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Jo Maloney

Supporting Wellbeing in Early Childhood Education: Navigating Psychosocial Hazards and Cultivating Positive Workplace Culture


Wellbeing can be a polarising subject for some in an often over-worked, poorly supported, and inadequately paid educators and support staff in Early Childhood (EC) education. Some people have an immediate eye rolling response when the word wellbeing is used in a workplace context, for others it feels like something else to add to the ‘to do’ list, and others are taking the steps they can to support their own wellbeing and considering how they can do the same for their workplace teams. Yet, wherever you sit we all have a regulatory obligation to consider wellbeing in the form of psychosocial safety in the workplace.


When we examine the psychosocial hazards identified in the Code of Practice many items feature strongly in roles within the EC sector. These include job demands requiring high sustained mental, physical, or emotional effort to do the job, role overload, excessive time pressures, and high vigilance. Some educators experience poor support and lack of role clarity with frequent changes and conflicting expectations. A growing number of educators are being exposed to traumatic events through seeing, hearing accounts of traumatic events, and/or supporting victims of these traumatic events. Some educators are exposed to threats of violence, bullying or harassment from families and colleagues and are more increasingly subject to physical and emotional violence from children. A hazard that comes up in many EC services is conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions. Some of these are compounded by barriers such as inexperience and real or perceived barriers such as a power imbalance and lack of supportive leadership.


Supportive, positive leadership can minimise psychosocial hazards and the field of wellbeing science has much to offer in this. Leaders have the potential to improve the quality of the service through a climate of trust, respect, collaboration, compassionate relationships and creating a sense of belonging which can drive change in education settings (OECD, 2021). Leadership is not limited to those in formal leadership positions in EC and is a dynamic process that can be considered to be a shared responsibility.


Ideally organisations are taking the lead in managing psychosocial risks, but we all have a responsibility to identify, assesses, control and review control measures. When considering that leadership is not limited to those in formal leadership positions the responsibility for managing psychosocial hazards and educator wellbeing lies with us all, including:

  • the individual educator

  • colleagues to support each other

  • the early childhood service

  • the early childhood sector.


Having higher levels of wellbeing allows us to function in the workplace at our best and puts us in a position to be more resilient to the psychosocial hazards experienced in the EC environment. There are many ways to build and lead wellbeing in EC and foster positive workplace leadership and culture.


Leaders and aspiring leaders can apply the work of Kim Cameron, co-founder of the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan in managing psychosocial hazards. Cameron describes positive leadership and how this can support organisations that foster a positive workplace culture. He suggests:


  • creating a positive climate by being compassionate, forgiving others, and conveying and fostering the expression of gratitude.

  • fostering and creating positive relationships through promoting positively deviant qualities, that is being virtuous and demonstrating the best qualities of humanity such as kindness, compassion, hard-working, trustworthy, respectful, and reliable.

  • advocating for positive communication using supportive strategies such as using descriptive statements, being problem-focused, not person-focused, being specific and using active-listening with appropriate response styles.


Creating a positive workplace culture through a positive climate, building positive relationship and positive communication strategies can support in setting up an EC environment where wellbeing thrives, and the psychosocial hazards EC educators are exposed to are eliminated or better able to be identified, assessed and managed.

 

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