Appreciation is a fundamental human need. Whatever else we derive from our work, nothing rivals the feeling that we truly matter – that we are recognized for contributing a unique value to this beautiful university. Studies in North America also reflect this phenomenon. More than two-thirds of people surveyed by Boston-based Globoforce through their Workforce Mood Tracker said they were motivated by praise, while 78 percent said they would work harder if their contributions were recognized or appreciated.
Recognition and appreciation can come in many forms: a simple thank you, an award, an invite to lunch; and is equally important when coming from a colleague as when coming from a supervisor.
Every Day is Colleague Appreciation Day
Here are some examples for inspiration as highlighted by Dr Robert Nelson in his book, 1501 Ways to Reward Employees
nd “Ride the Wave” annual awards to make it fun and easy for employees to recognize each other’s’ performance to organizational values.What You Can Do Today
Every single person reading this article has a co-worker who does their job in such a way that you are able to do your job more effectively. You know who I’m talking about, the people who always have the answers and are there for you when you need them. So, why not take a minute today to try some of these creative ways to give cheers to your peers?
Make It Happen
One excellent way to build a system of support, recognise achievements, and build a culture of rewarding is to create a Healthy Work place Initiative Program for your department. The Healthy Workplace Initiatives Program (HWIP) is a fund available to UBC departments to support healthy activities in the workplace. The program provides start-up funds to starting health-related initiatives. The application deadline for next round of funding is Nov. 21, 2014. For more information, or to be inspired by previous programs, visit our website.
Thriving Faculty is a regular column highlighting individual or collective UBC Faculty who exemplify integration of health and wellbeing into their classrooms, research, departments and/or communities. Thriving Faculty support others’ health and wellbeing in addition to making a commitment to their own self-care. This column highlights personal and professional stories of Thriving Faculty.
1. Based on your experiences, please describe the relationship between student mental health & wellbeing and learning?
Based on my experience, mental wellness impacts students every bit as much as physical health. Because mental conditions can often go undiagnosed for a long time, the students may experience gradual deterioration in function over weeks, months, or even years. The functional decline can present as decreased focus or concentration, loss of interest, lack of motivation, poor attendance, and social avoidance. Academically, this may result in under performance and lower overall grades.
2. Please describe the role of your own mental health and wellbeing in your teaching, research and service to the community?
My role as a physician at the UBC Student Health Service is to diagnose, to treat, to educate, and/or to facilitate access to appropriate resources as required by the students. The students often present to my clinic because they suspect that they may have mental illnesses but not sure where to go, or they came at the request of their faculties, families or friends due to declining functional or academic performances. It is my responsibility, and the responsibility of my physician colleagues, to properly assess and help all students who presents to our clinic.
3. Are there any resources on campus that you have found to be helpful for promoting wellbeing for either yourself or your students?
UBC is fortunate to have an abundance of resources available to students. The on campus fitness centre and Aquatic Centre are great places to exercise and to unwind. For some individuals, regular exercise is as effective as medication in certain mental conditions. The Wellness Centre is very useful for learning about primary prevention and how to stay healthy. For those who prefer to talk about their mental concerns, the experienced counsellors at UBC Counselling Services offers someone to one sessions and group educational sessions on anxiety, depression, and attention deficit disorder managements.
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Simon Chen, MD, CCFP (EM) completed his Family Medicine & Emergency Medicine Residency Program at University of Saskatchewan in 2005. After residency, he worked in Saskatoon as both family & emergency physician. In 2011, he moved to BC, and started his position as a family physician at UBC Student Health Service.
Thriving Faculty is a regular column highlighting individual or collective UBC Faculty who exemplify integration of health and wellbeing into their classrooms, research, departments and/or communities. Thriving Faculty support others’ health and wellbeing in addition to making a commitment to their own self-care. This column highlights personal and professional stories of Thriving Faculty.
Read an interview with Dr. John Oliffe
Q. What are central challenges you face in your role as Faculty?
The toughest challenge has been protecting my time. Trying to anticipate and avoid the cul-de-sacs while choosing the avenues that will be of greater benefit to all and add to my energy levels. Teaching can add energy, as can analyzing research data and sharing those findings.
Q. Based on your experiences, please describe the relationship between student mental health & wellbeing and learning.
Our study of men’s depression focused on college men, and we were interested to learn that many guys are under enormous pressure to achieve academically amid trying to conceal their depressive symptoms. I think lots of guys buy into the idea of ‘passing’ as being well – and this can take multiple forms including alcohol and drug use, aggressiveness and being hyper-competitive as well as socially isolating for fear of being outed as having depression. Inversely, lots of guys also self-manage depressive symptoms effectively through physical activity and connecting with friends in ways that allow them to really talk about all the issues in their lives.
Our men’s depression website chronicles our work – and provides some insights about how it can be managed – as well as the diversity with which it can be experienced. www.mensdepressionhelpyourself.ubc.ca
Q. Are there any other insights you learned about college men and depression that you can share?
Being well mentally is the pre-requisite for bringing game academically. The flip is that mental illness adds a degree of difficulty to finding and sustaining academic success.
Q. Can you describe the practice of Men’s Sheds? Is there a parallel to Men’s Sheds that can be implemented in the context of Higher Education?
Men’s Sheds originated in Australia – where the government has invested in making sheds available to men who might be experiencing challenges around social isolation, job insecurity and/or illness issues. The sheds provide a workspace where men can come and connect with others as well as learn various skills and contribute to an array of projects. While there is no parallel in higher education, I am hopeful that we could thoughtfully consider bringing something like Men’s Sheds to UBC.
Q. Do you implement any strategies to support student mental health and wellbeing in the classroom/lab?
I think as a nursing faculty we are trained to be attuned to signs suggesting student stress and distress. So, in that regard I think as a collective we are well credentialed to thoughtfully guide student experiencing difficulties toward campus and other services.
Q. Can you highlight some of these signs? Do you implement any strategies/structures in your teaching that promotes mental health?
When grades begin to wane, and absenteeism or presenteeisim emerge – these are usually signs that something outside of my teaching is negatively impacting student success. Keeping things upbeat in class and having humour can be helpful – and asking open-ended questions to check if the student is okay are key strategies.
Q. Please describe the role of your own mental health and wellbeing in your teaching, research and service to the community?
I try to stay calm. My days of working from a platform of discontent (a strategy I used to prompt my tenure track hyperwork practices) ended July 1, 2013. My sense is that I may be relaxing a little more while still getting the job done. I was and am fortunate enough to have a great partner in life, and she has been a terrific person to be around – through thick and thin. The biggest tenure track challenge was being turned back by the senior appointments committee in 2007 (Assistant to Associate). I share that detail only to encourage others going through the tenure track process to never…never…never give up! The good thing about my current work is that I am moving from descriptive to intervention research – and I have great staff and collaborators to help advance the wellbeing of men and their families.
Q. What strategies do you use in your own life, that help you thrive as Faculty?
Wise faculty say: Never go to a meeting that does not have an agenda distributed at least 24 hours in advance.
Thoughtfully re-consider the 40%:40%:20% split as a percentage of your work week, not your entire week!
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John Oliffe is Professor at the School of Nursing, University of British Columbia. His research is focused on gender and health, particularly men’s health. He is especially interested in masculinities and gender relations in the context of various men’s health issues including prostate cancer, depression and suicide, and smoking. For more information on his current projects and publications please visit www.menshealthresearch.ubc.ca.
Thriving Faculty is a regular column highlighting individual or collective Faculty who exemplify integration of health and wellbeing into their classrooms, research, departments and/or communities. Thriving Faculty not only support others health and wellbeing, but also make a commitment to their own self-care. This column highlights both the personal and professional stories of Thriving Faculty with the intention to inspire the integration of wellbeing into life as faculty.
Read an interview with Professor Michael Lee.
Q. Based on your experiences, please describe the relationship between student mental health, and wellbeing and learning?
I like looking at wellness from a bio-psychosocial-spiritual perspective; which is a holistic way of looking at a person. To thrive, one needs to attend to all four aspects of one’s life. It is like a four-legged stool, which means lacking one will lead to imbalance, or even tipping over. Mental wellness is one of the essential factors that leads to thriving, including academic excellence. Likewise, in order to excel in learning, one needs to attend to all four aspects of life, hence mental wellness is essential.
I come across many students who invested their energy and time in certain aspects of their life, may it be attending to academic attainments, relationships, physical activities, etc., and neglected the importance of balance of all aspects. We all know the importance of a balanced diet. Likewise, a balanced life that also attends to mental wellness is important for a healthy living.
Q. What are central challenges you face in your role as Faculty?
Like students, I am often faced with too many things to do with limited time and resources. This is one of the challenges that we all face, like it or not, in this fast-paced world. Knowledge and information are growing exponentially, and we all are bombarded with pressing time lines. It is very easy for us to fall into the trap of racing with the fast pace world. Attending to the bio-psychosocial-spiritual aspects of life is a challenge that I face, especially when I am racing in a fast-paced world, or when I am doing certain things that I am very passionate about.
Q. What strategies do you use to support student mental health and wellbeing in the classroom/lab?
The best way to promote student mental health is to start from creating a healthy learning environment. Competition among students is contagious. Though competitions foster quality improvement, too much competitions result in excessive stress that is not helpful in creating a healthy learning environment. To me, learning is not all about how many “A”s you got, it is about how you can be a learning agent for the rest of your life, so that you can be a creative problem-solver. Hence, I always tell my students not to focus too much on how you score in your exam or in your assignment, but be reflective, and know how you can use what you learned to build new knowledge. To be a clever consumer, we look for merchandise that meets our needs. Likewise, to be a clever knowledge consumer, we make it clear that we are going after knowledge and intellect, not on having higher marks then the one sitting next to us.
I also tell my students to look at the classroom as an oasis of resources. In a class of 50 students, there are 49 other bright brains that can help you to learn the knowledge better and to understand the concept clearer. See your prof as the one whom you can identify as a mentor, not the one who is mean and holding back each and every mark in your exam. Look around to identify resources, not barriers.
Q. What strategies do you use in your own life, that help you thrive as Faculty?
To be mindful of your goals is like having a GPS that will help navigate and not be distracted by what is happening around you.
Know your capacity and maximize your strengths. You don’t have to do everything, but do things that you are good at. Build capacity. There are many resources around us that we are not aware of. Think about our environment as full of resources. Leverage these resources in order to help us to get to where we need to get to.
Q. Are they any specific initiatives and/or research you are involved in that promote health, mental health and wellbeing?
I worked with a group of students to bring mental health awareness on campus. The Mental Health Awareness Club is a student-led initiative, with the mandate to bring mental health awareness on campus; and to eliminate stigma on mental illness with the hope to create a healthier campus. Students from various disciplines, different faculties and various backgrounds work together to promote campus mental health awareness through various events and programs. One project that we started last year is a campus-wide mental health needs assessment. Using participatory action research approach, we invited students to tell us about their perspectives on stresses on campus, and identify ways to address these stresses. In addition to knowing more about students’ perspective about stress, this project helped participants to know more about stress issues on campus and supported them to develop strategies to build resilience against stresses. This year, the Club is rolling out another needs assessment to look at mental health stigma, and how stigma impacts on student life. Through these participatory research activities, we hope we can draw campus attention to mental health and mental illness issues and to enable our community to develop strategies to address these concerns. Our ultimate goal is to help the community to built capacity in creating a healthy learning environment for our future generations.
Q. In your role as faculty, please describe your experience balancing work-life commitments? Is there a metaphor that depicts this relationship?
I mentioned a four- legged stool. It is important for me to attend to all four aspects of my life, including not only my physical and psychological wellbeing; but also attend to my social and spiritual needs.
One of my mottos is “know your strengths, build your capacities.”
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Michael Lee is the Senior Instructor with the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, as well as the Curriculum Coordinator for the Master of Occupational Therapy program. In addition to teaching, learning with his students and promoting mental health on campus, he enjoys his time with the family and having quite time to refresh.
Nominate a Thriving Faculty
Do you know a UBC faculty member who thrives? We’d like to know! Please send your nominations to geoffrey.soloway@ubc.ca, and let us know why this person is a champion of wellbeing both inside and outside of the classroom.