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Well-being

Well-being

Well-being is feeling happy, healthy, socially connected, and purposeful. Workplace Well-Being is the ability to pursue your interests, values, and life purpose in order to gain meaning, happiness, and enrichment professionally. Employee well-being refers to the impact someone's job has on their overall health and happiness. When we talk about wellness or well-being, we're talking about a combination of good physical health and good mental health.

When people are in a state of well-being at work, they're able to develop their potential, be productive and creative, build positive relationships with others, better cope with stress, and make meaningful contributions.

All of the major stressors and challenges of the past year — fear of getting sick, isolation, racial injustice, blurring of boundaries between work and home — have all brought personal well-being to the forefront for people. The next few years we are expecting to see major mental health impacts from the pandemic. Racism, declared a public health crisis by King County, continues to impact well-being. People thrive and are more resilient (having the ability to cope with and adapt to new situations) when they have a strong sense of well-being. That is why the well-being of employees stewarding King County in recovering and rebuilding will be foundational.

Data

Well-being is highly correlated to engagement. Those who feel a sense of well-being are 6.76 times more likely to feel engaged. Well-being is also highly correlated to belonging. Those who feel a sense of belonging are 5.93 times more likely to feel a sense of well-being.

What influences well-being

Supervisor behaviors are critical to employee well-being. Specifically, county employees report higher levels of well-being when supervisors:

  • Support development and provide performance feedback.
  • Provide recognition for effort, growth, and excellent work.
  • Encourage and value employee ideas.
  • Create a safe and racially just workplace.

Learn More

To read or watch:

Trainings:

Live Trainings:

Neogov Learn trainings:

Workplace Mental Health, About the training: Welcome to the “Workplace Mental Health” video course, which describes how to set an organizational culture that supports mental health. This course, comprising six video lessons, highlights the pervasiveness of mental illness and conveys mental illness warning signs, risk factors, and coping skills. In addition, this course explains how to create a healthy workplace and appropriately intervene in the case of a crisis situation at work. Ultimately, learners should understand that mental illness is a medical condition that doesn’t discriminate and is nothing to be ashamed of. What can you do to help crush the stigma?

Simple, impactful behaviors leaders, managers and supervisors can use to build culture of well-being

  • Know how people are doing. Use the employee survey data to understand how people are feeling about their well-being. Engage employees in discussion about what’s working and what can be improved.
  • Model self-care and boundary setting. Encourage work/life balance by modeling the way. Employees will look to you to see what’s okay and what’s not. Consider not sending email outside of work hours, engaging in regular selfcare that rejuvenates and restores you and using vacation leave.
  • Be clear about shifting priorities and help people reprioritize to design realistic workloads. When priorities shift, tell employees why and open a dialogue about capacity. Things might need to come of their plates so they can accomplish the new goals. If you are seeing signs of burnout you can support employees adjust workloads to be more manageable by reprioritizing work.
  • Empower managers to meet the individual needs of their teams. Each team is different and each person in the team has different needs. Empower managers in their relationships with employees to make decisions that balance the business needs of the organization with the well-being needs of the individual.
  • Provide Stability. Demonstrate steadiness, resilience and support. In times of chaos, steadiness from leaders is calming to employee.
  • Incorporate well-being into work. Create time to connect. Have walking meetings or take time to stretch during meetings.
  • Share resources to support well-being. Share information about Balanced You, Making Life Easier and Benefits.
  • Support development. Encourage and support employee development through individual development plans, training, stretch opportunities and special duty assignments.
  • Take the training Staying Steady for Yourself and Your Team which will teach you how to build a resilient team.

Simple, impactful behaviors employees can use to build a culture of well-being:

  • Build opportunities for connection throughout the day. Start meetings with a check in or ice breaker question.
  • Recognize people for effort and growth. Use the county’s values cards to recognize employees for accomplishments consistent with the values.
  • Value ideas and suggestions of others. Ask people what they think and incorporate their feedback.
  • Normalize conversations about mental health. Be authentic in discussing your own challenges and coping skills. Be accepting and supportive when hearing the challenges others are facing. Do not try to solve someone’s problems, offer empathy.
  • Build resilience. Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. As much as resilience involves "bouncing back" from these difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth:
    • Build connections: prioritize relationships, join a group
    • Find purpose: help others, look for opportunities for self-discovery, move toward your goals
    • Embrace healthy thoughts: keep things in perspective, accept change, maintain a hopeful outlook, nurture a positive view of yourself
    • Focus on gratitude

Use these tools and resources:

  • Take Yale’s most popular course free: The Science of Well-Being by Yale University | Coursera In this course you will engage in a series of challenges designed to increase your own happiness and build more productive habits. As preparation for these tasks, Professor Laurie Santos reveals misconceptions about happiness, annoying features of the mind that lead us to think the way we do, and the research that can help us change. You will ultimately be prepared to successfully incorporate a specific wellness activity into your life.
  • Incorporate well-being into work:
    • Take "How to Promote Wellness at Work" through Neogov Learn and create an action plan based on what you learn. About the training: This lesson covers the six types of wellness and how to incorporate them into your work setting. Ultimately, if learners apply these tips, they should healthy and, as a result, happy at work.
    • Incorporate mindful moments into your day using these exercises. Idea: Pick one mindfulness exercise each week and practice it throughout the day. As a team discuss the effects it has on you.
    • Use Balanced You videos to guide you in taking a mindful minute (or longer). Idea: At the beginning of a meeting use the videos to guide you in a mindful exercise.
    • Take "Achieving Mindfulness at Work" through Neogov Learn.
    • Attend a balanced you exercise class. Idea: as a team building activity regularly attend the yoga or body strength class.
    • Use these Balanced You videos to take a stretch or exercise break. Idea: Use the videos to lean an exercise you can do at home and continue to practice it throughout the week.
  • Set appropriate boundaries and engage in self care
  • Build opportunities for connection
    • Join an affinity group
    • Idea: Start meeting using an ice breaker from this list.
    • Idea: Make it a regular practice at the beginning of every meeting do a "1 to 5 check" in where each person rates their well-being on a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (fantastic) and says why.
  • Recognize people for effort and growth
    • Use the county’s values cards to recognize employees for accomplishments consistent with the values.
  • Manage Stress
    • Take the "Managing Stress" training through Neogov Learn.
    • Take the training "18 Simple – But Effective – Ways of Managing Stress" through Neogov Learn. About the training: As we know, stress is part of the package of any career field. In fact, it’s the motor that keeps our engines running at work, and keeps our productivity and creativity from stalling. However, just as we need to keep up the maintenance on our car engine so it runs smoothly, we need to take steps to keep our emotional engines from overheating. We try to find ways to reduce stress if possible. There will always be some stress, even if it stems from positive changes. So, we get as close as we can.
    • Take "Managing Stress in Uncertain Times" though Neogov Learn. About the training: Recognize how the brain and body respond to uncertainty and learn some helpful techniques to manage stress in uncertain times.
  • Gratitude
    • Make gratitude a regular team practice. Learn How Gratitude Cultivates Well-being. Idea: watch the video together, discuss how you can make gratitude a regular practice of your team. After a month check back to see if it’s having an impact.
  • Value ideas and suggestions of others Ask people what they think and incorporate their feedback. Idea: Create time in team meeting to make seeking and incorporating suggestions of others a regular team practice.
    • Take this eLearn training "The Art of Authenticity" and discuss how to make it a regular team practice. About the training: The Art of Authenticity, based on the best-selling and award-winning book by Dr. Karissa Thacker, is a micro-learning performance support tool that can transform you and your team to achieve higher levels of engagement and productivity. Key training points include understand the definition of "authenticity" at work; learn why authentic behavior is important for success today; discover why your quirks can actually be positive attributes; uncover the secrets of your various "selves"; learn how to balance and process input from your team; find out how to encourage others to be more open and transparent; learn how to have "honest conversations"; and more!
  • Mental health
    • Take a Mental Health First Aid training. Idea: As a team take a Mental Health First Aid training so you can learn how to recognize the signs of mental health distress, talk to someone about it and connect them with resources.
    • Take a mindfulness class. Idea: Mindfulness is proven to help with the pandemic brain fog many of us have developed. Take a mindfulness class to learn more about this practice and work with your team on how to integrate it into your work as a team practice.
  • Build resilience
    • Host a Balanced You resilience workshop (send an e-mail requesting a workshop). Idea: Kickoff your action plan by learning about resilience and then support each other throughout the year in practicing what you learn.
    • Practice self Compassion. Idea: Self-compassion is a core skill in building resilience. Take a deeper dive into this practice and have regular check-ins with your team as part of making this a habit.
  • Lead a team discussion about well-being and talk about how to build skills and incorporate practice into your workday.
  • Purpose
    • Use this activity to align personal values to the countywide values.

How do you switch off from work when work is always around you? The Organizational Change Management Committee, in response to the GWWW employee survey, set out to find answers to this question. We shared the recommendations of experts during employee forums and encouraged the 300 participants to adopt a mindset of experimentation: try something, see if it works, report back.

How supervisors can help employees switch off.

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