Areas of Work-design
Areas of work-design are the broad areas in the work environment that have an impact on employee stress or wellbeing. They are often considered at organisational level, but due to external influences which affect decision-making, as well as considering the areas of work-design at the educational setting level, it is also necessary to think about individual, group, local authority, multi-academy trust (where applicable), education system (local, national and global) and wider system (e.g., health and social care, community, political, ecological) levels.
In its Management Standards, the Health and Safety Executive (the organisation that has oversight of occupational health and safety matters in the UK) identifies six areas of work-design*. As these support employers in meeting their legal duty to assess the risks to employees from work-related stress in England (the context for my research), these are included in the bank of areas of work-design in my framework. The six areas (along with the descriptions given by the HSE) are:
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• Demands – this includes issues such as workload, work patterns and the work environment
• Control – how much say the person has in the way they do their work
• Support – this includes the encouragement, sponsorship and resources provided by the organisation, line management and colleagues
• Relationships – this includes promoting positive working to avoid conflict and dealing with unacceptable behaviour
• Role – whether people understand their role within the organisation and whether the organisation ensures that they do not have conflicting roles
• Change – how organisational change (large or small) is managed and communicated in the organisation.
Culture, defined as, ‘the way in which organisations demonstrate management commitment and have procedures which are fair and open’ was initially included in the HSE’s draft management standards as another area of work-design that impacted on stress/wellbeing, however, it was later dropped as it was considered to pervade all the other areas. Given that workplace culture, particularly in schools, comes up so often as impacting on staff wellbeing, in my framework, it is included in its own right to ensure that it has an explicit focus.
In addition to these seven areas of work-design, I’ve also included exposure to others’ suffering. Whilst this could arguably be included as a sub-category in demands, due to unfamiliarity with the uniqueness of its risks and benefits within the education sector (see compassionate acting pages), and to ensure that it doesn’t get missed, it has also been included as a distinct category.
When analysing my research data and in the supervision sessions that I do with educators, I found that it was helpful to have sub-categories within the eight areas. These facilitate a greater understanding of the areas of work-design and can help to provide a more nuanced identification of stressors/wellbeing enhancers. In line with the rest of the framework, these elements are in a dialectical relationship, so there is the recognition that there is a continuum from too much to too little of each. The categories, with their sub-categories/sub-dialectics, are:
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Change - frequency, management
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Control - choice, flexibility, predictability
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Culture - justice - interactional, procedural, distributive, rectificatory; transparency
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Demands - cognitive; emotional; physical; time
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Exposure to others' suffering - hear about; witness; direct impact; secondary impact​
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Relationships - pupils; families; colleagues - 'senior', 'on-par', 'junior'; external professionals; other
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Role - ambiguity; conflict; overload/underload
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Support - appraisal; emotional; informational; instrumental; self-care.
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Most of these are self-explanatory or obvious to those in the workplace but the aspects which are likely to be less familiar, or may be used differently in different theories, are defined or explained briefly in the section below the framework to show how they are being used here. Greater detail and an explanation of how they may be manifested in the context of the English education sector can be found in my thesis (click here), or for more information, please use the contact details below so that we can arrange a chat.
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The areas of work-design impact on how well educator psychological needs can be satisfied.
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*The HSE website has lots of valuable information on stress and mental health at work - Stress at work - HSE
more detail on sub-categories of areas of work-design
As suggested above, most of the sub-categories are self-explanatory; however, sometimes the same words are used in different theories to mean different things. To support with clarity of meaning, the way that I use some terms in my framework, which may otherwise be unfamiliar or ambiguous, is outlined below. Also, as previously stated, there is an assumption that where wording is positive, there is a continuum ending with the opposing negative, and vice versa (i.e., there is a dialectical relationship at play).
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Culture (drawing on perceived organisational justice theory)
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Distributive justice - perceived fairness of allocated outcomes/decisions
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Procedural justice - perceived fairness of the processes whereby outcomes are allocated
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Interactional justice - perceived fairness in the interpersonal treatment received during the implementation of the procedure and when outcomes are distributed
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Rectificatory justice - the correction of unfair treatment, including compensatory measures
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Transparency - decisions and processes are easy to understand and openly communicated.
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Emotional demands - these can be further sub-divided into:
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Situations which provoke strong emotions (e.g., dealing with an aggressive parent)
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Managing one’s own emotions (e.g., conforming to professional norms and standards of conduct which may involve showing emotions that are not congruent with the ones that we actually feel)
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Work focused on others’ emotional wellbeing (e.g., supporting pupils' emotion regulation).
Much emotion work that educators do is automatic and genuinely felt which requires less psychological energy and many emotion-provoking interactions will result in experiencing positive emotions, associated with increased vitality and wellbeing. However, dealing with complex and multiple interactions simultaneously or in quick succession, where switching from one emotion to another quickly is required, can be emotionally draining; whilst each interaction in isolation may not be emotionally demanding, the effort of changing from one to another can use up psychological energy.
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Role
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Ambiguity - occurs when there's a lack of clarity regarding expectations and boundaries associated with role delivery
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Conflict - occurs when multiple pressures or expectations are simultaneously placed on the same employee, and working to comply with one makes it more difficult or impossible to comply with the other role/s held
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Over/underload - where the employee finds it either too hard or too easy to meet the expectations associated with their role/s which creates feelings of dissatisfaction with their work or stage of their career. This could relate, for example, to the amount of work expected to be completed; to the type of work being too varied or too repetitive and dull; or to feeling under- or over-qualified/skilled/appreciated for the work that's expected.
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Exposure to others' suffering - see compassionate acting pages
Support
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Not all interactions or interventions used in education that claim to be supportive are experienced by the employee as supportive (e.g., so-called 'support plans' which are linked to capability proceedings). In my framework, I am drawing on theories associated with social support, where activity is always intended by the provider to be helpful, distinguishing it from intentional negative interactions (such as angry criticism, hassling, undermining). It has four key components:
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Instrumental – concrete support e.g., through additional physical resources - including people and time
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Informational – access to ways of increasing skill level, e.g., someone who can give helpful, practical advice, access to training or relevant reading material
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Emotional – access to a person who will listen compassionately and without judgement
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Appraisal – access to a person who can support the employee to reflect on, cope with, learn or grow from a particular situation.
Self-care is added to these, because as explained elsewhere, employees have a responsibility to take action to support their own wellbeing. Having an understanding of psychological needs can help individuals with a more specific identification of how areas of work-design are impacting on their psychological wellbeing, so that they can apply wellbeing support in a more targeted way.