I said from the outset that part of the purpose of this blog is to discuss mindfulness. After yesterday, I thought that today I might just do that. I want to reflect on Calm.
https://www.calm.com/ is a website that I signed up to some time ago and from time to time they send me emails. A recent one was really aimed at employers rather than individuals or employees. However the email prompted me to start thinking about where I have worked in the last few years and about their approaches to mental health and well-being. From 2005 I worked in Higher Education in the UK until I took early retirement due to burn out last summer. Today I googled two of the universities that I have worked in and looked for their staff well-being policies. Interestingly I could find plenty about the well-being of students, which is of course important, but nothing about the staff. I know that the two universities in question would state that they take the well-being of their staff seriously. My question is do they? Calm discuss the fact that staff should be encouraged to leave their desks and to take a lunch break. In reality we were all their sat at our desks answering emails whilst shovelling our food in.
I feel that over the last twenty years the work-place has changed almost unrecognisably and now the workloads that are put upon people are unrealistic and quite frankly unmanageable which is why we are seeing more and more people facing burn out. In the universities that I have worked in they have had a workload allocation model. This takes the number of hours in the working year and divides them up in order to demonstrate what each member of staff can be expected to deliver during the academic year. However much of this is arbitrary. So for example marking a 2000 word essay, 4 to 6 sides of typed A4, would usually have an allocation of 20 minutes. I know many lectures who say that they cannot do this and give the appropriate feedback in less than an hour. This means that people are having to find the extra time in their own time. All of which leads to staff that are not Calm.
Today I have enjoyed Calm. It was a friend’s birthday so five of us were ladies that lunch. We went to Roscoff, the sun shone and we sat outside and enjoyed a lovely long and relaxing lunch. I cannot do it every day, nor necessarily every week however taking time out and having this relaxed time is so important. I cannot make suggestions about what happens in the work place. Though perhaps there needs to be some recognition of the fact that the approach that is currently being taken in the long run will have a negative impact not just on the individuals involved but beyond that to the businesses in which they work and of course more importantly their families. Well-being, Calm, Mindfulness, whatever you choose to call it, needs to be more than a written policy, it needs to be practice that enables people to live a fulfilling life that is not about how much we can cram in to each day.
I hope that you all have a calm and relaxing evening. Until tomorrow.
Tales from the Sheshed France 
Thank you for a really interesting reflection on your own personal experience of a pressured workplace. I feel you are right, in that the workplace has changed enormously for many employees over the last 20 years. I honestly feel that this is due to increased profit based employers, be them universities or Tesco. Employees are there only to build greater revenue and often still strive to do their very best and then a bit more on a human level for those who we work with and for. As an employee we are expendable and as the population expands and education levels generally increase we are ever more expendable. This in turn exploits our human quality to try and please and work harder, so an employer gets even more from our labour and knows that as each individual eventually burns out there is a willing and ever ready supply of replacement humans who will replace us as they step onto the treadmill and follow the same trajectory as the one who has just left. As profit has played an even greater part in an Employers agenda it has been coupled with greater dissatisfaction from employees.who feel undervalued and invisible in their workplace.
In almost every profession people take their event in their fifties, teaching, nursing, law etc as by that time they have amassed enough pension to eek out the remainder of their days in a more fulfilled way. When we were growing up
e new of almost nobody who considered retirement before 65. When you think that those generation didn’t live as long as we do, it would make sense for the opposite to happen and for us to be working into our 70 s.
On another level it has been relatively few generations that women have worked to the same academic level as we do now. The pressures on women are wholy different and there is a definite lag with resources for us in those working environments. Even my own former profession was staffed by historically single women or those who chose to not have a family and continue dedication their life to nursing. Everything is on it’s heat at the moment and we can only take action on an individual level for our wellbeing because if we wait for an employer to notice, we may be waiting a long time.
Toy lunch looked absolutely wonderful and sea air always gives for a good appetite. So pleased you had a lovely time. Have a calm evening and I’ll see you tomorrow. Xxx
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Thank you as always for your positive response. I know it is the same in many work places. Chris worked in social housing as a team leader. When his deputy left they didn’t replace him, they simply passed all his duties to Chris. When he finally broke, they admitted that he had been an, ‘experiment to see whether deputies were necessary’. Just awful.
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My experience: where’s the report it’s late
My reply; I was busy supporting students
My boss; that’s no excuse
My reply; that’s what I’m employed to do
My boss: if that’s your idea you need to leave
My response: went away, thought about it, opted for early retirement
The notion of calm is the same as doing what your inner voice tells you 🙏🏽
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Thank you. It’s hard to understand how so many work places have become so toxic.
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