St. Aidan's Community School, Brookfield, Tallaght
Risk Assessing for Work Related Stress – Work Positive Audit Tool
Who are they?
St. Aidan’s Community School is a second level State school situated in a RAPID (Revitalising Areas by Planning, Investment & Development) area in West Tallaght. It is categorised as a D.E.I.S. Category 1 school. Under the Department of Education and Science Action Plan to Combat Disadvantage St. Aidan’s is well supported in its efforts to deliver equality of opportunity and provide social inclusion.
The school offers Junior Certificate and Traditional Leaving Certificate courses. They also offer the Leaving Certificate Applied Programme, the Junior Certificate Schools Programme and Post leaving Cert Courses; enabling the less able student to benefit from continuing education and remain in the school until Leaving Cert.
St. Aidan’s is an inclusive school catering for the local population of the Brookfield and Fettercairn areas of West Tallaght. Currently the school has about 20% Foreign National students, 10% from the Traveller Community with some 20% presenting with special education needs. The school actively encourages participation in the A.C.E. Programme to enable the brighter students to proceed to third level.
The school is run by a Board of Management comprising V.E.C. trustees, The Loreto Order, 2 parents and 2 teachers. It is funded directly by the Department of Education and Science.
No of employees:
The school currently has approximately 53 teachers, 9 special Needs Assistants (SNA's), 3 Caretakers, 3 Office Staff and 10 ancillary cleaning staff.
SECTOR: Second level Community School serving the
LOCATION: Brookfield/Fettercairn, Tallaght, D.24.
STUDENT POPULATION: Approximately 460, from 1st year to 6th year and P.L.C.
What part of the organisation was chosen for this project?
For this project all Teachers and NA's were included (62)
What groups were the staff divided into?
It was decided at the outset that in order to ensure total anonymity and build confidence in the project that staff would not be divided into groups.
How did they set about carrying out the Risk Assessment (from now on referred to as Work Positive)?
Stage one: a meeting was held with the HSA Psychologist and the SMT. During this meeting potential actions were suggested and possible outcomes explained. Following this meeting full support was given to the project and a plan with an agreed time line was set out for March 09 to May 09.
A further meeting was then arranged to which all staff involved in the project were invited. This discussion gave staff the opportunity to ask questions; get a feel for the purpose of Work Positive, to develop a good understanding of the procedures and so to fully embrace the project.
Posters and leaflets were distributed to staff notice boards in advance to promote the Programme. Questionnaires were then disseminated using an online service provided through the Work Positive programme. This web based service allowed busy teachers to complete the survey quickly and efficiently at a time convenient to them. Paper versions of the survey were made available to those staff that did not have access to email.
The online system provided the extra benefit of collecting from staff qualitative answers to the following questions:
- What do you enjoy most about working here?
- What is the one thing that causes you stress at work?
- What is the one thing you would change to make the workplace better?
These qualitative answers provided more depth to the information collected and gave additional meaning to the quantitative answers. For example if control was an issue: what aspects of control were concerning staff; whether control over students, control over their work, or control over some other aspect of their work.
Questionnaires were collated and analysed by an outside consultancy. Neither the school nor the HSA were involved in this part of the project.
Approximately 1week after the survey closed, in early April ‘09, results were presented to the SMT. Feedback presentations to staff were then scheduled for the next staff meeting in May ‘09. All teachers and NA's were invited to this session hosted during an afternoon.
Results for St Aidan’s followed the trend for other schools in the programme with variations of similar issues being raised.
What happened next?
At the May meeting results were communicated to staff and volunteers for participation in focus groups were invited. Five staff volunteered for a focus group held immediately after the staff meeting. In order to encourage open and frank discussions it was agreed that focus group consisted of a cross section of staff but excluding the SMT.
Discussion took place in the focus group, facilitated by an external professional facilitator, to analyse the results in depth and to develop an action plan to deal with the issues raised. Staff were encouraged to evaluate and sort solutions on three levels. At the micro level staff were encouraged to analyse what they could do for themselves), at the macro level what they would like the SMT to do and at the strategic level what longer term solutions that might be considered that were perhaps high cost high or involved negotiation with the department. These suggested solutions will be discussed with staff representatives and the SMT to agree their feasibility, costs and implications. Finally, a timeline for completion, a person responsible for each action and review dates for each action were agreed. The outcome of these discussions will be communicated to all staff at a meeting take place in early September ’09.
Was that the entire project completed?
No, by May 2009 the project had been completed up to the stage of the final discussions with SMT on completion of the Risk Assessment/Control Measures template (see ‘Risk Assessment Template on this site).
What worked well?
‘It was a very effective tool and delivered efficiently into the current school systems and timetables. The online system allows easy management of on-going Risk Assessments and enables the school to complete one when required. The project also provided good links with the HSA’.
What was the main challenge to the success of Work Positive?
‘The main challenge to the project was persuading teachers to take the time to firstly complete the survey. Once some teachers had completed the survey online and were able to pass on the word that it was a fast and easy process most of the staff then took part (76%).
Is there any other support the Authority could give organisations to improve psychosocial risk assessments?
‘Continue projects such as this one to other organisations’.
