For many of our clients the Christmas period represents the most high stress time of the year. As the end of the year approaches we give some thought to the stressors that are likely to increase in your workplace.
What can you do to mitigate the end of year stressors and prepare your staff for a successful new year?
The end of year period may prove stressful for everyone because of:
• Expectations around Christmas and end of year social activities
• Family relationships
• Financial stress
• Travelling
• It is a time of self reflection
• Pressure to complete work and/or personal projects before the holiday period commences
• Reduced staffing
And the list goes on.
Your service recipients may experience a lower quality of service and support from some or all of the providers and stakeholders in their lives due to:
• Family and social supports away on holidays
• Heavier reliance on casual staff who may lack familiarity with your specific workplace and service recipients
• Reduced staffing levels potentially leading to less time to complete tasks
• Disruptions to daily routines over the period
• Less staff to prevent and manage incidents of aggressive behaviours should they arise
Unfortunately, even though you may have no influence over the actions of family or other service providers, your service recipients may become more stressed and frustrated. Some may even present aggressive behaviours as a result of this stress.
Knowing it is far easier for you to change what you do than what others do, what can you do to better manage this period?
We have adapted the Vulnerability-Stress Model to explain the relationship between your stress levels and how you might respond to aggressive behaviours.
Stress refers to the challenges faced in our lives which are often heightened during the Christmas period. Vulnerability refers to our basic susceptibility to manage additional emotional and physical stressors, that is, how affected we will be by them.
When we are managing our daily stress well, we have relatively more capacity to cope with (and not be overwhelmed by) further stress such as aggressive behaviours. When coping poorly, our stress levels build and so does our vulnerability to being overwhelmed.
We can expect that as our vulnerability increases our capacity to safely manage aggressive behaviours will decrease.
By addressing factors that influence your vulnerability such as your coping skills, social supports, and involvement in meaningful activities, you can increase your capacity to cope with stress and to more safely manage aggressive behaviours.
If you are to do a better job for others at this time of year, it is important to address the factors impacting on your own wellbeing first.
How can you improve your own self-care? Mentally? Physically? Emotionally? Spiritually?
Safety and wellbeing are important for everyone.
Take five minutes to write your list now.
Moving forward into the New Year, how can you upskill your staff to better identify and manage stressors leading to incidents of aggressive behaviour?
We have found that one of the biggest barriers to staff safety training is an organisation’s ability to align staff rosters with the training schedule. This is exacerbated when staff are over stretched and stressed.
With this in mind we created our unique M.A.B™ eLearn as an online version of our M.A.B™ workshops. The eLearn offers easy to learn, contextualised, self-paced learning for the convenience of the learner that will boost the effectiveness of your staff safety training program.
Feel welcome to give Jon, our Client Solutions Manager, a call to discuss a package contextualised for your organisation.
* M.A.B™: Contextualised Prevention and Management of Aggressive Behaviours
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The team at Holland Thomas supports organisations to manage the impact of aggressive behaviours on their staff, the people they support, and the organisation itself. Our goal is to create safer workplaces that enhance wellbeing for all concerned whilst also delivering improved operational and financial performance.
We provide a range of flexible and tailored staff safety solutions including consultancy, eLearn and face to face training, and technology driven safety solutions.
This blog draws on our years of experience delivering our M.A.B.™ (Contextualised Prevention and Management of Aggressive Behaviours) staff safety training across Australia and the development of My Safety Buddy, our smartphone app and web portal based lone worker safety solution.
Should you wish to discuss strategies to improve your staff’s safety in their work environment, please feel welcome to contact Holland Thomas.
Travis Holland
Managing Director
Holland Thomas
