the biggest Wellbeing challenges currently.
We caught up with News UK’s Career and Skills Development Manager, Claire Kearney, to find out how she is approaching these challenges.
What multigenerational challenges do you see with regard to Wellbeing?
Generally, with the older generation there’s more of a ‘get on with it’ attitude. I’m not saying that’s a good thing, because I do genuinely feel like everyone – regardless of age – should be able to have a conversation about their wellbeing.
But with the older employees there’s much more of a ‘put up and shut up’ approach to work, because the culture societally in the past was very much to ‘soldier on’ and ‘be strong’. I’d guess there was a lot of suffering in silience in the workplace in generations gone by.
Whereas with the younger generations, conversations about wellbeing and mental health are a lot more open. Just recently, I ran a mental health awareness course with employees in their twenties and thirties. They knew alot about it and were really open. But when I’ve run courses like that for the older generations, people might nod and then ask ‘but how are we going to have this conversation with staff?’
Older managers might find the conversations problematic, whereas younger people are having these conversations anyway. It’s the way they talk to each other.
Do young people expect these conversations about wellbeing at work?
Yes. Older employers see wellbeing as something attached to the job, on the side. Younger employers tend to think work should be good for their wellbeing and like there’s an employee value exchange in terms of what they get from work.
They want work to include things that make them want to come to work, enjoy their work and make them feel supported in their work. They want to know about Wellbeing when they do onboarding or inductions. They really sit up and listen when you talk about the kind of support available, and the benefits and wellbeing packages.
Are there any challenges of young people being so interested in Wellbeing at work?
I personally haven’t known any. Part of my role is coaching and mentoring people in the business, and I have lots of conversations with them about Wellbeing.
However, I suppose theoretically it could be a challenge if a young person comes up against a manager who doesn’t want to talk about Wellbeing.
What happens when you identify someone through coaching whose mental health you are concerned about?
Sometimes this does come out in coaching. The point of the coaching is always about performance as we want to coach people to be amazing at their jobs and really feel like they’re achieving in their roles. Obviously that involves bringing the whole person into the conversation. It could be they are underperforming in their role and that could be because their Wellbeing is not very good.
In that case I’d signpost them to support and I’d always tell them to go and speak to Occupational Health. Quite often they might then say they don’t want to bother them,
or they haven’t got time, it’s not that bad, they have deadlines… And then I’ll usually say ‘would you like me to speak to them?’. In that case, I confirm that it is OK to (break the confidentiality agreement and refer them that way).
Usually they can get help quite quickly. We’ve got so many benefits like counselling and private medical care. They usually come back to coaching renewed and invigorated.
There’s no getting away from the fact that the fast pace and constant pressure makes for a potentially stressful environment. How do you account for that in terms of Wellbeing?
Yes. During the General Election, for example, our journalists and broadcasters had a lot of pressure on them to produce content our readers, listeners and viewers go to first. That means a lot of extra hours, late nights and all-nighters. There’s a huge amount of pressure because our brands are so strong and got so much heritage attached to them.
This means we have to make sure we’re very clear what is expected during the recruitment process. We’re clear on things like the hours that are required and the extras that might potentially be expected in the job.
Can you give an example of how you might do this?
We really try and make sure we get the right person for the job, with the right experience and skills in the recruitment process. Then the job should be a stretch rather than too hard.
Of course, there are times when people do go into a role that isn’t quite right for them so we are always saying ‘make sure you speak to us before a problem arises if you are struggling and you need to talk about it with us’. We encourage open conversations.
I guess finding time for these conversations in such a fast paced environment can be hard too?
When you have the continual churn of deadlines our editorial staff in particular find it hard – there are so many meetings and deadlines in the day, they find it hard to have meetings about the stories they intend to run, their objectives and performance development, let alone about Wellbeing!
Companies are increasingly seeing a link between Wellbeing and Personal Development opportunities. Can you talk about that?
We are always looking for different ways to help people’s personal development. We do everything from helping people understand the performance development review cycle and objective setting to coaching and mentoring.
There are a variety of training courses employees can go on and there are no restrictions on who can attend. For example, how to give feedback, management essentials, how to build resilience, how to manage stress, etc.
We want to give people the opportunity to make their own decisions about what they attend. We encourage people to broaden their remit or knowledge, which they can do in all sorts of ways, not just training, but also taking on a specialism or helping out on a project, to secondments. There are also so many different departments and opportunities to move roles if you want.
You’ve been at News UK for 14 years. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen with regard to Wellbeing?
We have always had good wellbeing benefits, so this hasn’t changed. But we have had to be more obvious about what we offer and more obvious about showing that we care about employee wellbeing, because that’s what people look for in a company today.
So, we put on things like yoga and HIT classes, we do campaigns around themes, etc.
We want it to be a place people want to work at. This is so important as there’s not many people that join the company that don’t want to know about the benefits and extras. It’s not just about the job anymore.
