Making team wellbeing a management priority

Workload, clarity of responsibilities, support and respectful relationships can affect how people experience work. Wellbeing concerns can influence concentration, attendance and teamwork, but a manager should not diagnose an individual from a performance change. Consider the conditions around the work and use appropriate support routes.

Fictional scenario: a team’s late handovers increase after a scheduling change. Instead of assuming the staff need to be more resilient, examine whether the new overlap is adequate and whether responsibilities are clear. Ask for appropriate feedback without demanding personal health disclosures. Individual support and improvements to work design can both matter. The aim is to understand and address the problem, not to blame someone for experiencing difficulty.

Practice: Identify three work-design questions for the fictional late-handover problem and one assumption about an individual that should be avoided.

Use appropriate channels to understand common work concerns and assess whether actions help. Explain the purpose of feedback, how information will be used and the limits of confidentiality. Avoid collecting unnecessary health information or presenting a small survey as a diagnosis of the workforce. Consider whether staff can participate without fear of unfair treatment.

Fictional exercise: a manager asks for names and medical histories in a general workload survey. Revise the exercise to focus on the operational question and obtain privacy advice where needed. Combine suitable feedback with other relevant evidence, such as whether planned breaks and handovers can occur. Set a baseline, choose a practical change and review its effect. Low response rates or missing groups limit conclusions and should be disclosed.

Practice: Draft three non-diagnostic workload questions and a short explanation of purpose and privacy limits. Define how you would know whether a proposed change helped.

A wellbeing priority needs practical action, resources and follow-through. Select a specific problem, involve appropriate workers, assign an owner and decide how progress will be assessed. Management behaviour should support the stated priority: staff cannot rely on encouragement to take breaks if the work arrangement makes them impossible.

Fictional scenario: a team identifies unclear escalation during busy periods. The manager arranges a clear contact process, confirms cover and tests it through a suitable exercise. At review, staff report whether help was available when needed. If it was not, revise the arrangement rather than declaring success because training attendance was high. Make support information accessible, but do not use an assistance programme as a substitute for addressing preventable problems in the work.

Practice: Create a fictional action record: problem, proposed change, owner, resources, date and evidence of effect. Include what would trigger a revision.