Professor Stephen Bevan speaking at Wellness in the Workplace ICCSR Nottingham

1. ©The Work Foundation
Stephen Bevan
The Work Foundation
Lancaster University
Is Your Boss Dangerous to Your Health?

2. Danger – Boss at Work!
• Hero or Villain?
• How much influence do bosses have?
• Where do bosses sit in H&WB Strategy &
Practice?
• Bosses & ‘Good Work’
• New NICE Guidance
• Humanity & Empathy
©The Work Foundation

3. Role of the ‘Boss’ in Workplace Health (1)
“Part of it I think is because I know that I’ve worked so
hard and my employer - and one particular line
manager - knows how hard that I have worked. So from
that respect I know that she would always be very
tolerant and that I could more or less ask her for
anything [in terms of adjustments].”
©The Work Foundation

4. Role of the ‘Boss’ in Workplace Health (2)
“It took me a while to tell him I had MS. After they sacked me the
manager told the tribunal that they’d ‘helped’ me by giving me a
desk by a window”
“My line manager is rubbish, so I just go around him now. I don’t
bother with him at all. I just go straight to the HR person…It’s just
him personally. He’s just crap, he’s a rubbish manager and he’s a
control freak as well. I prefer to just go to HR now, this is one of my
strategies to reduce my stress, so I just go straight to HR, because
ultimately they are the ones who will make the recommendations.”
©The Work Foundation

5. ©The Work Foundation
Study for BWC on
work/non-work ‘boundary’
and wellbeing

6. Is this a Health & Wellbeing ‘Strategy’?
©The Work Foundation

7. Company Strategies to Promote Wellbeing
• Being ‘strategic’ is not about having an eye-catching
list of initiatives…..
• It is about:
– Aligning your HWB strategy with your business strategy
– Prioritising prevention & early intervention
– A focus on causes not just symptoms
– Co-producing healthy work with line managers & staff
– Measuring & monitoring what you do
– Including a public health & community dimension to what
you do.
©The Work Foundation

8. Components of ‘Good Work’

9. Examples
©The Work Foundation
Early
Referral
Job Design
Line
Management
Vocational
Rehab
Workplace
Adjustments

10. Resilience – two perspectives
©The Work Foundation
‘both the capacity to be bent without
breaking and the capacity, once bent,
to spring back’
‘something which helps inoculate our
employees against work pressure,
ambiguity, poor management and
bullying’
Or…

11. Challenges
• HWB – cost or investment?
• Line manager health
• Employee engagement & wellbeing vs
‘Vitality Curve’ performance management
• Disclosure, stigma & psychological health
• HWB as ‘benefit’ or ‘intervention’?
• Good Work: Tackling symptoms or causes?
©The Work Foundation
Hypothetical: 2% of your online transactions are security
compromised. What budget ceiling do you allocate to
resolving this?
30% of your employees have at least one chronic health
condition which affects productivity, absence, customer
service and increases risk of errors. What is your budget
here?

12. Marmot Review – Reducing Health Inequalities
• Give every child the best start in life
• Enable all children, young people and adults to maximise
their capabilities and have control over their lives
• Create fair employment and good work for all
• Ensure healthy standard of living for all
• Create and develop healthy and sustainable places and
communities
• Strengthen the role and impact of ill-health prevention
©The Work Foundation

13. A Message From HILDA
• Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in
Australia (HILDA) Survey
• Analysis (Butterworth et al, 2011) of seven waves of
data from 7,155 respondents of working age (44,019
observations) from a national household panel
survey.
• Longitudinal regression models evaluated the
concurrent and prospective association between
employment circumstances (unemployment and
employment in jobs varying in psychosocial job
quality) and mental health, assessed by the MHI-5
Butterworth, P., Leach, L. S., Strazdins, L., Olesen, S. C., Rodgers, B. et al. (2011). The psychosocial quality of work determines whether
employment has benefits for mental health: results from a longitudinal national household panel survey. Occupational & Environmental
Medicine, first published online on March 14, 2011, doi:10.1136/ oem.2010.059030

14. Psychosocial Job Quality (1)
1. My job is more stressful than I ever imagined
7. My job is complex and difficult
8. My job requires learning new skills
9. I use my skills in current job
10. I have freedom to decide how I do work
11. I have a lot of say about what happens
12. I have freedom to decide when I do work
4. I have a secure future in my job
5. Company I work for will be in business in 5yrs
6. I worry about the future of my job
3. I get paid fairly for the things I do in my job
Job
demands &
complexity
Job control
Job
security
Effort-
reward
fairness
Source: Butterworth et al, 2011

15. Psychosocial Job Quality (2)
“As hypothesised, we found that those
respondents who were unemployed had
significantly poorer mental health than those
who were employed. However, the mental
health of those who were unemployed was
comparable or more often superior to those in
jobs of the poorest psychosocial quality.”
Source: Butterworth et al, 2011

16. Draft NICE Guidance (1)
Line managers should adopt a ‘transformational leadership’ style of management.
This includes:
• encouraging creativity, new ideas and exploring new ways of doing things and
opportunities to learn (‘intellectual stimulation’)
• offering support and encouragement to each employee to build a supportive
relationship; acting as a mentor or coach; being open and approachable to
ensure that employees feel free to share ideas; recognising the contribution of
each employee (‘individualised consideration’)
• having a clear vision that they can explain and make relevant to employees at all
levels; ensuring employees share the same motivation to fulfil their goals
(‘inspirational motivation’)
• becoming role models who are trusted and respected by employees. They
should provide a sense of meaning and challenge and build a spirit of teamwork
and commitment (‘idealised influence’).
©The Work Foundation

17. Draft NICE Guidance (2)
In addition to transformational leadership, use the following approaches:
• consult regularly on daily procedures and problems; promote employee
engagement and communication; recognise and praise good performance; work
with employees to produce and agree employees’ personal development plans
• be proactive in identifying and addressing issues and concerns early, and take
preventative action at the earliest opportunity.
• show empathy and have an understanding of both internal and external causes of
stress, such as excessive workload, financial worries, work–home conflict or
family issues. Signpost employees to further support outside the workplace.
• avoid negative behaviour such as detachment from colleagues and ignoring
employees’ suggestions. Ensure they monitor and manage their employees as a
group (‘group dynamics’) and are always welcoming and accessible. Ensure they
always consult employees before making decisions that will have an impact on
them and try, where possible, to consider their suggestions.
©The Work Foundation

18. Dangerous or Enabling?
• Line managers are the ‘squeezed middle’ in
many organisations
• Can make life very difficult if they manage
these tensions badly & get no support (or
permission)
• Policy & training will help, but humanity &
empathy are crucial too
• “Random acts of kindness are allowed”
©The Work Foundation

19. www.theworkfoundation.com
sbevan@theworkfoundation.com
@StephenBevan