an alternative model for workplace wellbeing: emancipation through learning elizabeth cotton,...
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An alternative model for workplace wellbeing: emancipation through learning
Elizabeth Cotton, Middlesex University
Birkbeck Business Week
• The bad news
• Precarious work and precarious workers
• Rise in demand and fall in supply of mental health
services
• Rise(?) of Workplace Wellbeing
• Future research agenda
Mental health at work context
• Corporate Social Responsibility/ HIV/AIDs trajectory
• Credibility for employers
• Credibility for employees
• Stigma and tackling victimization
• Employee engagement and participation linked to
behaviour change
Workplace Wellbeing
• Simplification of positive psychology and cognitive
behavioural methods
• Keep calm and carry on
• Ignores external realities
• Denies conflict and adversarial employment relations
• Individualizes collective issues
• Stage set for superheroes
• Has no principles
Criticisms of wellbeing & positive psychology model
• UK workplace tour: Can we develop a progressive
approach to mental health at work?
• Used concept of ‘resilience’
• Piloted online courses, Surviving Work Weekly
@survivingwk
• Surviving Work Library
Surviving Work Project
• Active Learning or Participatory Methods originating in European Workers movements (Swedish and German) and emancipatory movements in Latin America (Freire)
• Largest international system of adult education• Emancipatory aims• Empowerment through consciousness raising, problem
identification and collective problem solving• Dialogic model using small group dynamics and collective
tasks• Underpinned by principle of solidarity and practice of
confidentiality
Emancipatory education
Emancipatory model of resilience
ANGERUnderstanding itExpressing itChallenging fear and shame
AGENCYConsciousness raisingChallenging internal & external oppressors
RELATIONSHIPSCollectivisingSocial capitalPooling experience
REALISMUnderstanding external realitiesNegotiating realitiesNo magic solutions
PRINCIPLESNon-discriminationConfidentialitySolidarity
• People like to talk
• Helpful stuff for human beings
• Realistic overlap
• Real workplace capacity
• Good use of the technology
• Good use of unions
This is what we found
• From niche to mass provision
• From training to social media
• Shift in the experts
Future of Workplace Wellbeing
• @NHSE_Dean Never put off a difficult conversation. They just become harder, more stressful and more time consuming
• @touretteshero would definitely be: Ask for help when you need it.
• @AmandaKendal: Plug the earphones in and listen to the first act of 'Die Walküre' – well, that's how I've managed this morning. :-) and imagined myself in a helicopter. :-)
• @bevwonderful If you can join a union, do so. You may find you are not the only one having a hard time.
• @OptiflowNHF Let’s cut the serious stuff and get down to some heavy mucking about
www.survivingwork.org
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