Highways Agency Well-Being at Work Case Study
As a three year programme to tackle stress within the Highways Agency concludes, this case study looks at the successful programme, designed to help kick-start stress awareness in the Agency.
Making a three-year commitment
The Highways Agency made the brave decision to implement a series of voluntary personal well-being/stress management orientation sessions and practical workshops across all their sites.
This simply huge programme was to be offered to all 3,500 staff over a period of three years, starting in 2005 and concluding in May 2008, and would run alongside a range of other activities making up a package of staff support.
The Highways Agency tendered for a provider who would be able to deliver a two-pronged workshop approach across multiple sites. The aim was to provide staff with a strong awareness of what stress is, and to build their awareness of actions they could take to prevent and manage stress. These workshops would be accompanied by a medical screening carried out on a separate date by a registered nurse
Building coping strategies
Business Psychologist Judy Bennet of Criterion Partnership was approached to design sessions and workshops that would enable individuals to explore their current situations and learn techniques that can be put into place immediately to reduce levels of perceived stress. Judy ensured that these included a range of coping strategies:
• Preventative coping strategies (which avoid experiencing a potential stressor)
• Combative coping strategies (which aim to alleviate stressors already being experienced)
The programme was designed to include two stages. Firstly, a large group orientation session was held to share current thinking about stress and its causes. Participants were then able to attend a smaller, practical workshop where they could explore relevant coping strategies. At the end of the programme, attendees left with some concrete actions for addressing their own stress issues.
Large Group Orientation Session
The orientation session was a half-day event facilitated by one of Criterion’s Business Psychologists. The aim of this was to help attendees understand the nature of stress and consider their own issues and individual responses. Areas covered in the sessions included:
• Definitions of well-being, work place stress & stressors
• Understanding the stress response
• Workplace stress and individual responsibility
• Using psychology to improve well-being
Small Practical Workshops
The practical workshops were devoted to providing delegates with opportunities to sample different ways of managing their stressors: These were:
• Individual work-style drivers
• Relaxation, physical stretching and visualisation strategies for controlling stress and improving well-being
Feedback
Feedback was gained from delegates for both the Orientation Sessions and Practical Workshops. An analysis of this feedback from programmes run at 6 different Highways Agency Sites showed a very positive response from delegates.
‘A very useful course which has helped me to identify where my stress is coming from’
’Excellent short course, thoughtfully presented with lots of practical ideas’
’This was a very enjoyable and eye opening course. The best we have had. Will use in the work place’
’The trainer was very good at putting people at ease right from the start. A well presented, positive and ‘quiet’ course. I enjoyed it very much’
‘Good course, allows attendees to focus on possible solutions/changes in lifestyle/behaviours’
’Found the course very interesting and relevant to my personal and professional life – the learning will be used.’
When asked what the most useful thing they had learnt was, responses could be divided into 4 main categories:
• Driver types/Individual differences (84 comments)
• Stress management techniques generally (36 comments)
• Relaxation techniques (115 comments)
• Causes and Indicators of stress (13 comments)
The workshops gave Criterion an opportunity to provide the Agency with summary reports for each site. This highlighted the stressors uncovered by employees during the session, so that action could be taken to try and reduce or eliminate these where possible.
Taking to the road
Following the successful roll-out of the well-being at work sessions to all Highways Agency office-based sites, it was then decided that these should be adapted for the Traffic Officer Service (TOs). Not only are the stressors of their working environment very different to the rest of the agency, but traffic officers operate in shifts over a 24/7 period making the delivery of the sessions more complicated.
To decide how the workshops could be delivered, Judy ran two pilot sessions with two groups of Traffic Officer Managers. A workshop was run first for the Operations Managers (OMs) of each region to gauge their feedback. A half-day stress module was then introduced to the five day Manager Development Programme in the south region. Following evaluation, all Traffic Managers going through the programme received the module as part of this training.
An alternative approach
The final strand in the programme was to develop an alternative approach for the Traffic Officers themselves. Given the logistical difficulties of bringing groups of TOs together, an alternative approach needed to be developed.
New materials have now been developed, especially for the Traffic Officers, which has been created in a CD format, accompanied by a Workbook for TOs to explore the same material, but in a format more suited to their own work patterns.
