How to survive work
For those of you that know me you might be wondering what the hell I'm doing organising courses on how to survive work. A life long struggle with authority and deep reservations about playing with the other children, honestly I have never found working life all that easy. This week we’re launching some events on the hallowed turf of the Tavistock Clinic. Three courses on bullying at work, raising concerns and being a Guardian, and generally how to survive work for anyone working on the health and social care frontline. People, try to form an orderly queue! Agreeably it’s tempting to stay in our psychic bunkers and wait out the Battles on the NHS Frontline. But working within a ’pervasive culture of fear’ means 61% of health and social care workers are feeling scared all or most of the time. These courses provide a confidential and safe space to build our capacities to get on with the people around us. The courses are tailored specifically for health and social care sectors and focus on how to build relationships and figure out how we can collectively build better workplaces. Just to be clear, at no point will you be asked to play drums or engage in free expression dance. The courses use ideas from different disciplines including psychoanalysis, employment relations, and active learning methods - nothing new just the good solid stuff of talking, listening, thinking and solidarity in action. We take as given that we are all adults with ordinary expertise in life which when collectivised is powerful stuff. In order to swerve the marketing car crash such ideas normally evoke, we call this the LAUGH approach which involves three steps: Stage 1: Starting where you are by Listening and Assessing what is going on at work Stage 2: Understanding your environment and identifying resources that you have individually and collectively Stage 3: Getting Help from the people around you and working out how to have better relationships at work We are not superheroes or purveyors of magic solutions but we are offering the ordinary stuff of you, me and some other human beings sitting in a room trying to figure it out. It will not make you richer or thinner but it will help you to survive work.