Staff Fatigue and Morale Issues
At times it seems as if the challenges faced by the tertiary education sector have been making headline news forever. Staff fatigue and morale issues are significant concerns, acerbated by ongoing funding uncertainty. This session explored opportunities to boost morale and support staff wellbeing and resilience.
Identified strategies to support staff
- Alternative ways to measure wellbeing are to measure safety and trust of staff in leadership at both the faculty at institution level.
- Leadership training is essential for improving culture, morale and wellbeing. Investing in building leadership skills from early career, mid managerial to senior leadership has been positive by providing individual opportunities for development and building collectives.
- Providing mental health training for both academic and professional staff, especially for people in contact roles has greatly improved mental health outcomes within institutions.
- Providing guidelines and support to staff working in the public arena to manage media attention on HASS research.
- Developing research ecologies and networks across disciplines, schools and faculties to reduce isolation has been a positive for collaboration and capacity building.
- Establishing mentoring programs for early and mid-career researchers has been a helpful way to support staff and build community.
- Workshops, forums and drop-in sessions with specific themes provide staff opportunities to connect with one another, present research and engage with other disciplines in more informal, collegial settings.
- Providing go-to online resources that group all HASS related forms and bureaucratic procedures in the one place. This also provides support to staff who are required to adapt to new technologies.
- Using internal research funds to establish incubators providing opportunities for early and mid-career researchers to work together on an ideas for external research grants.
Other discussion highlights:
- Institutions have a range of annual and bi-annual surveys where staff fatigue is often a prevalent issue. Attempts by senior leadership to address this still takes place within a financially constrained environment and there is concern amongst ADRs about capacities to further address issues institutionally.
- ADRs encouraged speaking to professional teams within universities dedicated to occupational health, workplace culture and mental health for support in psychosocial safety and staff wellbeing. These teams have a role to play in facilitating safer workplace design and procedures.
- Recognising the ADR role is often more strategic focused rather than a line management role, and that staff wellbeing is something an institution overall has responsibility for not just individual leaders.
This gathering was facilitated by Dr. Karen Greig from the University of Otago Mō Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.
