[Speaker 1]
Good morning.
[Kirsten]
Morning. Can I get a hands up? Can people hear me? Thumbs up, everyone can hear me? No, you can't hear me? Oh, you can. Paige? Yes. Okay, Elena? Okay, okay.
[Elena]
Yeah I can now.
[Kirsten]
Excellent. Well, welcome everyone. I think everyone's been popped into this room. Everyone has spawned, as my son would say. I am Kirsten. I am one of the wellbeing coaches who has had the absolute privilege of being involved in this project. So, I'm going to get underway because we do not have a lot of time. I believe, Elena, we are starting off with you. And before I do get started, I will acknowledge the land that I am joining you from. It's the beautiful sunny central coast in New South Wales, the land of the Darkinjung people. And I pay respects to elders past, present and emerging. And I'd also like to welcome any Aboriginal people that are joining us today. So, what I'd love to do is welcome Elena. She is joining us from Wire. And Elena, if you want to give us a little context into your role and your organisation as we get started, that would be fantastic.
[Elena]
Sure, thank you for that. I'm Elena and I'm joining you from the Wiradjuri People in [inaudible 00:01:55]. And what I'm going to do is actually share some slides and then will take you through that process as well.
[Kirsten]
That would be great. Let me pop these open and share.
[Elena]
Can you see.... Can everyone see that?
[Kirsten]
Yes, we can.
[Elena]
Awesome. Thank you. So, just a bit of background about why we've been around for 40 years and we support women, gender diverse and non-binary people across Victoria. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because I believe you're going to get these slides. The main thing-
[Kirsten]
Can everyone still see the slides? No, we can't. Can you share them please?
[Elena]
Again? Okay, sure. I'll try that again.
[Kirsten]
Okay, no worries.
[Elena]
All right. Have you got them now?
[Kirsten]
Yes, we do. Excellent, thank you.
[Elena]
Fantastic. Technology yet again. Okay, cool. So, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail. But we've been around for 40 years, as I said. Roundabout 50% or half of all of our requests for information relate to family violence. So, that's why we are involved I suppose. So, particular our approach to wellbeing and Wire was to be explicit and intentional in what we did. Over the last 12 months, which is the context, which was your question, Kirsten, was about... We've had lots of change. We've got a new strategic plan, a new CEO, a new structure. And picking up on Kelly's comment before, we've got new premises as well. So we had a whole lot of things change, and so lots of chaos.
We also introduced, as part of our wellbeing approach, was to include the reflective supervision and that's obviously been talked about by the last two groups as well. So that's been really important for us. One of the things that we're super happy about, and I'm going to use that language. We accomplished, we had our next PERMAH survey, the second round just a few weeks ago, and we accomplished an improvement across all factors and that's in this [inaudible 00:04:09] of change that we've had. So we regard that as just sensational. The impact of that is that we are very proud of what we've done and it demonstrates that wellbeing is really starting to work at Wire, which is fantastic. So let me take you on through the next slide.
[Kirsten]
I love that. That's amazing, Elena.
[Elena]
Thank you.
[Kirsten]
That you can tick that box of accomplishment. Well done.
[Elena]
Thank you. And it's good to use these other tools. I'm really enjoying this process. So what we've done, is we adapted the learning loop, that was one of the ones available to us, and Linda suggested that that might be useful to us. And we built upon Wire's good practise of our model that we use for interactions. And of course, the learning loop model is act, assess and adjust. And the Wire model, which is that bottom arrow I've got down there is listen, validate, explore and empower. And we do that in all our interactions, both in the phone room, face-to-face, amongst staff, right across the organisation. So, it was a good way to reinforce that knowledge and good use of how we were already working together. So it was a very useful process.
The learning loop was really useful for us because it enabled us to find a way to utilise everybody's experience, give them the opportunity to contribute and to try and manage, in whatever way, the change that was happening. So, we've used it on multiple occasions and it's enabled us to actually go through and look at what are we doing well, what can we change, what are the opportunities and so on. And so, that's where we were able to use it.
And then, picking up on the last bit, the other half of it. We added in a whole lot of different questions that really fit in with our model of what we do. And obviously, you could see the optional extra questions, what have you, they're very much strength-based and trauma informed, which is absolutely what Wire does. Pardon my cough. So, it's really been about building up a tool that is very accessible for people very quick, but also, it can also be in depth if it's a bigger change that we're working through and we continue to work through different changes.
So finally, a couple of thank yous to Linda. Great job. The webinar series has been fantastic and lots of people have been going and watching them and continue to watch them. And I've got a book of notes that we continue to use. Obviously, thank you very much to Family Safety for enabling us to have this and the staff have been wonderful during all of this chaos that we have been able to contribute and come up with some great results and we continue to work very well towards our wellbeing. That was all my presentation. I wanted to keep an nice and quick. Yeah, I'll stop sharing.
[Kirsten]
Thank you so much, Elena. That was amazing. I especially love how you aligned it with the Wire model of listen, validate, explore, empower. That's an excellent approach to any type of communication. I wish every organisation would take advantage of it. And for any comments, please pop them into the chat. And also, if you have any questions, please pop those into the chat as well. I think that was a great example of your ability to bring a whole bunch of ideas together, because that that's been a challenge for a lot of organisations, is you involve everyone and that means you have a lot of data to work through. What was your biggest challenge, Elena, that you came across as you were going through the last 12 months?
[Elena]
Look, I would say time. Because we had all of the different changes, it was a matter of trying to consciously pay attention to our wellbeing as we were going. Because you get so many big changes, so many small changes, from, "Where does this box go?", through to, "How do I deal with this particular person because they're feeling stressed or because the tech's not working for them or their manager has disappeared and they need to find somebody else to report to about a particular thing?" or something like that. So, this has been a really good anchor to keep thinking, "Okay, looking at the wellbeing, what's going to help all of us to look after our own self-care, but also each other as well." Yeah, that was the biggest challenge for us.
[Kirsten]
Yeah. But I love how you spun it into a positive. That's awesome. That's what we like to see. Linda's done a good job in coaching [inaudible 00:09:14]
[Elena]
She certainly has, yeah.
[Kirsten]
Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing. What I'd like to do is jump on to our next presenter. And that is going to be Renee. Let me just see if I can pin you here. Replace pin. I will introduce everyone to Renee Axon. She is a team leader from the Orange Door and works within Mali Accommodation Services as well. Renee, can you share your screen?
[Renee]
Sure can.
[Kirsten]
Perfect. Thank you. Okay, great. Looks fabulous. We can all see it. Perfect. Take it away.
[Renee]
Perfect. Okay. So, I work, as Kirsten said, at MASP up in [inaudible 00:10:17], and we have a team of about 16 people who participated in this programme. We sit across many different sites, so we have three different locations. So being a team leader over all of that stuff is quite challenging, that has brought some hard stuff for us. One of the things that we wanted to do, was allow people to have some input into what they felt that their self-care needs were. So what we did is, we came up with a bingo card. This is essentially a card that people can spend a little bit of time to, like five minutes at a time to get up, move away from their desks, and actually get some self-care started and occurring. This has worked really well for our team. We also added an incentive to it. We decided that if you got a bingo, we'd treat for a cup of coffee. So that was something nice that the whole team could get involved with and get through.
Some of the things that we found along the way was that we'd already been doing a lot of self-care. We already had things like our Power Hour built in. We had models of care for our agency that were being implemented across the thing, but we didn't have anything specific for people who were sitting in the Orange Door who could actually just get away from their desk. So, one of the things that we really struggled with was the fact that we have so many time pressures and that we are forced to remain desk bound, we wanted to focus on the health aspect of the PERMAH model. So we really wanted to get people up and moving away from their desks and that they weren't actually just sitting there constantly and just bogged down in work.
We took a lot of the time in our Power Hours to actually get the voices of everyone. So we had stuff over, like we had Kirsten come in and actually join us to help work out what that was going to look like and what people were actually wanting. Because as much as leaders model and guide people around this stuff, we actually wanted the team to take some initiative and have some part in this as well, because we can't always be around for everybody, but we can actually be there to do those little five minute check-ins every now and then.
What did we learn? Well, we learned that the whole team needed to take more time out and needed to move away from their desks. They also needed to have more of that... Got a blank, sorry. That we've also found that leaders needed to drive the model of this self-care. So as leaders ourselves, we focused a lot more on ensuring that our self-care was being taken into account and we were then leading and feeding that out to the rest of the guys. So, finding different things that would fit in with the bingo cards that would help to encourage others to then keep going and taking that on.
After all of that, we found that this is going to roll out quite well to the rest of the agency, because then it's something little and small that can contribute into the daily lives of everybody. I think this has been a great programme for all of us to participate in. One of the biggest things that I've taken out of it is that, and I found this quote that is actually quite great, it's, "Self-care is not a waste of time; Self-care makes your use of time more sustainable." We've found that people are a whole lot more productive in the time that they are sitting down and doing their work, and then they get to get up and have those breaks. So that way it's creating that nice little balance. And that's it. That's what I've got.
[Kirsten]
That's awesome. Thank you so much, Renee. Everyone give Renee a round of applause, that was fantastic. And if you have any comments for Renee, you can pop them into the chat, I can see them coming through as well. And thanks for sharing what your challenges and struggles were throughout that project, because I think they resonate with all of us as we went through the last eight to 12 months, there were a number of challenges that we faced. And I think the number one thing so far, which comes through loud and clear, Renee, is the time factor. So thank you all for your comments. And thank you, Renee, for your team and your organisation for jumping in feet first to that. It is greatly appreciated. I'll get you to stop sharing your screen now.
[Renee]
Perfect.
[Kirsten]
And also, if you have any questions for Renee, please pop them into the chat and if we have time at the very end, we'll have an opportunity to ask questions openly to all of the presenters today. So thank you. Now, I have the privilege of introducing our last presenter, who is Paige Toms. Paige is joining us as the Children's Services Team Manager from Junction Support Services. And I will highlight you, Paige, and see if you are able to share your screen. Welcome, Paige.
[Paige]
Good morning everyone. I will just navigate my screens around 'cause my mouses are going backwards and that's always fun to manage. Great. Can you all see my screen?
[Kirsten]
Yes.
[Paige]
Amazing. My name's Paige. I am the Children's Services Team Manager at Junction Support. Today I'm lucky enough to be speaking on behalf of the Facts leadership team here, who includes Megan Pierce and Colleen Crisp. Colleen has really taken on this process as a bit of a passion project and has really gotten a lot out of it, but she is off on holiday, earning lots of wellbeing points, having a wonderful time. So, I hope I can do it justice for her today.
Before I get started, I would like to take a moment just to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of the Wiradjuri People in which I work on and live on, and recognise that continuing connection to the land and water and community and pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. And welcome any Aboriginal People joining us today.
So, Junction has been really lucky to participate in the health, safety and wellbeing pilot. Junction support services started off really small in 1989 with one person and one programme in Wangaratta. Today, Junction is growing by the minute. We currently have over 36 programmes that offers support across Victoria, with offices in Wadonga, Wangaratta, Shepparton and Gippsland. Our team specifically works with children, adults and families as a whole, to provide counselling, therapeutic supports for people who have experienced homelessness, family violence, or are requiring some early intervention parenting support. It's been a really interesting journey for the leadership team, in learning about where everyone is at in terms of their wellbeing. And I think it's also been a really interesting journey for our staff as a whole.
Oh, sorry. So today I'll just be kind of covering the process that we took as a team to identify and understand so that we're able to develop what wellbeing meant for us and what we would like it to look like moving forward. At the start of the process, it was about identifying as individuals what wellbeing meant. Everyone acknowledged that wellbeing means different things for different people at different times. Recognising that depending what's happening that can change and it's an ever moving beast. The team were asked in an anonymous survey what wellbeing meant for them, and we've got a few examples up here on the screen. So yeah, obviously, people were in a range of different spaces, where some were struggling and some were really able to identify what they needed for that wellbeing to happen for them.
We then decided to unpack what some of the barriers were for us practising wellbeing and were able to come up with our five top barriers. Which was, high work demands and lack of balance, other people, money, time and fatigue or low energy. So, from hearing the other presentations today, I don't think that that's a surprise to anyone in this sector that we work in, that our work demands and client demands are often very high, which makes it very difficult for us to prioritise our own wellbeing whilst we're providing this support to other people.
So next, when we measured wellbeing within our team, over 50% of the team were above the thriving line. However, 45% of the team were below this line. This measurement gave us targets to focus on, with the goal to move those members of the team who were below the thriving line up and increase their wellbeing to be above the line. The area calling out for our attention the most was health within our team and our organisation as a whole. However, we were also able to identify some consistent strengths across relationship and meaning, so we wanted to draw upon these to build on our health, just to utilise our strengths to support the growth in the areas that we needed to work on.
So as a team, we then identified the three areas we wanted to improve on. They were movement, drinking more water and taking breaks. It sounds like three easy things. However, I think we've all recognised today that it is quite challenging to make sure that we're doing those things. Often we start something and you look up and it's three o'clock in the afternoon and you've been stuck on a phone or at your desk all day. We wanted to explore a way that we could support the team to implement these practises in a way that would be easy for them to read, easy for them to access during busy work schedules. And the calendar model has provided that flexible proforma that can be adjusted and easily accessed for our team. The team has found the calendar really useful so far. It's currently displayed throughout our room, as well as they identified that maybe having a soft copy and some reminders in their electronic calendar would be helpful, especially when our team is spread across a few different offices. The team had reported that when they do get caught up, they were often forgetting to look at the calendar, so that's provided that reminder or reminded somebody within the team to generate that conversation.
The team have also identified that even though we've got these great specific day reminders, that the calendar is really providing a variety of different things. So, if Mindful Mondays isn't where you're at on a Monday and maybe a Wednesday Walk might be more suitable, then we can change things up if we need to, which has been really great. So, this has kind of resulted in the calendar being utilised as more of a prompt to engage in wellbeing rather than the specific activity.
A significant part of our process was actually at the end, where we were able to participate in a single session focusing on self-compassion. I'm hearing that that is a consistent theme throughout a lot of organisations. We were able to identify throughout the process that our team were at times being really judgmental and critical of themselves. The single session really allowed us to focus on the importance of being present and practising self-compassion and how it can help us professionally and personally. For some of our team members, it was really confronting, but it provided the opportunity for us to reflect on why all of this is really important, and that if we can do more to care for ourselves, then we're going to be offering our clients and our colleagues the best versions of ourselves. So it's something that we need to prioritise.
So moving forward as a management team, we're hoping to continue to foster positive wellbeing within our team. We're hoping to implement this model as a complete model, and I think I'm going to be stealing a few of your ideas as well, to support staff and strategies that work for them and maintain themselves in this line of work. We'll encourage and remind staff to engage in the timetable by continuing with the calendar reminders and create opportunities each day for them to engage in this wellbeing. We'll also continue to lead activities that we already had in place, like Crazy Fact Wednesdays, icebreakers at the start of sessions, and obviously, regular supervision and team bonding opportunities. We'll continue to add our model of care with new ideas that we come up with, so it continues to be flexible and meeting individual and team needs. Wellbeing is now a standing agenda and our model is a standing agenda item on our monthly team meetings, where we discuss things that have worked for us and things that we might want to add.
Continuing to support opportunities to develop and maintain the relationships within the team is also something that we're hoping to continue or that we will be continuing so that it continues to be embedded in our culture. So just to sum it up, during the process we've learned a lot. There's been some struggles along the way. The online component was at times challenging with lots of staff logging in the same room, it was a little bit tricky. And I think that we're all experiencing a bit of online fatigue after being experiencing it for the last three years. So, that was a little bit tricky at times. And I think we would've liked for it to go a little bit longer. Having some more single sessions would've been amazing. The team really identified that taking the time to focus on those topics really provided that reflection space and an opportunity to learn.
[Kirsten]
Thank so much, Paige. That's amazing. Really great reflections and really fantastic opportunity to see what you came up with. But I love the fact that you came up with a tool, but what it turned out was people just genuinely needing prompts, right? Because when you look at any type of habit formation, the science of habit, I've read several habit books, they start with a prompt, you need a prompt. So, if you want to exercise in the morning, put your running shoes out at the end of your bed.
[Paige]
Exactly.
[Kirsten]
Yeah, so having little prompts around the office and in the calendar genuinely encourages people to do things. And I love the point that you made about, if we can care for ourselves, we're better able to service our clients and our colleagues and show them the best version. I think that's a really great take home. So congratulations, Paige. Well done. Any comments or feedback, please pop it into the chat. I can see them coming through. Great presentation. Love the calendar. All really practical tools. So, thank you everyone. I believe we're getting booted out of this breakout room in 12 seconds. So, thank you to all the presenters, you did an outstanding job. And we appreciate all the work and effort, it's been an absolute privilege to work with all of you
[Speaker 5]
[inaudible 00:30:03] 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. So...
End of transcript.
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