The pressure on our society is bringing challenges to our wellbeing and the prosperity of our economy. I got inspired to write this blog because of the

  • protests of teachers, farmers, health workers, SME-owners in the past months
  • my clients who turn to me with questions around (re)finding a better life/work balance, managing their time between work and care-taking and dealing with the emotions due to this and other personal matters such as divorce, relationship issues, mourning.
  • and two inspirational conversations with Nicole Bolweg from Pro Life Zorgverzekeringen and Anjet van Dijken from We-Care who is focusing sib- caretakers.

The pressure will continue to grow due to the aging population, regulations, protocols, less attention for the individual student and patients, laws of nature, the 24-hour economy etc. There is hardly space for time to stop, breathe, reflect, feel, mourn and be in silence. As I see it, the protests are a cry to look at things differently. In the space of silence there will be opportunities to look at things differently and find solutions for this growing pressure. We have reached a limit!

Also in my practice, I see the effects. When I meet my clients, I am actually working at the back-end of this process; trying to support them at a time when it is already very hard to stand tall and continue to work.

These coaching trajectories often are funded out of the personal vitality training budgets, however, I wonder is this actually about vitality? How many times does an employer offer psycho-social support pre-emptively to avoid over-stretching? Or does an employee feel comfortable to ask for this support for personal reasons? It seems this topic needs more attention in the corporate world if we want to make sure that the current and future workforce are able to do all the work that needs to be done.

Fortunately, there are companies who have space and openness for this topic. For example, my disability insurance offers a budget for coaching to prevent me from burning out. And one of Hollands largest funeral service companies ‘Coöperatie Dela’ offers pre-emptive coaching for their employees who need some temporary support. The Dutch insurance company, Pro Life, offers support to its customers: they are the only health insurance company in the Netherlands (that I know of) who offer relationship courses and therapy through their health insurance. In addition, they actively support topics such as ‘growing older’ and ‘building resilience’ to create consciousness and create relief in the system.

In my view the responsibility to build resilience and open up about personal topics at work, lies with the individual him/herself. However, employers also play a significant role in the ‘chronical wellbeing’ of their employees. Two things will be key in that:

  1. Companies’ cultures need to become more open, have linking values and offer easy- accessible support to create a safe enough space for employees to actually open up and ask for help if needed.
  2. Take a bold step around vitality and start working on this at a much earlier stage, and besides the great vitality programs, actively offer pre-emptive and accessible psycho- emotional support through coaching trajectories paid even when the topic is a personal one.

This will empower employees to grow resilience, or as Nicole said in our conversation, build life-resilience to AND be able to do a good job AND at the same time set boundaries and deal with personal emotions.

If we will work on being safe, we need to be a lot less sorry.

Through coaching and training programs, I offer different ways of providing this pre-emptive support in order to support building a chronically healthy workfloor.

Would you like to learn more? Feel free to contact me through:

+31- 6 53 44 44 57
brechje@brechjevangeenen.nl
www.brechjevangeenen.nl | www.scheidenopdewerkvloer.com