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