Wellbeing Champions: Fred Pau, Nirmala D’Souza, Kristie Venegas, Maja Zidov, Charlotte Bocquet, Helen Polley and Dasha Kashirskaya. Absent: Erin Hughes, Laura Harvey and Mirjana Bogosanovic
Making ‘sense’ of our COVID-19 experience: Sensemaking workshops
What have you taken away from your experience in lockdown? Are there things you’ll keep doing, or plan to incorporate in your personal or professional life in future? Are you worried about the future for yourself and those around you? What would you like to see being offered on campus over the next few months?
As we transition to the next phase of this significant time, now is a good time to take a step back to find a way to acknowledge the bad, and capture the good coming out of this crisis. Our Wellbeing and Sustainability team, guided by conversations with our ‘Wellbeing Champions’, is doing just that. As well as exploring their own experiences and emotions, they’re now looking for ways to support our Unitec staff, and want to know what would be helpful as we navigate the rest of the year.
If you would like to join a conversation, you can register for one of the three 45-minute Sensemaking workshops (on Skype) and share your own experiences and ideas. The Sensemaking workshops will explore the lessons learned during the lockdown and ways to make them part of our ‘new normal’. If the workshop times don’t suit you, you can share your ideas by emailing connect@unitec.ac.nz.
Does this chart capture any of your emotional lockdown journey so far (see note below re graph source)?
Any significant event in our life can have an on-going impact on our mental health and our ability to ‘operate’ in our regular day-to-day life like we used to, so it’s important we address this. The conversations captured during the workshop session will contribute to shaping our Wellness programme to support our ‘recovery’ and build resilience.
Outlined below is some feedback from a recent sessions with the Wellness champions.
Workshop times:
Our Wellbeing Champions share their lockdown reflections
Our Wellbeing Champions help to shape our Unitec Wellness programme, as representatives from support and academic teams. Below, the Champions share some of their reflections from lockdown – do any of these resonate with you?
Past month: What have we done, what have we learned?
- Our academic staff pulled off a near miracle! It was a huge job to get set up for online learning but was a great success, helping our students engage and learn
- Balancing the demands of home and children with work was difficult, but we realised that kids don’t want much, just your presence
- We got better at showing we care. When people ask ‘how you doing’ they stopped to listen. It wasn’t just another way to say hello. Listening to others helped forget some of our own struggles and find comfort in learning that everyone else is also experiencing regular highs and lows
- We really felt for people who were facing isolation alone. It was really hard for those who have come to study or have just immigrated or on work permits.
- We had to find our own way to manage strong feelings and impulses. Sometimes it really was as simple as taking a deep breath or going for a walk to clear the head (meditation really does work!)
Next month: Where are we going? What is the best case scenario?
- We normalise negative emotions and the complexity of it all. Emotions will keep running high and low so we need to be mindful of this and keep working on it
- There seems to be a masked anxiety. We seem to be in a better state then the rest of the world, so why feel negative? Yet there continues to be a fear as to ‘where to from here’ especially in terms of economy and what happens when the borders eventually open up
- Organisations across New Zealand are demonstrating flexibility in their business in many different ways, while we all try to figure out how to make flexible work as part of our new normal, and practical for those that want it
- All this helps us hone individual resilience as we together face the challenges ahead and support each other through them
- We continue feeling content with what we have. Turns out we don’t need much apart from having a safe place and food on the table (and internet and power and water of course haha)
What would make most difference to wellbeing of our staff as we navigate transition back to work and adjusting to the new normal?
- We need and want to take more control of our future. How can we contribute to future of Unitec?
- Many people are feeling excited to be coming back. How can we build on that? Organise something fun?
- Our academic staff need more support. They seem really stretched. Can we re-organise and help with the workload?
- We have an opportunity to help staff keep the healthy habits taken up during the lockdown. Let’s support each other to keep walking, DIYing and gardening
- How about a team challenge with MIT so we can think our NZIST future and not just COVID recovery?
If this feedback resonates with your or inspires you to share, please join in a workshop and help contribute to the wellbeing of our Unitec community.
*Above graph is adapted from Zunin & Myers as cited in DeWolfe, D. J., 2000. Training manual for mental health and human service workers in major disasters (2nd ed., HHS Publication No. ADM 90-538). Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services.
Reading off that research graph, then given that we have neither emerged clear of the “Levels” nor celebrated the ‘Anniversary’ event, it would seem to me that we are somewhere between the Heroic and Honeymoon stages. (From my own past experiences and reflections) I’d advise colleagues to not let feelings fool you – the Disillusionment stage is still to come. We are not in the Reconstruction phase. We may feel that we are reconstructing, but the fact is that “Level 1” is still an “Alert Level”, and thus we haven’t ended the Impact-Honeymoon phase yet.