[Michelle McQuaid]
Our sincere apologies for keeping you on your toes this morning around Zoom links. As always, we are here to model the perfectly imperfect creatures that we all are. We thank you for your resilience and flexibility and agility in finding your way to the right link. We cannot wait to get underway in a moment with these beautiful showcase presentations. As you're coming in, just let us know in the chat if you can, where are you joining us from? Where are you physically located today? Which service are you representing? And here as part of, it's a great way just for us to get a sense of who's in the room together today as we get underway for these fantastic showcase presentations. I've been getting a sneak peek behind the scenes at some of the amazing tools your colleagues have been creating, and I know that you're going to take so much away from today's session in terms of things that you can use practically as well.
Again, as we get going just in the chat, if you can just be popping a hello, where are you joining us from today? Penny, great to have you from Wangaratta. Renee from Women's Health Grampians. Marion, wonderful to have you here from the Grampians team as well. Thank you so much for being with us. Keep popping them in there. Renee, welcome. Kirsten, wonderful to have you from Sacred Heart Mission. If you can just keep popping into the chat for us. Where are you joining us from today physically and which services are you part of? It's a great way for us all to just get a sense about who's in the room as we dive into these showcase presentations today.
Janet, welcome here from Mallee Family Care, Mildura. Katie, wonderful to have you from Aubrey Wodonga Health. Tracy, great to have you with us from, I think that's jumping up for me, Northern Melbourne from Family Violence Services. Lisa from Safe and Equal, wonderful to have the Safe and Equal team with us as always. Bernadette from Meli, welcome. They're going faster than I can read them now is the good news. Keep popping them in there. It is such a joy to have you all with us again today for this showcase session. To help kick us off formally, Katheryn, I'm going to pass it over to you please.
[Katheryn Kent]
Thanks so much Michelle, and I'm so excited to welcome everyone here today for our Health Safety and Wellbeing Final showcase. I'm sure you're just as excited as I am to hear about how all of the pilots have gone and to learn about the resources that have been developed. My name's Katheryn Kent. I'm the director of the Family Violence Industry Plan team here at the Centre for Workforce Excellence, which is part of the Department of Families Fairness and Housing. Some of you may meet know me from where we previously were in Family Safety Victoria. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands throughout Australia and I pay my very deep respects to their elders past and present. I acknowledge-
[Michelle McQuaid]
Is it just me or is Katheryn frozen?
[Evie]
No, Katheryn has frozen Michelle. It's not just you.
[Michelle McQuaid]
I can see some nodding of heads there. We'll see if we can get Katheryn back in just a moment. It's the joys of technology keeping us all on our toes, so let me just finish that acknowledgement there for Katheryn. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the lands throughout Australia and pay my respects to their elders past and present. I'd also like to extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues here today and the important work that's being driven from Aboriginal organisations in this space. I'd also like to acknowledge victim survivors who may be joining us today. We keep forefront in our minds all those who are impacted by or who are living with violence and abuse and who have sadly lost their lives because of family violence or sexual abuse and for whom we undertake this very important work. Just a reminder that today that any time you're affected by the content and you require support, please feel free to turn off your camera or have a break. You can also refer to the support numbers that are being placed in-
[Katheryn Kent]
Sorry.
[Michelle McQuaid]
No problems at all, Katheryn. I was just continuing the acknowledgement of the traditional landowners and the acknowledgement of victim survivors and just letting people know that if it feels too much at any point today to turn off their cameras, refer to the support numbers in the chat or to reach out to any of our teams, so Katheryn, I'll pass it back over to you.
[Katheryn Kent]
Thanks so much and huge apologies everyone. As Dr. Michelle McQuaid says, we are modelling the imperfect today and we have extra imperfect internet connections here at 50 Longsdale Street. Thank you so much for continuing for me. As you know, the Health Safety and Wellbeing Pilots Guide and Safe and Equal Self-assessment tool are among the many initiatives being driven through the 10-year family violence industry plan. I want to call out the significant and really invaluable feedback from across the sector that we've received to date in order to inform this work and to acknowledge the role particularly about peak bodies in advocating for increasing investment and effort in this space.
This is a really critical time to be talking about health, safety and wellbeing needs of our family violence, sexual assault and prevention workforce has given particularly those challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic these past few years. It's been almost a year since we launched the Health Safety and Wellbeing Guide and Safe and Equals organisational self-assessment tool and hand handbook with an event similar to this. At the launch we heard that after the pandemic, the sector needed to reorganise how the work occurred with hybrid models being incorporated into business as usual. We heard about the need for agencies to be flexible and to be kind to workers and that one size just doesn't fit all with each worker requiring different and tailored wellbeing supports. We also heard that the sector was facing increased demand and urgent need across the system and recruiting experienced workers could be really challenging. All of these things impact on the health, safety and wellbeing of our workforce as we know it.
At the launch, we invited agencies to put in an expression of interest for the Health Safety and Wellbeing Pilot Programme, and we were incredibly pleased to receive excellent submissions. We were really fortunate to have interest from rural, regional and metropolitan locations and from a variety of family violence prevention and sexual assault services, including statewide service. With an emphasis on health, safety and wellbeing being a collective responsibility rather than an individual one. The pilots were designed to be flexible and provide the pilot agency's options and choice such as supporting completing sections of the organisational self-assessment tool, measurement of workplace wellbeing, workshops to hear about the workplace wellbeing survey results and regular team or leader wellbeing Coaching sessions.
Nine agencies participating in the pilot programme with seven having started from September last year and concluding now. Two further agencies started a little after those and we'll be finishing in September. The pilot and the seminars are being independently evaluated. The pilot sites are spent considerable time and thinking and effort in developing the wellbeing resources and I'd like to provide very sincere thanks to each one of them for their generosity and spirit and giving back to the sector they work within. The agenda today will cover a chance to hear from those pilot sites about what they've learned and the most effective ways to measure health, safety and wellbeing in teams, how the teams co-created workplace wellbeing strategies, what worked and what didn't, sharing with you the workplace wellbeing resources they've developed.
We'll all hear some of the presentations as a group and some will occur in breakout rooms, which Michelle's team will automatically allocate you to so you don't have to do anything. All of the presentations are being recorded and will be available, so don't worry about missing out. You'll be able to hear those presentations in different breakout rooms after the sessions. The resources being developed by the pilot agencies will soon be available and being added to the guide for everyone to be able to use. I'd also like to highlight that the guide includes a workplace wellbeing survey, which has been adapted for our workforces and is available up until September this year. It's important to note that the licences last a year from the time your agency signs up. The licence enables team and programme or organisational survey reports to be generated to support a systems approach to measuring and caring for workplace health, safety and wellbeing. We encourage your agencies to consider whether this might meet your needs.
Also as part of the offerings, a series of free 90 minute Leading for Wellbeing seminars were delivered by Dr. Michelle McQuaid, which were conducted from February until May this year. The recordings of those are available online as part of the health safety and wellbeing resources, and we've put the link in the chat, I hope it's in the chat. These seminars have proven to be really popular with over 500 sector leaders, HR personnel, and workers attending across the four seminars. Topics included how to handle burnout, increased collective care and psychological safety, and improved team dynamics amongst many others. These seminars have included the voice of the sector through the interviews with Michelle. I'd like to personally thank the sector leaders who agreed to be interviewed and shared their experiences in trying to improve their workforce wellbeing.
So this is included, Kelly Gannon from Winda-Mara Aboriginal Corporation and Marianne Hedrick from the Women's Health Grampians in seminar one. Colleen Crisp from the Junction Support Services and Lisa Robinson from Meli in seminar two. Elena Ashley from Wire and Gerald Dane Bilston from Family Safety Victoria in seminar four. I'd like to extend a particular and enormous thank you to Daphne and Ivy Yaren from Yearlong healing service for co-hosting, the third seminar. I hear some of you're presenting today. It's such a significant contribution that you're making to our sector and our workforce. While I'm on thanking people, bear with me because I've just got a couple more that I'd like to do and particularly given that this is our last opportunity.
I'd like to thank the project advisory group which has included the three peak bodies, Safe and Equal, No to Violence and Sexual Assault Services, Victoria. With any project lots of hard work happens behind the scenes and this group was absolutely instrumental in guiding this project. Once again, I want to say huge thank you to our pilot agencies. Thank you to Dr. Michelle McQuaid and her team, which includes Evie and the two wellbeing coaches, Linda and Kirsten, who have guided and supported the pilot programmes. I'd like to say a really deep and enormous thank you to my team and particularly Sue, Greg and Anigo Co who have been absolutely tirelessly working in the background to bring all of these pieces together, and I'm incredibly privileged to have such a wonderful team.
For now, I'm going to be quiet. We'll head off into the final showcase. It's absolutely my pleasure to once again introduce Dr. Michelle McQuaid from the Wellbeing Lab, the host for today's showcase. Thanks so much everyone.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Thank you so much Kathryn. Again, beautiful role modelling of our perfect imperfection and how we just take a breath and find our feet on the other side of those moments. You may get to see a lot of that today. We have some amazing showcase presentations for you. I just don't want to undersell what it takes to get on here in front of all of your peers and share a piece of work that you've been pouring, not just effort and energy into, but a whole lot of hope. I echo Katheryn's thanks for all of our presenters today and I know like me, you'll give them all the grace and space that they need as they find their feet and come on to share their stories with us. The good news is that they are gifting forward the tools that they have been co-creating to support the health, safety and wellbeing of their teams for all of us to be able to both learn from and experiment with ourselves.
So it is such an exciting moment to be here with you. As Katheryn mentioned, when we launched the health safety and wellbeing guide, organisations were invited to apply to be part of a pilot project where funding, resources and coaching would be provided to work with services, with leaders, with their teams around what does it actually take to be able to support health safety and wellbeing practically in their workplaces. Over a period of time of about nine months for most of them, as Katheryn mentioned, by the time we got through funding and up and going, those organisations have been trying to work through the sequence of steps that are featured in the health safety and wellbeing framework that many of you were part of helping us co-design over the last few years. You can see there that step one is measure the health, safety and wellbeing, and step two is to assess those levels of wellbeing.
And so to do this, these seven different sites started out first and as Katheryn mentioned, two more have since been added and are still going through these steps. They used the PERMAH Wellbeing Survey that had been designed specifically for family safety workplaces to get a quantitative gauge as to where their organisations are at. Then they also use the safe and equal self-assessment tool, which we had featured of course in the Leading for Wellbeing series on workshop number two. If you want to go back to that video again, Evie's been putting those links in the chat as we are going. And so they were able to use this tool to assess some of the psychosocial hazards, those social and emotional hazards that may be existing in our workplaces that are adding to stress and burnout levels for people.
When they were assessing, these pilot sites were drawing on both of these different tools and they were working with two of our amazing coaches, so Linda, maybe if you can give us a wave. Linda Rowley is one of the coaches that have been supporting them, and Kirsten McKenna, can you give us a wave as well out there at the top? Kirsten is our other coach who's been working with them. When they gathered this data, the coaches sat alongside the leaders and the teams together with complete transparency, without blame or shame or judgement , but lots of curiosity and generosity as to the messiness of learning together and trying to support our health, safety and wellbeing. Often in very challenging contexts of the workplaces that we're in to figure out, well what did all of that mean? What was working well out of this data? Where were we struggling? What could we learn from it and how might we adapt from it?
With that growth mindset in place, with a strengths lens, looking at the strengths that they could build on as organisations, but with absolute responsibility and accountability for collective care and the role that organisations and leaders play in looking after the wellbeing of our people, they were then able to unpack those insights with the leaders and teams together to then create a team wellbeing plan.
What you can see on the screen now is one of the templates that was provided as a starting place to think about how they would lead wellbeing. The L for the literacy, the language that they were going to use to talk about wellbeing as a team. The E for the evaluation, were they going to keep using those chosen measures, did they have other engagement tools or pulse surveys or did they want it to be more just around qualitative conversations? A for activation, what were they going to do practically? So we asked the teams to co-create together at least one health safety and wellbeing tool that they could experiment and try out for themselves and come back and share with the sector as a whole as part of the pay it forward for the pilot, which is what we're going to see today. Then the D in the lead is for determination. How would they use the team and leader coaching that was being provided as part of the pilot to keep checking in on their progress? To keep asking those questions, what's working? Where are we struggling? What are we learning?
Because as we all know, caring for health, safety and wellbeing is never one woo-hoo and done as we like to say at the Wellbeing Lab. It's a day by day proposition and we need to give each other the space for the perfect imperfection we all bring to it individually and collectively when it comes to looking after ourselves and each other and then to hold each other accountable in that space for the things we're saying are important to be able to achieve together. Not all of the teams used this exact plan, but they started with something like this and then they had full permission to adapt to whatever was going to work for them. Then as I say, they've worked together on different tools, and so this is one example of one of the tools, not specifically out of the programme, but actually Kelly, who's going to speak to us in a moment from Winda-Mara introduced us to in seminar one around the rocket recovery tool.
And what you're going to see today are a whole lot of these different easy to use tools that you can pick up and use for yourself. You can introduce to your team. The goal out of the backend of the pilots, in addition to helping the nine sites learn more about how to care for health, safety and wellbeing for themselves was to give forward their insights, their learnings to improve the tools and ideally to try and create this living evidence-based toolbox to go alongside the health safety and wellbeing guide that everybody in the sector could draw from. The invitation after today is for everybody in the sector to continue adding to. If you are seeing things today and going, "Oh, we've got something like that we could offer into the toolkit." Then all gifts will be gratefully received. The idea here is to make this by the sector, for the sector when it comes to having practical tools to help care for health, safety and wellbeing.
And then the last thing that these seven sites have recently done is actually go back and measure again, so they've reused the PERMAH Wellbeing Survey to get a quantitative feel for where they are. They're continuing to look at the safe and equal assessment tool for identifying those psychosocial risks, and in a little while we'll be able to pull together all that quantitative data and share it back with you both for insights in what is wellbeing looking like across the sector right now for a number of our organisations, but also what did we learn shifted over time, what was more malleable and what was more perhaps fixed for us to be able to contend with.
Again, just reminding you that everything you're seeing today has really been designed around the health safety and wellbeing guide. Evie, if we can make sure we've got the link for the guide into the chat in case people haven't seen that, and the invitation and opportunity for these pilot sites was, well practically how do you bring this to life? And that's what we're going to try to help give you lots of examples of to inspire you today. With that said, enough of me, let's get into the show showcasing and the stories. Please along the way use the chat to share any appreciation aha moments as the showcases are sharing. If you have questions that are coming up, we are trying to allow time at the end of each of these presentations to come back and address any of that.
Keep the chat going along the way if you wish, but Kelly, if your voice is feeling okay, I should preface Kelly's not being hugely well and is a bit croaky in the voice but is here with us anyway and we're so grateful for that. Kelly, thank you so much. Kelly, if I get you to unmute yourself and maybe just before we dive into your showcase itself, can you just help remind everyone a little of the context of Winda-Mara, what you were trying to address in terms of helping your team care for their wellbeing? And then we'll dive into the tool and I'll share it on my screen when you give me the word.
[Kelly Gannon]
Thanks for that, and thank you Katheryn and Michelle for that great introduction and to Kirsten for all the support that she's had, because I tell you what, she's been debriefed on a few occasions. Excuse me for my coughing. I'd just like to say one, and just pay my respects to my elders past president in merging. We are sitting, I'm sitting on Gundi, Tamara country, which is southwest Victoria, and I work in an Aboriginal Corporation. When we started this project, we were a standalone unit within Winda-Mara. It's a multi-service organisation and we did our survey with our co-colleagues of Integrated Family Services and Kinship Services, but we haven't been able to complete that last one simply because there's been a whole heap of changes.
Our work in an area where it's a small based place population with very strong kinship ties and networks, which is both good and bad and we're a frontline family violence service, and what I am learning now as a result, we had a complete change of leadership in the executive level. There's been a whole change in terms of how the organisation works, how we're going to go forward and having to co-locate other services into our building and the impact that's had on the team and how we see. This has only happened in the last couple of weeks, how we see the flow of the clients and the workers through the building, all that sort of thing, so it's brought up a few issues for us, which has impacted on the team, but reflects on how strong they are as a team as well.
We don't necessarily have people who have qualifications in the area. We can take people who have lived experience or have strong cultural knowledge that have good skill sets that we can train up, and we've got two of those in our network, but at the same time, they're now starting to commence their tertiary studies in the area and that's been helpful to give them the knowledge base to work from on top of the great skillset that they have. There's been a whole different layer to occupational health and safety for them as what they would be to someone who's qualified and has an insight into the work that they're doing. I have to say that right from the outset, I'm very, very proud of my team. So I'm a big proud mama.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Rightly so, Kelly. Rightly so.
[Kelly Gannon]
And what the other thing I learned too was being a team leader means that you are the buffer between them and the rest of the organisation. The organisational tool was a great thing to create discussion and to create awareness of where we found the gaps. We are currently in the process at Winda-Mara of redeveloping all our policies, updating them and all that sort of thing, so much to my discuss, I've put myself on the policy subcommittee so that I can have an input into that for the benefit of our team moving forward.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Very brave and necessary I think. You can shape a lot from that level as well, even though it's sometimes painful to do the work.
[Kelly Gannon]
And the other thing that we discovered, which is it, this has been a really good learning curve, because the other thing we discovered too was that when you're in a multi aid service agency, often the understanding and the knowledge of what frontline family violence is and what it takes to operate in a community stops with us. Trying to educate the rest of the organisation around that can be a long discussion and a frequent discussion. It's about how then as a team leader, I can care for myself, which obviously at the moment I'm not doing that very well, but now we can care for ourselves so that we are not putting that back on our teams.
[Michelle McQuaid]
And I think we all have the ups and downs in that care. Again, I think Kelly modelling the human nature of what it is to care for health, safety and wellbeing and doing the best we can with that. Are you happy if I share the tool on screen that your team co-created and you can walk us through it? Is that okay?
[Kelly Gannon]
Yep.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Okay, so Kelly, give me a thumbs if you can see that on the screen. Awesome. Over to you mate.
[Kelly Gannon]
This is where my technology doesn't extend to, that's why Michelle's sharing it for me. This was what Kirsten and the team came up with in terms of a wellbeing checklist and it was based on that rocket recovery tool that I talked about in the first seminar, but what it's basically about is a wellness plan for workers. I suppose that's part of my experience in working in psych rehab and Kirsten's experience as a psychologist coming together and trying to create something that is usable for the workers and something that they can relate to.
The rocket recovery, just as a refresher, it was about distract, there was three components to it. When we're feeling overwhelmed, we need to distract the mind from all the circular thoughts that we have or the nagging worries that we have that we don't want to take home with us. It's about how we soothe the nervous system and how we do something active, to tyre the body out so that it feels rest and relaxation, so it was on three different levels and this goes through that as well as that self-compassion. At the end of the day, acknowledging that we've done our best and we've had a really hectic couple of weeks where we've had some really high risk clients and we're only a small team. I've got two case managers under me. I have a small caseload as well as being team leader, but my people my team are my main focus, and we have a community development worker.
So we are working on a number of different levels, but those two workers have had some really intense clients and some really difficult issues and we've found that we've had to start moving into with our community development worker doing some proactive stuff to lobby government to create some change in the region. That's all happening in the last few weeks as a result of stuff that's happening, but what we found was we hit rock bottom this week and it was about sitting down yesterday and just looking at each other and acknowledging that and saying that we're doing the best that we can and that we can't help everyone, that sometimes people are in charge of their own life and we can only deal with what we have access to and what they're prepared to do and their stages of readiness. That was a really important thing to do at the end of yesterday because everyone was feeling overwhelmed. That was, and just highlighting what their strengths were for that week and what they'd done.
This come from that, and so on the first page it goes through the create healthy boundaries. It's learning to have those strong boundaries about when I got finished work at the end of the day, when not in emergency service, the phone gets turned off and it doesn't get turned on until the next day. That sort of stuff. Like for me it was if I'm having a bad day and I live in the next to the forest, so that's really good for me, I will drive through the forest rather than around it on the main roads and maybe sit at Fire Dam and just relax for a bit before I actually go home so I can decompress and not bring that back to the family. It is about those boundaries between what is work and what is home and trying to do some strategies when you're home that creates you a safe place there as well, so the rest and recovery points are what we talked about where we distract and we calm and we activate.
The self-compassion. We've talked about that to actually recognise what we're feeling and say, "That's okay, that's just where I'm at at this moment, but I've done a really good job and this is all... And I'm not in charge of all of that, that is happening to me." Or around me I should say. The only thing that we are in control of is us and how we respond. Immediate safety actions, so when we're feeling triggered, we had an issue where one of the workers came up against... Fortunately he didn't recognise her, but one of the people who used violence of one of her clients and it wasn't the day when she was expecting him to be at court. Luckily for her, the support worker for vows recognised that she was, had changed in her demeanour and just took her aside to one of the small rooms and had a bit of a chat to her and we did some one of the strategies when she got back, so that was that immediate safety action thing and what she needed for her for that.
Act, assess and adjust weekly reflection, so going through at the end of the week. We don't always do this, it's been a really busy month and I said to Kirsten last night, I could tell that the team had missed their supervision because we'd had extra time when we had to do in services for the organisation, strategic planning, all that sort of stuff. It meant that people had to take time off on days that ended up being on their supervision day and we hadn't rescheduled because we were all pretty busy. That's a note to me that I must reschedule in every month to make sure that supervision happens, because that weekly adjustment we overlook this month and that's what showed up yesterday was that we really need to get together. We get together as a team every Monday morning and do the caseload, but we really need to do it at the end of the week is just a check in of where everyone's at before we finish our week.
And the transitions between clients, the transition between work and home, that's what we've already talked about. They all got to do their own what suited them because it's not going to be the same for everyone.
[Michelle McQuaid]
And so Kelly, this is where I can see behind that checklist in your beautiful tool, you've got a page for each of those actions for people to take. Is that right? To help guide them?
[Kelly Gannon]
And each of them individually, so it might be knitting and gardening for someone else, it might be [inaudible 00:32:07] for someone else and getting out with family.
[Michelle McQuaid]
It's amazing.
[Kelly Gannon]
So it's different for everyone.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Yeah, it's so beautiful and I love Kelly, its simplicity but also its holistic sense right through that checklist from boundaries to what am I doing for my own rest and recovery to the self-compassion, safety actions, that learning process of acting, assessing and adjusting. Again, I think this is such an amazing tool and I'm imagining many leaders and team members watching this right now going, "When can I get my hands on that?" And it will come. We're going to put them all up as part of the health safety and wellbeing guide, but I'm just mindful we've got a few more beautiful showcase presentations to get through and of your wonderful voice, which did so well to guide us through all of that. Can I ask people in the chat if you've got any burning questions or you want to share some appreciation or ahas there for Kelly and the beautiful tool that the Winda-Mara team have created and are gifting forward for us all to pop that into the chat now.
And Kelly, I think your observation there at the end are going, when we are using this consistently and there's supervision to help support and build that accountability and give people space to debrief that act, assess, adjust part, this works really well. When that supervision and accountability isn't there, either because we're sick as a leader or things are so busy at work, it's hard to make the moment for it just how quickly it can drift away. It's that important reminder to us that it's never one and done when it comes to health, safety and wellbeing. It does need that consistency of practise. Am I hearing that right in terms of your last observation you were sharing?
[Kelly Gannon]
Absolutely, and the other one is I want to keep Kirsten.
[Michelle McQuaid]
You want to keep Kirsten. For those joining us from the department, the ask is can they please keep their wellbeing Coach. We love that. Kelly, thank you so much for sharing and for being here, even when you're not feeling a hundred percent. I can see there's lots of love in the chat there for you and lots of appreciation and people saying they can't wait to use it as well, so thank you so much and thank the team please for us as well. It's just been amazing to be travelling this path with all of you and again, I think this is such a valuable tool that many across the sector will get benefit of for a long time to come, so thank you so much.
[Kelly Gannon]
I think it's going to be shared, isn't it, with everyone?
[Michelle McQuaid]
It is. Yep. We're going to share all the tools up with the guide in the coming week, so we'll make sure everybody who's signed up for the workshop gets everything sent out to them afterwards as well, so thank you for that.
[Kelly Gannon]
I'm going to give you the copy of the supervision contract that we put up last.
[Michelle McQuaid]
That would be amazing if you're happy to share your supervision contract as well. I know after the last seminar there were lots of requests from people about whether they might be able to see that, so a two for one, we always love that. Thank you so much Kelly, so if we can round of applause, snaps, whatever you've got with your cameras on. Awesome. Loving in the chat for Kelly and the Winda-Mara team. It takes a lot of effort and commitment to walk through these, commitment, well a lot of time and effort and commitment to walk through the monthly process of really prioritising health, safety and wellbeing. I think the team at Winda-Mara have been an amazing example of that. Let's go to our second showcase. I'm going to do one more here together with us and then we're going to go into some breakout rooms so you can hear some more. We are very lucky right now to be joined by Rose Durey from Women's Health Grampians. Welcome Rose, great to have you with us.
[Rose Durey]
Thank you.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Rose, again, can you maybe help for everybody listening, watching today, just give us a little bit of the context for the service and your team when you started to pick this up and why you've created the tool that you're going to share with us today.
[Rose Durey]
Yeah, absolutely. I can bring up some slides because that can bring it to life a little bit as well. Tell me, Michelle, what can you see?
[Michelle McQuaid]
We can see it beautifully.
[Rose Durey]
Okay. Beautiful. I am the manager of strategy and programmes at Women's Health Grampians and I too am going to just quickly start by acknowledging that I am based in Ballarat and this is Wathaurong country, this always was and always will be Wathaurong country and I pay my respect to elders past and present. To provide a bit of that context, Michelle, we are a health promotion organisation, so we're a bit different to Winda-Mara and other organisations in that we don't do the direct service delivery. We're not at the response end of the spectrum. We're at the primary prevention end of the spectrum, so we are funded by the Victorian government to work around the drivers of violence against women including gender equality and we work largely at an organisational level. We work with organisations around achieving gender equality outcomes and working towards challenging gender social norms, applying gender lens, all of which is key in preventing violence against women at that primary prevention end. We're rural and regional. I'm based in Ballarat, we've got offices in Horsham as well. This is a little picture of, can you see that Michelle, photo? So this-
[Michelle McQuaid]
Oh no, it hasn't moved on, Kelly. It's still on your first slide.
[Rose Durey]
Okay, here we go.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Try again so I can share it from my end.
[Rose Durey]
Can you see that now?
[Michelle McQuaid]
No, let me try from my end. Kelly, I think let's go over to-
[Rose Durey]
I'll stop sharing.
[Michelle McQuaid]
That's Okay. No problems mate. To see the photos that go with it. There we go.
[Rose Durey]
And maybe the next slide. Thanks Michelle. You can practise but it does not-
[Michelle McQuaid]
That's okay.
[Rose Durey]
Make perfect. This is the team. There are about 25 of us in the team. We are all women except for one man. We all work part-time. A lot of us have caring responsibilities and almost all of us work in some way around that primary prevention of violence against women. What that means is that we are not necessarily seeing the immediate impact of our work at all. It's a really long game that we are playing, so that's the kind of context that we are working in health promotion and not direct service delivery, but we're working at an organisational level.
If you can go to the next slide, Michelle. Like Michelle was saying earlier on, we did the survey at the start and at the end of what we are doing ,and what it indicated overall is quite a strong and positive or organisational culture, but when we delved a bit deeper, it showed that we are going well, but we have within our staff group relatively high levels of judgmental and critical self-talk and relatively low levels of self-compassion. This wasn't on the whole, we had quite a high performing team, but despite that work and progress and sentiment at an organisational level, we were still talking ourselves down, which was really interesting for us. I think we quite enjoyed being able to delve into that a bit deeper.
In part, I think our hunch was that in part that's due to the primary prevention work and not necessarily seeing impact of our work in real time, but also gender equality and inequality and gender norms are our bread and butter, and so we did apply a gender lens and flesh that out a bit more to we're an organisation that are almost all women and the gender is at play in where we scored more poorly. If you go to the next slide, we looked at the evidence around this, but the evidence around our punch and there's lots of data that shows this. This is just one study from Harvard Business Review that backed up our conversations, and it's that women are confident about their performance and men are on the whole overconfident. That men engage in substantially more self-promotion than women, and that women systematically across the board provide less favourable assessments of our past performance and our potential future ability than equally performing men. We thought that's interesting for us as an organisation that is largely just women.
So what we developed is the accomplishment spotlight. The accomplishment was the PERMAH Wellbeing factor that these scores fell into, and basically it was about encouraging our team to take notice of our own achievements, but also those of other members of the team, our achievements, contributions that we might have made and milestones however small they might be, so celebrating those small wins and not just achievements but also effort and to use to develop a language around that. I accomplished something and the impact was this, to really get better at our own self-promotion in some ways and to embed that into supervision team meetings and at the internal comms that we have within our organisation. As well as giving us permission and getting more used to calling out negative self-talk and encouraging us to challenge some of those gender norms around how we talk about and showcase our own achievement.
This is our tool, super simple. It has been quite useful for us as a team that is performing quite really well as a way of boosting kind our team wellbeing, and also for us it was quite individual and so this particular tool that we developed was able to shine the spotlight on both of those things. I think it's also beneficial for teams that are doing long-term primary prevention work, because sometimes it's hard to find where the change is happening as well.
[Michelle McQuaid]
That makes sense, Rose. I love the simplicity of the, "I accomplished dot, dot, dot and the impact was dot, dot, dot." Then how you thought about, well how do we anchor that? How do we embed that into our existing ways of working? So it's not something we're doing on top of another thing we've got to add onto the to-do list to remember, but actually how do we embed it into our supervision conversations? How do we embed it into our team meeting agendas? How do we use it in our internal communications? I love both the simplicity and the effectiveness that this could have for a team.
[Rose Durey]
It's been a pleasure.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Yeah, that's just amazing. Again, team in the chat if you want to share any reflections, appreciation, questions for Rose in there, please do so. Rose, I think your observations about one, where you are in the continuum of support that is provided to people in the sector is such an important part of that and the gender lens to that as well. Having studied lots of workplaces and I'm always curious about the self-compassion and the criticism and judgement that people use. I would say a yes and to that I think there's definitely a heightened piece for all those reasons that you identified with your team. One thing we would notice is that often this is the factor, these are the factors that are pulling down accomplishment in many, many workplaces as well.
And so again, for those listening, if you are wondering about this for your team and where they might score there are, you all have access to free licences for that survey tool if you want to use them as Katheryn mentioned at the start. One of the benefits of that tool is it would allow you to be able to accurately assess, is this a challenge in our team? And I think Rose, again, what you guys did so beautifully with that was then open up a conversation about what does this mean for us? Does this ring true for us? Why might this be happening for us? What might we be able to do with that? And so a beautiful example of how that data then led to conversations and actions for you, and to me that's always the best use of data.
[Rose Durey]
Yeah, absolutely.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Thank you so much for sharing, Rose. Again, you've got your cameras on, round applause, snaps, whatever works for you there. Some love for Rose in the chat I can see happening there as well. Again, we will share the page, the tool when we send out all the resources from today, but you could take that simple sentence stem and start using it yourself maybe even after this. What have you accomplished today? What impact did it have?
So we're going to move you into some breakout rooms so that we can get through the next six presentations. As Katheryn mentioned, we're going to randomly assign you to rooms so you won't need to do anything. Evie behind the scenes right now is getting all of that ready so it will move you there. In terms of what's going to happen in the rooms when you get there. If I just share up a slide, we'll pop where we are going here. In room one we've got two different presentations for Meli. We've got the women's work and the men's work happening there along with Kids First, and in room two we've got Masp, Junction and Wire are going to be talking there. Now coaches are going to be leading the conversations in these rooms, so you can get to hear somebody other than me chatting.
And so we're going to be in the rooms until about quarter past the hour and then we'll come back here just to do a bit of debriefing together as to what we learned and saw and loved and just share some next steps in terms of when everything is being sent out for you. Now do not panic if you get in one room and you're like, "I wanted to see the presentations in the other room." We are recording both rooms. Again when we send out the files from today, we will include the recordings of both rooms, so you'll be able to go back and not miss a minute of it.
Evie, on that note, have we got the rooms ready mate?
[Evie]
We are ready to go Chelle.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Fantastic. Kirsten and Linda all ready to lead the way for us in our rooms. Fantastic. Let's open the rooms, Evie, and send people off so they can hear some more of these beautiful showcase stories.
Evie, just a reminder, you read my mind. Welcome back Susanna and Shelly. Everybody is on their way back here. The rooms are just counting down with 20 more seconds as they finish their beautiful showcase presentations, and we will get underway and wrap everything up here, let everybody know how to access the recordings and the materials and all of the goodies from today. Welcome back as you start zooming back into the main room. All the breakout rooms are just closing right now, so we'll just give it a moment while everybody reappears here in the main room for us.
Hopefully, you saw some amazing examples of additional health, safety and wellbeing tools that you'll be able to steal with pride and experiment with in your own workplaces. Linda, can I ask you maybe just for those that weren't in your room to give us a little quick debrief and recap of things they might want to go back to the recording to or keep their eyes out for coming in terms of resources?
[Linda Rowley]
Yeah, so the presentations we saw were just amazing. We saw Meli's presentation on Bounce, which is the language and imagery cards that they created and we heard how that had helped to provide deepen relationships within the team as well as help to identify and express emotions both within themselves and each other, and also just the adaptability of the tool, which could also be used with service users as well. We also heard about the appreciation wall from the Meli men's team and some different elements that they could focus on, whether it be pets or things you like doing outside of work, which again promoted a sense of positivity and generativity within the team as well as that relationship building. We also heard from Kids First who have developed a very interactive database of their staff with photos, strengths, interests and expertise, which is just all wonderful.
[Michelle McQuaid]
I love that strengths focus. Nothing like a good appreciation world to make that visual and in front of us, and can't wait to have a look at the Bounce cards, so thank you so much for sharing. Most importantly, thank you for the amazing coaching and support I know that you've been providing for many of our pilot sites. I know many of them are keen that the coaching continues for a while longer, which I think we've got a little bit more to go. If you were in Linda's room and you want to share any of your own insights or ahas or appreciation for the presentations that you saw, can I ask you just to put that in chat now? A little bit of healthy FOMO, fear of missing out here so that people can go back and look at the recording that weren't in that room and check out the resources won't do us any harm I think today. How about Kirsten, are you happy to also give us a little bit of insight into what you found in your room?
[Kirsten McKenna]
Yeah, definitely the time flew by so quickly. I'm actually glad we got those extra few moments, Linda, I'm glad you brought that up. First of all, we got to hear from Helena from Wire who introduced us to their adapted learning loop, which was amazing because they took advantage of utilising one of their current frameworks on conversations that they have, which really meshed well with the learning loop in terms of listening, validating, exploring and empowering people. Then we got to hear from Renee from Mass in the orange door, and Renee introduced us to an R&R Bingo card. They found that health was one of their primary areas within the PERMAH model that they needed to focus more on and particularly doses of rest and recovery. Little opportunities that everyone could be encouraged to do, leaders could model them, but that they could also score bingo on these bingo cards and then if they did, they got to have a cup of coffee with one of the leaders.
And then next was Paige from Junction Support Services, and Paige introduced us to a wellbeing calendar, which was filled with lots of little activities each day for what people could do for their wellbeing because again, they also found health as an area that they wanted to focus on. In particular taking those breaks, having movement in their day because a lot of them were desk bound. How could they take five minutes within their day and move and staying hydrated? And what they found overall as a result of putting that together was they weren't necessarily going to have to do each activity every day. Wednesdays was Wednesday walkies, but it was good to use as a prompt, as a reminder to have there of what worked for them and that they needed to look after themselves in order to be the best version of themselves for their clients and for their colleagues.
[Michelle McQuaid]
I love that. I love the Wednesday Walkies. That's now how I'm going to be thinking about my Wednesdays and the idea of that visual prompt of the wellbeing calendar to just stay present and keep reminding us of the commitment that we want to make towards health, safety and wellbeing. The R&R Bingo, I can't wait to play, and the adapting that learning loop. Again, we saw that a bit with the beautiful work with Kelly and the Winda-Mara team around the act, assess, adjust, and how do we keep moving through so that we continue to build the health, safety and wellbeing skills we need individually and collectively. Thank you so much, and Kirsten, I know Kelly gad you a huge shout-out before for the impact of all the beautiful coaching and support you've been providing to their team, but I know that is true also in the other pilot sites. Thank you so much for the work that you've been doing and the impact that it's been having.
[Kirsten McKenna]
Absolute privilege.
[Michelle McQuaid]
Yay. Again, in the chat, if you were in Kirsten's room, you want to share any extra appreciation, insights, questions, call-outs there, please do so. As you're doing it, again, I just want to bring up the amazing organisations that we've heard from today. Each of these as you know, busy, time poor in a context that is not easy to navigate as workplace and as leaders, but in choosing to say, yep, we'll put up our hand for some extra support around the health, safety and wellbeing of our teams and for ourselves as well as leaders and how we're going to do that and to make that space to stick with it over nine months. That's not a small thing, and then to co-create these tools and pay them forward so that hopefully more of us can benefit from them as well is such a huge act.
Not just a generosity but also courage, so please join me in a big round of applause, finger snaps, appreciation in the chat, whatever works for you, and thank you so much for everybody that presented and shared today. We are so very grateful for your courage and your generosity. On that note, we are coming to the end of the showcase. As promised, we will send out the recordings from today. We are just gathering all of the tools and putting them together for you and we will send those out also in the coming slash days, weeks. We are also pulling together all of the different tools that came out from the leadership series and putting those together for you. In registering for today, you will continue to get those emails, keep your eyes out for them as those different resources become available.
Evie, perhaps again, we can put that website link in the chat for people as to where they can already find the leadership recordings and the health safety and wellbeing guide. You can find information there about the PERMAH Wellbeing Survey tool. If you want to be able, like Rose was mentioning, to measure some of those wellbeing factors in your team it is a free tool that is available in the sector for your use and of course also the safe and equal assessment tool around any psychosocial hazards. Lots to come away with today to play with, and again, please feel like you're able to reach out to any of us if you've got questions or are looking for a little additional support.
As always, we would love your feedback, so Evie, can we put into the chat the link for the feedback survey for today? If you can gift us a minute or two of your time as we wrap up here just to complete the survey, it helps us all learn how to make sure these opportunities are as valuable and respectful of your time as possible and that we are all providing for you what you need to make caring for health, safety and wellbeing a little bit easier, hopefully a lot more effective, maybe even a bit more enjoyable as well.
I would echo the many thanks that Katheryn extended to the teams that have made today possible, who have made the pilot programmes possible. As promised, we are doing some further independent evaluation on the impact this has all had. Again, those pieces of information will be shared as they are available, so on that note, we're going to wish you a healthy, safe, and well rest of your day. Again, if you can fill out that survey link for feedback would be great. More videos and tools coming your way. Thank you so much for making the time to learn more about caring for the health, safety and wellbeing of yourself and your teams. Until next time, take care. Thanks everyone. Bye. Well done team.
End of transcript.
Updated