Teacher Wellbeing Toolkit: Helping Your School Tackle Staff Stress

An increasing amount of poor wellbeing and stress experienced by school staff and teachers and is having a knock-on effect to pupils across the UK.

Many schools report that teachers and staff struggling to cope with the constant pressures of teaching and supporting the growing mental health and behaviour needs of pupils.

This is demonstrated by these findings, part of the 2022 Teacher Wellbeing Index shows that

• 59% of staff have considered leaving the sector in the past academic year due to pressures on their mental health and wellbeing (67% senior leaders, 59% school teachers)
• 55% of staff have actively sought to change or leave their current jobs (58% senior leaders, 53% school teachers)
• 68% of staff cited the volume of workload as the main reason for thinking about leaving their jobs (83% senior leaders, 66% school teachers)
  

An unstable and overworked workforce can't meet the demands of their role, which negatively affects academic and school performance. This, in turn, leads to more stress for the workforce.

What schools need is a practical approach that will help prevent these issues from developing in the first place and to support staff and teachers to develop personal strategies for wellbeing.

How schools are tackling stress in teaching

Often, schools lack the resources and time to meet the increasing demands placed on them by a stressed workforce. As a result, many schools feel like they are always responding to urgent needs related to staff and struggling to stay ahead.

Dealing with teacher stress can be a daunting task, especially if you have a large workforce in your school or college. As a result, school leaders, HR managers, and mental health leads may feel stuck and overwhelmed. They must look for solutions to address the issue of stress and poor wellbeing among teachers.

Solutions or strategies you may try as a school to tackle teacher stress

• a wellbeing inset
• mental health day activities
• reducing conflict at work
• team building activities
• staff wellbeing survey or questionnaire
• training your school senior mental health lead to support teacher as well as pupil wellbeing
• making a lovely staff room notice board with signposting posters and wellbeing affirmations
• treats or positive feedback in pigeonholes
• reminders to look after psychical health - drink water, make time for lunch, make sure you go to the toilet and find time to exercise!
  

BUT are these making any significant difference to the wellbeing needs of your staff, or do they feel more like window dressing?

Staff may feel like wellbeing or stress reduction strategies are not effective if they are not involved or invested in their own wellness. Additionally, the school system itself may be a source of stress. To make a real impact, it is important to lead a more comprehensive and long-term approach to teacher wellbeing.

What schools need is a practical approach that will help prevent these issues from developing in the first place and to support staff and teachers to develop personal strategies for wellbeing.

To make these changes you need to know how, with training, support and practical tools and resources.

Time and limited budgets can make it difficult for schools to fully address the root causes of stress. It's possible that you believe a significant CPD budget is necessary to collaborate with a wellbeing consultant or hire an expensive provider for a staff wellbeing INSET day in order to alleviate stress. However, these approaches are often one-and-done and don't have the lasting sustainable change required that will make a difference to the teachers and staff in your school.

How can schools prevent wellbeing issues for teachers and staff?

Schools can develop a culture that prevents stress from developing in the first place AND provides ongoing professional development that supports staff to develop individual resources for wellbeing.

Our Staff Wellbeing Toolkit helps you feel confident to plan, lead and develop your own sustainable approach to staff wellbeing. Supporting you to

• help staff effectively manage the demands of teaching
• improve staff wellbeing, comradery and morale now and sustainably so they don't keep leaving
• support teachers to be able to cope with change and be resilient
• help staff successfully navigate the peaks of workload and demands at key points of the academic year

But, rather than working with organisations like us, that come in and provide this service for you without giving you any ownership or ongoing support. Why not learn how to do it yourself!

Introducing the Teacher Wellbeing Toolkit

The Staff Wellbeing Toolkit provides resources that help reduce the impact of stress on teachers and provides you with a range of practical positive psychology based wellbeing strategies you can share with staff.

The Staff Wellbeing Toolkit is a train-the-trainer programme designed for a school leader, school mental health lead or HR manager to access for 12 months. It blends practical on-demand learning modules with simple but practical tools and resources and activities that you can use to review and identify areas contributing to staff stress, plan and develop your own staff wellbeing programme or training day.

Using a train-the-trainer approach this flexible staff wellbeing programme provides training and support to help you develop a sustainable approach to staff or teacher wellbeing. The staff wellbeing toolkit is based on research and evidence from the fields of occupational psychology and positive psychology, which are focused on improving staff and teacher wellbeing.

How does the teacher toolkit improve wellbeing?

The online learning programme draws on a range of positive psychology, organisational psychology and coaching approaches proven to develop wellbeing through techniques that can be shared with colleagues as part of wellbeing training days, programmes and interventions or as part of strategic approaches to stress reduction and the development of a culture of staff wellbeing.

Who is the Teacher Wellbeing Toolkit for?

The toolkit is not aimed at the individual teachers to improve their own wellbieng, it is a train-the-trainer programme that increases school capacity to develop staff wellbeing.

The teacher wellbeing toolkit is aimed at individual staff members (usually in a leadership role) who are able to influence strategic work around supporting staff or teachers mental health and wellbeing. This may be your school senior mental health lead, staff development manager or HR manager.

Your membership offers a wide variety of CPD opportunities and resources that can be shared with your colleagues and staff to reduce stress and enhance the overall mental health and wellbeing of your teachers and school staff.

What do you get in the teacher wellbeing toolkit programme?

Our Staff Wellbeing Toolkit programme for school leaders, Senior Mental Health Leads of HR managers is a digital train-the-trainer toolkit. When you join one member of your team gains 12 months of access to our complete programme wellbeing resource toolkit

• Online modular training course with 9 modules that help you understand how to reduce stress AND improve wellbeing
• Over 20 downloadable resources, tools and activities
• Tools for reviewing, auditing and planning your staff wellbeing strategy
• Support to help you lead a team of staff 'wellbeing champions' who can help you embed your approach to staff wellbeing
• Staff wellbeing coaching activities and resources
• Curated recommended resources and activities, websites and information
• Online coaching, support and feedback through our coaching log
• Hotline sessions for help and trouble-shooting
• Examples and best practice from other schools
• Updates, live workshops and top-up CPD opportunities
  

Plus, our online support will ensure you have everything you need to plan, deliver and build an effective approach to staff wellbeing. Within the Staff Wellbeing Toolkit online programme, you’ll find everything you need to improve staff wellbeing and reduce stress in your school.

Check out this video to see a behind-the-scenes look at what the programme looks like.

Who can access the Teacher Wellbeing Toolkit Programme

The programme licence provided one year access for one named member of staff per school or setting. If more than one person is required to access the programme beyond the named individual, additional member access can be provided at a discounted rate per additional member.

If you need to change the person who has access during that year, you are able to swap who is the member accessing the programme. To do this, get in touch with us via email, with the name and email of the person you would like to be the new member for your school and we can swap them over for you.

Why choose us?

We are experts in providing resources and programmes that teach and embed strategies that improve staff wellbeing and protect against the onset of work-related stress and mental health problems.

This programme has been developed from my extensive knowledge of teaching workplace wellbeing at masters level as a MSc module leader and my know how and experience of working with schools, school leaders and mental health leads.

We have spent the last 12 years working with schools to use evidence-based strategies that improve mental health and prevent these problems getting worse in schools and settings.

Over 300 schools in 10 different countries are currently working with us to develop school wellbeing.

And, we would like you to join us too to support your teachers and staff to reduce stress and improve wellbeing

We know you may feel like a time-consuming task you don't have the capacity for, but by joining our Staff Wellbeing Toolkit a bit of time invested up-front will increase your school's capacity and support so many teachers and staff now and in future.

• The programme provides online learning modules (5-hours) that you can work through bit by bit, with downloadable activities and tools you can start using right away.
• You get 12 months of access so you can build your staff wellbeing knowledge and skills gradually and adapt your plans to meet your school needs.
• The programme has been designed to provide step-by-step bitesize chunks with videos and reflective tasks, coaching questions and review tools to use with colleagues.
• With this programme, you can quickly gain the ability to help alleviate many low-level wellbeing issues while working on longer term strategic plans to reduce staff stress.

Ready to join now?

When you start working through the programme you will feel more able to increase capacity to support staff mental health and reduce the impact of many low-level wellbeing-related issues.

Joining the programme enables you to TAKE ACTION that quickly starts making a difference in your school or setting to only directly to the staff you work with but also to the pupils they support.

Do you want to move forward with and evidence-based intervention that will reduce demands associated with staff stress and poor wellbeing?   Join the Staff Wellbeing Toolkit here.