Looking after your team
The resources below provide an overview of the signs that staff might be feeling overwhelmed, experiencing anxiety or approaching burnout, as well as some techniques and strategies that you may find useful to support your team members to address those feelings in line with your responsibilities and remit as their line manager.
Whilst we hope these resources prove useful to you, the University web pages on staff health and wellbeing provide a much wider range of additional support and guidance to signpost team members to. There is also a specific page for managers, covering how to raise concerns and navigate conversations about staff wellbeing, Occupational Health referrals and how to create a Wellbeing Action Plan.
It is also important to encourage your team members to consider where more personalised professional support could be helpful to them, whether that be through our Employee Assistance Programme provider Health Assured, the NHS, or other means.
All of the above resources are not only there for you to signpost your team members towards, but also for you to access yourself. As a line manager, supporting the wellbeing of your team members can place additional strain on your own health, so please do seek help and support when you need to.
Staying informed
The resources below provide a good overview of some key aspects of work-related stress and burnout, as well as how to spot key warning signs and the causes that might be behind them. Exploring the resources available through these platforms can also help you to feel more confident in signposting team members to useful materials as well.
LinkedIn Learning Course Chapter on The Six Root Causes of Burnout
This selection of videos, taken from a longer LinkedIn Learning course, covers a range of different factors that might be contributing to increased feelings of stress, anxiety and overwhelm for your team members. Start with the the first video on ‘Overwork’ and watch through to ‘Value-skill mismatch’, reflecting on which of these factors might be present in your team.
Duration: 20 minutes
LinkedIn Learning Course Chapter on The Six Root Causes of Burnout
Health Assured Podcast on Work-Related Stress
This podcast features a professional counsellor providing a comprehensive overview of work-related stress, including:
- Signs of work-related stress and overwhelm
- Asking for support and creating opportunities for that
- Setting boundaries and saying ‘no’
- Identifying what is within your control
- Identifying what helps
- Guidance on how to approach being signed off
Duration: 35 minutes
Health Assured Podcast on Work-Related Stress
Health Assured Webinar on Burnout
This short recorded webinar provides a good introduction to the topic of burnout, including:
- What it is
- Common signs and symptoms of burnout
- How to tackle burnout yourself
- How to support others
Duration: 10 minutes
Health Assured Webinar on Burnout
What you can do
These materials cover some of the methods at your disposal to support colleagues who are experiencing overwhelm and/or anxiety at work. They should not be viewed as a replacement for professional support, but instead focus on your responsibilities and remit as a line manager.
Whilst not all of these strategies will be relevant to your team or their current context, see if you can identify one or two that can help you to support your team.
Encourage staff to speak up
Some key considerations to foster an environment of psychological safety so that team members feel comfortable to share the challenges that they are experiencing, enabling you to work with them to reduce the causes of stress, anxiety of overwhelm that they might be experiencing.
Duration: 4 minutes
Manage team workload
A range of ways to get a clearer understanding of team members’ workloads and where key stressors and pinch points are occurring. Not all of the approaches will feel appropriate to your team, but consider how you can understand what it is that is putting a strain on your team members and how you can alleviate that pressure.
Duration: 4 minutes
Preventing meeting fatigue
Consider the extent to which meetings, particularly those held virtually, are necessary and how far you could implement alternative forms of communication to reduce workload and screen time.
Duration: 4 minutes
Harnessing the benefits of social support networks
The two videos below cover different aspects of how you can take steps to foster meaningful social connections and interactions between team members, which will help to strengthen the support network that your team can draw on to navigate feelings of stress and overwhelm.
Duration: 7 minutes
Creating opportunities for building relationships
Creating opportunities for enjoyable social interactions
Prioritising and modeling self-care
A few tips that you can embed in your work to prioritise your own wellbeing, which will in turn model healthier working practices for your team.
Duration: 4 minutes