St. Colmcille's Community School, Knocklyon
Who are they?
St Colmcille’s is a community school situated in Knocklyon, Dublin. The school mission statement is;
- To provide a school community that provides a caring, happy and safe environment that strives to foster a love of life-long learning.
The school endeavours to develop each person's academic, physical, moral, cultural and spiritual potential based on mutual respect, fairness and honesty. The school aims to prepare students to emerge into society as confident, adaptable, responsible and caring citizens.
The Principal and Senior Management Team (SMT) welcomed the opportunity of participating in this project. After attending the open day, the school volunteered to participate in the Work Positive Project, a stress audit for organisations. The project was under the stewardship of the Health and Safety officer and ran between February 2009 and May 2009.
No of employees 60 staff [at the time of the survey]
Business Sector Education
Location Dublin, Ireland
What part of the organisation was chosen for this project?
For this project the full staff complement was included (60)
What groups were the staff divided into?
It was agreed from the outset of the project that total anonymity would be required to build confidence and ensure that staff fully engaged with the processes involved. For this reason staff were not divide 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 set up with the HSA Psychologist and the SMT, after the meeting full support was given to the project.
At a further meeting with the Health and Safety representative a plan was outlined on how to engage staff and a time line set out (March 09 – May 09) for the project.
Posters and leaflets were distributed to staff notice boards in advance of the presentations to all staff.
Questionnaires were disseminated using an online service provided by Stredia who also . This web based service allowed busy teachers to complete the survey quickly and efficiently at a time that suited them best. The online system provided the extra benefit of collecting qualitative answers from staff 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 helped give meaning to the quantitative answers. For example if control was an issue what aspect of control were staff talking about, control over students, control over their work, control over some other aspect of work.
Questionnaires were collated and analysed automatically once entered online. This expedited a quick turnaround of information.
Approximately 1week after the survey closed, in early April 09, results were presented to the SMT and feedback presentations to staff were scheduled. All staff were invited to these sessions, hosted over one morning. At this session, results were communicated to staff and volunteers for focus groups were invited, 14 staff volunteered.
Results for St Colmcille’s matched the trend for other school in the programme with variations of the same issues being raised.
What happened next?
Two focus groups were held to discuss the results in depth and to develop an action plan to deal with the issues raised. Each focus group consisted of 7 participants from a cross section of staff. Members of SMT agreed to remain apart from these meetings. This enabled open and frank discussions which were facilitated by an external professional facilitator.
Staff were encouraged to develop solutions on three levels; micro (what can staff do for themselves), macro (what they would like the SMT to do) and strategic (longer term solutions that are high cost high and may include negotiation with the department).
These suggested solutions were assessed with staff representatives and the SMT to agree their feasibility in terms of their costs and implications. Once accepted, a timeline for completion, a person responsible for each action and review dates for each action were agreed. The outcome of these discussions is to be communicated to all staff.
Was the entire project completed?
No. By May 2009 the project had been completed up to final focus groups. This included, setting the terms of initial SMT level consultation, staff agreement, information sessions and poster, questionnaires, feedback and results (incorporating information sessions on the context of the results) follow up with focus group discussions. The final discussions with SMT on completion of the Risk Assessment/Control Measures template (see ‘Risk Assessment Template on this site) will take place in the near future to conclude the project.
What worked well?
‘It was a very effective tool and delivered efficiently into the current school systems and timetables. The online system allows for 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 (52%) then took part. Once engaged they volunteered time to take part in focus groups.’
Is there any other support the Authority could give organisations to improve psychosocial risk assessments?
‘Continue projects such as this one to other organisations’.
