The health and wellbeing of high risk workers

In this edition of the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast, Professor Kevin Daniels speaks with Professor Paula Brough from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. She is the Director of the Research Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing (WOW) and an expert on the topic of occupational stress and coping. Here, she discusses her work on tackling stress and burnout in high risk occupations - those occupations where challenge and even danger are an integral part of the nature of the job. 

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:28:12

Helen Fitzhugh

Welcome to the Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast. This podcast is part of a toolkit of free, evidence informed workplace wellbeing resources provided by the Workplace Wellbeing Research team at the University of East Anglia in the UK. You can find the resources on www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org 

00:00:28:14 - 00:01:03:01

Kevin Daniels

Well hello everybody. I'm Kevin Daniels, I'm a professor at Norwich Business School specializing in workplace wellbeing. I'd like to welcome you to this Evolve Workplace Wellbeing podcast with Professor Paula Brough from the Griffith University in Brisbane, where she's director of the Research Centre for Work, Organization and Wellbeing. She's a fantastic academic, published loads, tons of publications, led loads of projects around workplace health, wellbeing and high risk workers in particular, which is what we're going to be talking about today.

00:01:03:01 - 00:01:08:13

Kevin Daniels

So, so good morning or good evening, Paula. Depending on where you are.

00:01:08:13 - 00:01:09:20

Paula Brough

Hi Kevin, how you going?

00:01:09:22 - 00:01:15:02

Kevin Daniels

Oh, good. Good. I should have said heaps of publications rather than tons of publications, shouldn't I?

00:01:15:02 - 00:01:18:10

Paula Brough

So that's fine. Thank you.

00:01:18:12 - 00:01:28:18

Kevin Daniels

Okay. Great. So could you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do and what got you into thinking about health and wellbeing for high risk workers?

00:01:28:20 - 00:02:02:18

Paula Brough

Yeah, sure. So, I'm a professor of organizational psychology or, occupational psychology, we used to call it in the UK. So I completed all my, my psych training in the UK. Worked for a bit at a, at a uni there. and then I had a huge desire for some warmth and sunshine. So I've spent the last 20 odd years working, in Brisbane at Griffith Uni, in Australia, which has certainly satisfied my desire for sunshine and all of my studies

00:02:02:18 - 00:02:29:07

Paula Brough

Really, right from the word go, were about occupational stress. I was really interested in the concept of stress and coping and appraisal, the sort of theoretical side of things, but also how how, knowledge and understanding could actually try to relieve the huge burden we saw, the huge suffering we saw, in workers, particularly high risk workers.

00:02:29:07 - 00:02:55:11

Paula Brough

So all of my studies focused on police officers, looking at stress in police officers. And quite a few of my projects over the last 20 years have included work with police officers in multiple countries, but also extended that out to prison officers and more recently, we've been doing quite a bit of work around, health care, of course, high stress and teachers as well.

00:02:55:11 - 00:03:14:06

Paula Brough

So trying to really identify what we can do to keep people healthy in the workplace, try and prevent that awful burnout, and try and keep people, you know, happy, as productive as possible when the work demands are often off the scale.

00:03:14:08 - 00:03:29:05

Kevin Daniels

Okay. Great. Thank you. So so you mentioned that burnout. Is that a specific, one of the specific reasons, why you got interested in this particular area, or is it something else that's particularly interesting about high risk workers?

00:03:29:07 - 00:03:55:04

Paula Brough

Yeah. The, the burnout came literally as the sort of concept was developed. But initially, initially, my very first, sort of work in this area was looking at the extra stress experienced, by female police officers. So I was following Jennifer Brown's work then, way back in the 90s. So this was on top of the normal stresses of police work, all that, you know, awful stuff.

00:03:55:04 - 00:04:35:07

Paula Brough

The mad, the bad, the sad that they mostly encounter people and on top of that, there was this extra layer of stress that female police officers were reporting about, you know, being harassed by coworkers as well as public members of the public, and dealing with this whole organizational, disdain for them often, to be frank, in the early days and how on Earth they were supposed to try and advance careers, sustain their, their careers when they had this additional, gender-based stress placed on them.

00:04:35:07 - 00:05:00:18

Paula Brough

So that's been an ongoing interest of mine, but obviously broaden that out. And to be honest, Kevin, burnout came a bit later as this extreme form of stress when we could see that whatever the causes, stress from the workplace, stress from the home environments all combined to produce the severe stress symptoms that are burnout in workers.

00:05:00:18 - 00:05:21:17

Paula Brough

And now, of course, we talk about burnout quite, commonly in a way, which is which is sort of good. But, you know, back in the day, it was quite an extreme form of stress that was relatively rare, and we were more likely to talk about having a breakdown, having, you know, just not been able to cope with work.

00:05:21:19 - 00:05:28:05

Paula Brough

But now, of course, we've identified some of the specific symptoms and pathways to burnout.

00:05:28:07 - 00:05:35:09

Kevin Daniels

It's very difficult to come back from burnout isn't it. yeah. Individuals it's it's a bad place to be.

00:05:35:11 - 00:05:36:01

Paula Brough

yeah.

00:05:36:03 - 00:05:51:10

Kevin Daniels

So we're all about using evidence to improve practice and policy here. So how can people use the evidence in this area around high risk workers and what kind of things can they do, which are evidence based?

00:05:51:12 - 00:06:25:04

Paula Brough

So I'm particularly interested in the preventative side. So what can we advise and help organizations to implement to prevent workers getting to that sort of high stress, burnt out condition? Of course it has to be preventative. So the response base, the reactive type of of stress didn't hasn't really appealed to me, the more clinical side. So how about picking workers up and making them more resilient and sending them back, especially in the early days back into the very similar work environment?

00:06:25:04 - 00:06:55:24

Paula Brough

High stress working for them. And I was always more interested in what can we do from a an organizational perspective or a systems perspective to try and prevent these, causes of stress happening in the first place to these to these workers who often mean, you know, really well, hard working, hard working people who would just for the sake of a rather ill advised or in some cases downright stupid, really system were experiencing, extreme stress.

00:06:55:24 - 00:07:24:02

Paula Brough

So it was all about the evidence. It was all about taking what we were finding back to the police services or the organizations and saying, look, instead of x, y, z, why don't you actually take this policy out or make this a little bit easier for staff, or just recognize that, you know, staff need a break or whatever it is after they've worked a 14 hour shift, they actually need a good break to recover and get back to the work more productively.

00:07:24:02 - 00:07:54:06

Paula Brough

So it was it was this sort of advice, either at a systems level or putting training programmes into place that I've been focused on. And primarily really it's also been about just raising awareness of stress as not being, you know, to be dismissed as psychobabble, which is certainly what we encountered in the early days in many police services, but it's actually a legitimate issue that can be addressed,

00:07:54:06 - 00:08:23:06

Paula Brough

should be addressed, should be acknowledged and should be, you know, we should all be working towards. And with the with the, impact of wellbeing more broadly now, especially post-Covid organizational wellbeing. You know, we have seen this these sort of discussions become much more palatable. So we, more, much less likely to be dismissed as talking psychobabble.

00:08:23:06 - 00:08:24:11

Paula Brough

I would suggest.

00:08:24:13 - 00:08:49:09

Kevin Daniels

Okay, I'll get a come back onto that in a second and also specific, examples. But 1 of the issues, of course, is that the practitioners often find it difficult to find reliable and trustworthy evidence, partly because the people who produce a lot of the evidence, us academics, put it in places which are difficult to access and difficult to understand.

00:08:49:11 - 00:08:59:13

Kevin Daniels

So can you tell me about how you how you, as an academic researcher, actually try to make the evidence accessible? Oh, yeah. You're working with organizations or otherwise?

00:08:59:18 - 00:09:27:16

Paula Brough

Yeah. Yeah. No, sure. it it is, that you're quite right. It's a perennial issue. Whatever the area trying to make, research findings trickle down into actual practice in organizations. So we've, we've done this, try to do this in a couple of ways. We, we produced, research into into, practice book, about stress in the high risk occupations.

00:09:27:18 - 00:09:57:00

Paula Brough

That was a couple of years ago. It summarizes, stress research we conducted with the police and the prison officers, prison services. And we purposefully, for example, had chapters that would appeal to these organizations and used language that was less academic. So we would talk about, you know, how to provide effective, environments that were conducive to wellbeing.

00:09:57:06 - 00:10:25:00

Paula Brough

We talked about, like the staff appraisals system, the performance appraisal system, how that can be used to evaluate, wellbeing. We talked about the impact of toxic work environments, which everyone loves reading about, you know, bullying and harassment. But actually each chapter has a practical component of what a manager can actually do. If this is an issue for for them, they're experiencing with their teams.

00:10:25:02 - 00:10:47:19

Paula Brough

We talked about reliable measures and how to access them, and then we talked about things which, perhaps, common to us, certain techniques like the Delphi studies, for example, a delphi analysis, but which, most managers have no idea what that means. So we just sort of try to break that down, and make it a lot more palatable.

00:10:47:21 - 00:11:16:08

Paula Brough

So we've done it. We've produced a book, which may or may not be of interest to organizations. That was a few years ago, but I also spent a lot of time either presenting, of course, to industry conferences or presenting to police services directly that, trying to trying to present at all levels, not just up to the execs about, you know, what we're doing, what we find, what the evidence shows.

00:11:16:10 - 00:11:37:09

Paula Brough

and also, you know, listening to what they say in trying to actually work with them. So I'm a huge champion for collaborative research. I like to work with organizations and try to, you know, now it's become very trendy. We talk about co-design a lot. But, you know, back in the day, sort of asking organizations what actually what do you want to find out?

00:11:37:09 - 00:11:55:09

Paula Brough

What's the big issue here for you? You know, are you actually interested in in stress or burnout or, you know, but more specifically what's what's of interest to you? So I'm a big believer in that. So and as you can see, I just talk and talk and talk. So I think I win them across by chatting a lot actually.

00:11:55:11 - 00:12:24:17

Kevin Daniels

But this is great. So you are perfect to interview. Let, let let let the, the participant talk. I was going to bring you back to the, the psychobabble, comment you used. Just to remind listeners, Delphi is a technique where you, you get consensus by asking people the same question, but showing other people their answers to see how their views shift over time until you get consensus.

00:12:24:19 - 00:12:35:22

Kevin Daniels

but yeah, so you mentioned psychobabble, as a particular challenge. Are there any other ones and how do you overcome them - apart from talking? yeah.

00:12:35:24 - 00:13:02:08

Paula Brough

Yeah, yeah. psychobabble was a fun one. there was a lot of talk about, and I'm thinking about, as you know, Kevin, my, my PhD is studies back in the day with the Met Police and going in to talk to them about wellbeing and stress and mental health and of their workers, their officers. It was just something that was not discussed.

00:13:02:10 - 00:13:38:08

Paula Brough

There was a huge stigma about admitting to having mental health issues anyway, let alone in the workplace. I think I'm sure I've written a paper, too, about that, the stigma around mental health. So and it was something that was definitely seen as being a hindrance to career progression. It was, you know, you would not be asked to to act in higher duties if you on your record did anything around mental health, you know, 20 years ago that that was definitely the common, thought by or by officers then.

00:13:38:08 - 00:13:59:07

Paula Brough

So, and I'm not trying to just single, single, single out the Met. I'm sure it was across many, many police services, but that was just where I did most of my work then. So whether it was called psychobabble or the stigma or just a reluctance to even talk about it, you know that that was loud and clear.

00:13:59:07 - 00:14:29:04

Paula Brough

And in fact, it's been great in the last 25 years to see that, that huge flip to it now being acknowledged as a serious problem. And even more than that, it now being as acknowledged as a responsibility for employers to take seriously to safeguard their workers or else, as we've found in the last few years, they can be sued or taken to court or face financial penalties if they don't look after their workers mental health.

00:14:29:04 - 00:14:36:10

Paula Brough

So it's been really interesting to work in this space and see the the a complete 180 degree flip on this issue.

00:14:36:12 - 00:15:01:07

Kevin Daniels

So so you mentioned working in different sectors and of course you worked in different countries. And I recall that you carried out research in China as well, probably New Zealand. Yeah. Yeah. yes. So as well as Australia and the UK. So I mean, are there any systematic differences between sectors or institutional setups in different countries? I mean, I appreciate the, you know, UK and Australia.

00:15:01:07 - 00:15:06:14

Kevin Daniels

are not that different on the grand scheme of things. They are different in in meaningful ways.

00:15:06:16 - 00:15:29:17

Paula Brough

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think I think most of my sort of Western country research, New Zealand, I did what I lived in New Zealand for a couple of years and, and did a huge study on, on all their police, on all the emergency services. And then that was it. They've only got one of each, you know. So then, then I, I’d studied everyone, I was like, well what else am I going to do for my career in New Zealand?

00:15:29:17 - 00:15:53:07

Paula Brough

Bless New Zealand, lovely. But but New Zealand, Australia, the UK, very similar systems, most of Europe, very similar systems in terms of emergency services and their approach to looking after their staff. But yeah, we did we did a project, we collected data in Hong Kong and China and I've done some other work, in Malaysia and Indonesia more recently.

00:15:53:09 - 00:16:27:04

Paula Brough

And the interest there is twofold. First of all, there's a there's definitely a cultural difference where the collective culture of those countries and those workers makes a huge difference. So those workers might, for example, admit to having high job demands, low job control or low job support, which we, of course would identify as a huge predictor of or, sorry, a significant pathway to high stress and burnout.

00:16:27:06 - 00:16:50:23

Paula Brough

But but that there that's the, you know, in those sort of countries we weren't getting those results from the data. And it was because it was seen as, you know, there's less of an individualistic approach. So even if they had adverse working conditions, most workers there was still happy to have a job. And certainly wanted to keep their job.

00:16:50:23 - 00:17:26:05

Paula Brough

And saw any criticism of the supervisors or of the service they worked in, they were seen as being highly disloyal and so were less likely to say, yeah, I've got low job satisfaction or low levels of work engagement or high levels of stress and strain. And then also there was this collective responsibility for their extended family. We often saw as well in Hong Kong and China, where work was just a means to an end to support the more their extended family in-laws living with them.

00:17:26:07 - 00:17:53:09

Paula Brough

and it wasn't the sort of be all and end all that it is more so in individualistic cultures. That makes sense. So so that was the that was one path and then the other path I was interested in when comparing cultures internationally was the theoretical model models we used and write and research and teach - they should work regardless of the culture.

00:17:53:11 - 00:18:15:13

Paula Brough

You know, that's the whole point. They have a theoretical model that's supposed to be universal, but we saw a lot of difference between some of the stress, like the theoretical explanations of stress that we would accept as being pretty mainstream. They just did not work so well in that data from more collectivist countries because of the reasons I stated.

00:18:15:14 - 00:18:40:03

Paula Brough

So for me, that was a secondary interest. What is it about the theoretical models? Well, we can see that doesn't work. But then what do we do? What what is the theoretical model that would work there? Do they have their own types of theoretical models or can we adapt them or how do we best then explain occupational stress and burnout in those sort of countries and help those workers?

00:18:40:03 - 00:18:42:22

Paula Brough

So yeah, we've still grappling with that.

00:18:42:24 - 00:19:04:04

Kevin Daniels

To reflect back a little bit, I'm getting from the conversation here is that there's, in more collectivist culture. There might be a bit more balance, if you like, between work and non-work and talking about work life balance necessarily, in the sense that we would understand it and spending time with your family, that sort of thing. But, you know, a sort of, a wider world view.

00:19:04:06 - 00:19:07:09

Kevin Daniels

Yeah. So I wonder whether we're measuring things in the wrong way.

00:19:07:14 - 00:19:37:20

Paula Brough

Yes, yes. And I don't know if it's necessarily balance, but more acceptance, acceptance of a hardship and, and this, this high, importance placed on loyalty. So loyalty to the organization. Loyalty to your supervisor. Yeah. You know, we we always get great supervisor support without because people don't want to report they have an unsupportive supervisor even. You know, we've we've seen it actually at first hand.

00:19:38:00 - 00:20:17:13

Paula Brough

So it's more about loyalty and acceptance that work life might be difficult, but often it's, it's sometimes it's a question of priorities. So people are aware that we've had a social system, for example, a support system. If people are out of a job, then they and their whole families will face extreme hardship. So, they're more grateful to be in a job and to be earning and more keen to keep that job in many ways which which is a problem in itself because there's issues around, you know, exploitation and a lack of a decent work environment then.

00:20:17:13 - 00:20:28:16

Paula Brough

But but yeah, I think it's more loyalty and the acceptance that they might be okay to, to a greater extent than we would if we put ourselves.

00:20:28:18 - 00:20:45:01

Kevin Daniels

And is there any sense that in more collectivist cultures, as there is actually more support from society? Not in terms of you, you know, mentioned there might be different welfare systems, if you like, but there's more kind of a collective responsibility if you want?

00:20:45:03 - 00:21:12:06

Paula Brough

Yes. But that's there's definitely more support. For example, for most people you can't generalize of course. But from extended family, they all live together. You might have grandparents providing childcare, for example. So suddenly work issues around work life balance for working parents are less relevant because your your parents are there providing the care to your children. They're in your home, they're cooking the meals, they're organizing the household for you.

00:21:12:08 - 00:21:43:16

Paula Brough

So what we would talk about in terms of work life balance is less relevant, so then perhaps the long work hours and the, adverse work conditions may be easier to, put up with to cope with, to manage, because you've got this extended family support system and then more, more generally in this society, groups, they belong to quite often also provide this additional support or relief from workplace stress.

00:21:43:16 - 00:21:48:04

Paula Brough

So there's a there's a distinctness for sure.

00:21:48:06 - 00:22:06:06

Kevin Daniels

So that that would certainly speak to to tailoring what you do. So if you're a multinational that for instance, you can't have or you might be able to is, you know, a an Anglo Australian company have a certain level of provision, though I imagine exposure to UV is going to be more of an issue in Australia than the UK?

00:22:06:12 - 00:22:34:12

Kevin Daniels

So certainly when you got these different, we are finding that, research actually even within the UK where you have a different demographic composition, a different sense, never mind sort of, you know, sort of the institutional cultural overlay that you get moving between different, different countries. yeah. But you have to have this very sensitive, I think, locally sensitive approach.

00:22:34:14 - 00:22:50:16

Kevin Daniels

yeah. Onto things. So, so, so, so moving back on to some of more practical, concrete examples, can you give us a few examples on how has research, your research has been used, to influence organizational changes for the better?

00:22:50:18 - 00:22:56:09

Paula Brough

Yeah, sure. I'd love to give you a long list. I'm not sure I can give you a long list. I can give you a couple of examples.

00:22:56:11 - 00:23:00:12

Kevin Daniels

Plenty of time.

00:23:00:14 - 00:23:21:21

Paula Brough

I mean, I wish I had, you know, we all wish it had a lot more influence than it does. We we feel we're doing, you know, hugely important work and, getting it translated into impact in organizations is often the hardest part of it all. I think I think one area that, I've worked hard on and that has been acknowledged is, is changing the perception.

00:23:21:21 - 00:23:53:19

Paula Brough

And I'm talking about, primarily police stress here, the police officers that operational work was the main cause of stress. And so the main issue to be focused upon for, prevention or managing or coping with stress, we've we've done a lot of work in many countries, and helped police services recognize the issue of organizational stress, the daily hassle sort of stuff.

00:23:53:21 - 00:24:21:11

Paula Brough

that has certainly having things like a disciplinary complaint and internal complaints made against you by your colleagues, or workplace bullying or a toxic leader, a toxic manager has we've demonstrated just as much and in some cases, more impact on workers than operational stress per se. So I'm not trying to downgrade the impact of traumatic stress that many of those workers go through.

00:24:21:13 - 00:24:54:11

Paula Brough

But we have - it helped all these police services to understand the impact of what I'm saying, of, of occupational stress, and helped then change their systems. They have to try and recognize that and help officers deal with that as they go through their training and as they go through their first few years, particularly of their, of their police service, because what we were finding, for example, was that officers would go through training, months and months of training, in the UK

00:24:54:11 - 00:25:14:04

Paula Brough

it was at Hendon, for example. We go out there, we work with these new recruits, all keen, all dying to get out there and be a police officer, make their first arrest. You know they loved it. They could not wait. But then there was this huge turnover before year one. Once they were out on the job, fully trained and we said…

00:25:14:04 - 00:25:34:15

Paula Brough

This makes no sense. Some of these people have waited their whole life to be a police officer. And what we were finding was that it wasn't the operational stress, it was the boredom. So it was the lack of work, or it was the toxic work environment, or it was too much paperwork and red tape. That's always a key one.

00:25:34:17 - 00:26:01:19

Paula Brough

that was driving these enthusiastic, keen officers out of a job. And actually we found very similar results with teachers as well, more recently. So then we were, you know, we tried to put systems in place to say, okay, well, how can we streamline things and give these officers less forms to fill in? And, you know, at the end of every job, not have them tied up for hours completing all these forms and everything.

00:26:01:24 - 00:26:11:20

Paula Brough

But I think that's been a big impact or a significant impact, I'd like to say, and I think that's certainly been acknowledged with the services I've worked in.

00:26:11:22 - 00:26:30:12

Kevin Daniels

Yeah, I'll tell you, you saying that reminds me of work done by Tom Jackson at Loughborough who works very closely with Emma Russell we also had on this podcast. yeah. About doing work with, you know, email systems and police officers and how just getting snarled up in email gets, you know, kind of gets in the way and becomes a frustration and an occupational stressor.

00:26:30:14 - 00:26:51:15

Kevin Daniels

yeah. I suppose this thing, it's it's say, like, firefighters know they have to go into burning buildings. You know, it's kind of a part of the job description. And that's stressful enough. So you don't want to put any more stress, some people might get in to do things that, you know, are not really part of the job, who you know, get into while you're doing the job.

00:26:51:17 - 00:27:19:12

Kevin Daniels

Obviously paperwork's important. We know that we're academics. We love it. but you know, as little as possible, I think. Yes, as well. So, we tend to have, you know, this particular podcast is, listened to mainly by people who do people management kind of work, HR and professional senior leaders. What what would you say should be the kind of take home messages from, from, the work that you've done if you, you know, three key things?

00:27:19:14 - 00:27:38:23

Paula Brough

Three key things, that's so hard Kevin, three key things. Well, I think will be some of the key ones are pretty obvious now. So the issue around, you know, as I said, workplace wellbeing, everyone's well aware of the importance of that now. So a few years ago I would have definitely said that. But I think that doesn't need to be reiterated.

00:27:38:23 - 00:28:18:05

Paula Brough

Now that's pretty loud and clear. And I think to be fair, I think most managers try to be a good manager, try to look after their team. Most managers value the staff and want to keep the staff they've got, I think. I think one issue is trying to sort of facilitate the internal systems, and I'm thinking here of a police again with disciplinary procedure, systems or complaint systems where it can just be bogged down for months and months and months and internal investigations or, you know, people are just waiting for an outcome for months and months and months.

00:28:18:05 - 00:28:43:13

Paula Brough

So a lot of a lot of times that system can't be speeded up very much because the various dates that have to be jumped. But I really think organizations and managers could do a lot more there. So just trying to minimalize the impact of the internal systems and speed them up. So, you know, why should a complaint take months and months to resolve that?

00:28:43:15 - 00:29:00:21

Paula Brough

You know, it could it could be done in weeks, weeks. It could be done it if, if they wanted to it could be I think so, I think that's a key one to try and facilitate, even if you have to push hard upwards to get it done so that that's difficult. I mean, I think, I think all the things about being a good manager are important.

00:29:00:21 - 00:29:06:13

Paula Brough

You know, being there for your staff, being and being able to listen to them take their views into account.

00:29:06:15 - 00:29:26:14

Kevin Daniels

Yeah. It's interesting what you said about most managers want to be good managers. Do you ever get the feeling that some organizations manage by the lowest common denominator? By which I mean that 1 in 20 managers or one in 100 managers might be a bit rubbish and then so you treat all managers as if they're a bit rubbish.

00:29:26:18 - 00:29:31:15

Kevin Daniels

Yeah. I think this is sometimes why we have these systems, you know, over complicated systems.

00:29:31:17 - 00:29:52:20

Paula Brough

Yeah. I've definitely found that. I've definitely found that I, I won't say where but I've definitely found that. So for example, I had I had managers say to me we were doing supportive supervisor training, basic people management skills. And I had managers say to me, why would I want to be more supportive? That just means that I'll get more work.

00:29:53:00 - 00:30:16:05

Paula Brough

It'll it'll be more work for me. Why would I want to do that? I'm not interested in my team members problems. They just come in, do the work, go home. That's all I care about. You know, very, very old school, black and white. And it was a huge shock for me at that time, you know, coming with a very, you know, idealistic idea of, well surely everybody wants to do the best job they can, then look after their staff.

00:30:16:05 - 00:30:39:13

Paula Brough

So it was a real culture shock. But yes, but definitely happens not always just in the blue collar industries either, I must say. But yeah, I definitely, definitely understand more that not everybody wants to, you know, go go overboard for their workers, of course, or for their team members. Of course not. But, yeah, that was a real culture shock.

00:30:39:14 - 00:31:05:22

Paula Brough

I know on one hand you can understand that, you know. Yeah, it is more work. You want to be supportive. You got to be there for them. Why? Why should you do that? But then you think, well, if you want to keep your team and if you value them and if you want to keep the performance going, and if you want to, look after the your clients in your, in your, as opposed to look after it in the best possible way, then you do have to keep a close eye on things.

00:31:05:22 - 00:31:08:17

Paula Brough

So yeah, try not to be too idealistic about it all I guess.

00:31:08:18 - 00:31:18:20

Kevin Daniels

Like if so, it's a great thank you. Paula. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to give me an answer to?

00:31:18:22 - 00:31:45:10

Paula Brough

I'm still after, 21 years of research or whatever it has been in this area. I'm still so excited by the stress field, and I can still see lots of work coming through. You know, like the work on proactive coping at the moment, how to how do we help people cope with known future events. That's great. And all the AI and the digital tech that's coming through now in our workplaces, that's going to be another one.

00:31:45:10 - 00:32:02:14

Paula Brough

We've already we really know about techno stress, too many emails. But how on earth are we going to cope when we, dealing with multiverses and digital twins and things I don't even understand? So I still think this is a very vibrant and exciting field.

00:32:02:16 - 00:32:18:12

Kevin Daniels

Okay, great. Thank you very much. So, professor, Paula Brough, been absolutely fantastic talking to you as always. And thank you for your, for, for staying up late! In Australia. So great to see you. Thank you.

00:32:18:14 - 00:32:21:22

Paula Brough

Thanks, Kevin.

00:32:21:24 - 00:32:32:23

Helen Fitzhugh

Please do visit www.evolveworkplacewellbeing.org  We look forward to seeing you next time.