WELL-BEING AT WORK
LEADING CULTURAL CHANGE TO ENHANCE MENTAL HEALTH Recognising the growing concern about and evidence of well-being issues within Fire and Emergency New Zealand, the agency’s Safety, Health and Well-being Team delivered a series of workshops to foster a more psychologically safe workplace, drawing on skills and connections of leaders within their ranks.
BY
ALANA BEITZ
AFAC
F
ire and Emergency New Zealand’s (FENZ) Psychological Well-being Workshops were recognised by the Stewart & Heaton Leading Practice in Mental Health Award in 2019. The annual award recognises agencies at the forefront of mental health practice and aims to support an industry culture that adopts leading practice and spreads the benefits of innovative well-being initiatives across all first responders in Australasia. Alison Barnes, Manager of Health, Safety and Well-being at the Civil Aviation Authority New Zealand (previously Safety, Health and Well-being Team Leader at FENZ), explained how the workshops respond to significant changes in the mental health space, including increased call outs to difficult scenes such as suicides. “Our situation within FENZ was influenced by the changing number and type of medical resuscitation calls that we were going to,” she said. “In some parts of the country there were increases in the number of medical calls that people are going to from 38 to over
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1,500 per cent in the course of a very short time, over about 18 months.” This was coupled with the introduction of new workplace safety legislation in New Zealand in 2015 that put emphasis on workers’ psychological well-being alongside their physical health. The result was the development and delivery of more than 100 Psychological Well-being Workshops tailored to the needs of 14,000 FENZ staff across 646 workplaces. The workshops focused on empowering leaders within teams to deliver mental health information that was relevant to the real-life experiences of participants.
Taking an adaptive approach
The FENZ Safety, Health and Well-being Team took an adaptive approach when developing the workshops to ensure the program was constantly reviewed to meet participants’ needs. The project team acknowledged its work was unlike day-to-day operations within the agency. “We have a fantastic legacy within FENZ of being able to rise to technical challenges, our people are talented and action-oriented—if you present them with
a challenge, they will look at it and find a way to deal with it,” Ms Barnes said. “But looking at psychological well-being required a different response, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.” Workshops were held with different group sizes and at different durations depending on who was participating. The workshops had to be flexible enough to meet the availability and work experience of all staff—from the rural volunteer cohort to the executive suite. “Every single workshop was different,” Ms Barnes said. “I had to hand things over, hold my vision lightly, and understand this was an adaptive challenge, the vision belonged to everybody who was part of it.” Andy Chappell, Safety, Health and Well-being Team Leader at FENZ, also helped to deliver the workshops across dozens of locations. “What we’ve tried to do the whole way through is have a workshop that suits the people we’re delivering it to, as opposed to the people delivering it,” he explained. Uniting each workshop was the aim to encourage and normalise having conversations about well-being and seeking early support. All workshops are
