You have measured your current staff wellbeing, set your goals and if you want to improve your staff wellbeing you now have to take the right action. To do this well you will want to use effective project and change management principles to implement and embed the changes you make.
These work both sequentially and simultaneously and we will look briefly at the steps you can take for effective implementation. This part is about accountability and ensuring there is clear responsibility for every part of your plan.
This means individuals having knowledge of any system changes, whether these are being followed, tracking deadlines to make sure they are being met, and if not, that corrective action is taken.
Sounds simple, yet with you, other school leaders and staff being so busy, this needs a strong hand to ensure action happens as planned.
Other changes and new actions will be introduced on top of an already too heavy workload and you need effective systems in place to follow up and make sure people are held to account for their behaviours and actions.
Improve your staff wellbeing – the steps to take
- Make sure there is a clear shared vision of what the intended outcome looks like in practice and a sense of urgency about reaching it.
- Allocate specific responsibility for individual actions and allow them the right level of decision making and authority to for effective leadership.
- Set out a clear plan of communication and follow it. Too much communication is better than too little and use the right mix of channels to reach all staff.
- Maintain momentum and celebrate successes and every win, even small ones.
- Re-work the plan or reschedule actions, if or when needed.
- Create champions, focus first on early adopters and make sure effective support is given to those who are finding change difficult.
- Identify blockers early, involve them where possible and manage them closely to reduce possible negativity and prevent sabotage.
- Praise those staff who demonstrate the right behaviours while holding those who don’t to account.
- Do not move on too early. This is usually the biggest mistake when outcomes are not met, as actions are not embedded before switching to a new task.
Finally, if you want to improve staff wellbeing, you will need to measure to see if the intended change has been achieved. You will track progress through regularly reviewing your school improvement or development plan.
Reviewing where you are now, learning lessons, understanding what went well and what would have been even better if, provides you with further insight. This takes you back to the start of the cycle. To validate your findings, you would move back to measurement, interrogate the relevant school data and run your survey again (if you ran one previously).
The cycle is a continuous one and it is this process that will allow you to build wellbeing (and all its associated benefits) into daily school life and culture.
It becomes simply “just what we do round here!”
If you have any questions about about what is the right action to take or would like any advice or support to improve your staff wellbeing, you can get in touch here.