STAFF WELLBEING
I’ve experienced first-hand that it is possible to work in education and have good overall wellbeing, including a sustainable work/life balance; I would love to share with you some of the strategies I have used, and enable you and/or your team to experience the same!
ONLINE CONSULTATION
If you would like to make improvements to your own wellbeing, this might be the package for you! Perhaps you’d like to learn strategies for how to manage your workload better, so you can reclaim your free time? Or maybe you’re struggling with the emotional and mental baggage that comes with working in a demanding, relational job? Perhaps you’re a senior leader who would like to discuss how to support their team with their own wellbeing? Whatever your wellbeing needs, this is a space to talk together, over two 30-minute Zoom calls, to collaboratively find solutions to the issues you’re facing.
The first involves discussing the specifics of the issue, exploring possible solutions, and landing on one specific solution to push forward with. We could split the time discussing two separate areas, if you’d prefer, although we would likely not be able to go into as much depth.
In the second call, we will explore how the implementation of the plan has gone, identify any barriers to success, and outline future goals to continue taking it further. You could instead use the second session to explore a separate issue, if something more urgent or important has occurred in the meantime.
INSET TRAINING
One of my key online resources is a book I’ve written called “Leaving Work At Work: A Practical Guide to Improving Work/life Balance for Educators”; it outlines practical, tried-and-tested strategies and tools to improving workload management as an education professional. The content allows you to physically do less work in your evenings and weekends, but also better manage the emotional and mental strain of the profession. Since writing the book, I have turned this into a half-day (3-hour) INSET training course to be delivered to whole staff teams. I would also have a 30-minute Zoom call with a school leader before the day, to understand the school context better before coming to deliver the training, and a 30-minute post-training call with a school leader to collaboratively set future goals for your school, in terms of how to move forward from this training session well. Each participant would also receive a free electronic copy of the book which the training is based around, to support them to apply these strategies well to their day-to-day practice and make sustained improvements in the area of workload management and overall wellbeing.
In addition to this half-day training, you can book my services for an additional half-day, with 3 further hours of INSET-day support. This could be time spent one-to-one with specific staff members or teams who need extra support in this area (perhaps your school’s early career teachers would benefit from support in juggling the various aspects of a teacher’s role and working more efficiently, or maybe there’s an experienced teacher who has recently been given extra responsibility but hasn’t yet found a way to balance this with other commitments). Alternatively, it could include a training session for a cohort of trainee teachers about to start at your school, based on my shorter e-book “Learning Work At Work: Top Tips for New Teachers Learning on the Job” (see online resources).
SLT PACKAGE
My online consultation package is great for supporting individuals or small teams to make positive changes to their own wellbeing and workload management strategies. However, larger-scale change only comes when the leadership team truly put wellbeing at the heart of their school’s culture. Many schools believe they do this well, but there are some practical steps that senior leaders can take to ensure their practices and procedures truly do support staff well, leading to improved outcomes in whatever areas the staff lead.
The remote version of my SLT package comprises of 4 30-minute Zoom calls with an SLT, as they work through my e-book “Leading Work At Work: Helping School Leaders Foster a Culture Where Work/life Balance is Possible" (a free PDF of the e-book is provided for all team members, by the way). I am also contactable for troubleshooting and further advice as you implement the changes you decide upon through the training.
The blended version of my SLT package goes even deeper towards supporting leaders to have wellbeing at the heart of the school’s culture. As well as the above virtual support, it also includes 3 hours spent in-person in your school, observing the running of the day, speaking with a range of staff to hear their perspective on the extent to which leaders support their wellbeing and what improvements could be made, and then feeding back to SLT at the end of that time with further recommendations or observations. There is then a follow-up call with SLT 3 months and 6 months after my visit, to support you to make the changes and achieve the goals we set (this can be combined with a Quality Assurance visit – see school improvement packages).
Are you interested in booking one of these packages? Please complete the contact form here: