Wellbeing Week kicks off this Thursday with a lakeside launch and wellness expo, coinciding with R U OK Day – a day for having meaningful conversations with yourself, and those around you, about your wellbeing.
With this in mind, we asked Victor Halim, Sydney Clinical Manager at Davidson Trahaire Corpsych (DTC) – Macquarie’s new Employee Assistance Program partner – to tell us more about the support services available to staff.
People often think of an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) as just counselling for work issues. But through the EAP, Macquarie staff have access to support and coaching on a huge range of areas including relationships, work/life balance, vocational goals, managing change, family, stress, anxiety, depression, nutrition, sleep, physical wellbeing, grief and loss, legal, financial, drug and alcohol addictions, interpersonal conflict and more.
DTC has been providing Employee Assistance Programs and services for trauma support for almost 30 years to a range of organisations across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors.
Our qualified and experienced professionals have extensive training in counselling, coaching and workplace consulting and demonstrate the utmost care as we support and coach people through the joys, challenges and tragedies that mark our work/life journey.
Counselling can be delivered via different modes, including face to face, phone, LiveChat, email and video conferencing. DTC also has convenient locations for face-to-face appointments with an office located on Epping Road near Macquarie University.
For managers and team leaders, DTC also offers managerAssist®, providing a senior consultant to discuss strategies, options and approaches to help their employees to thrive and perform.
Accessing the EAP
Visit the University’s Employee Assistance Program page to find out how to make an initial appointment. During the initial contact you will be asked a series of questions to help us link you with the most appropriate counsellor.
When you attend your first appointment the counsellor will discuss the parameters of the service, including confidentiality and number of sessions, to ensure that you are comfortable with the service whilst also working with you to develop plans and goals to manage issues and challenges in a constructive way.
EAP consultations are free, confidential and voluntary. DTC does not share information about you with anyone unless authorised to do so by you in writing, or if required by law.
I encourage you to come and meet us at the Wellbeing Week launch to find out more about our EAP program and other support.
Register for the Wellbeing Week launch event (it includes a free healthy lunch!)
Wellbeing Week also features information seminars on mental health, resilience through times of change, and emotional health in the workplace. Visit the Wellbeing Week program for more information.
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I have been having ‘meaningful conversations’ with my self and others about my ‘wellbeing’ at work for quite a while now. There’s only so much that talking can do, however, no matter how excellent the EAP, the outside therapist/counsellor, the supportive sympathetic colleague/s, and the much put-upon family members.
At some point, ways of doing certain things in the workplace – THIS WORKPLACE – have to change and implementing these changes is out of the control of any one individual. It calls for more than talking and art classes, useful as those can be.
And it definitely calls for more than one day or week of concern.
If the executive were actually serious about R U OK day, they would be reconsidering the ‘disestablishment and redundancy’ process they have forced upon hundreds of people. Rather than treating us with respect, we are treated like some numbers on a spreadsheet (which seems to be all that matters anymore here). I have been at MQ a long time, and have never seen staff morale so low across the board, even in areas not being affected by secretive change proposals…
Perhaps all the executive in their abbey should get some counselling on how to actually interact with us ‘downstairs people’
I’m looking forward to wellbeing week, and have registered for several sessions. I am disappointed that the art classes are full, but it’s great that people are keen for these things.
No, I’m not OK, and neither are many of my colleagues. The combination of:
* overwork
* job insecurity (especially for casual staff but also for fixed-term and continuing staff)
* poorly executed change processes with extremely stressful sham EOI and redundancy processes and
* ever-escalating performance targets and shifting goalposts
is causing massive problems for well-being and mental health. It’s not just Macquarie – the evidence that is emerging about mental health issues in universities is not good.
Thank goodness for EAP. I suppose at least someone is doing well out of this appalling situation. But supporting individuals with their situational trauma is not exactly fixing the situation, is it? How about we do something about workload and job security? We have around 1200 academic casuals and sessionals – why don’t we place more of them into Scholarly Teaching Fellow positions? There is nothing “casual” about their work – they teach the same courses year after year – it’s only their employment that’s casual. Job insecurity is compounded by breaks in employment and minimal superannuation – casual staff not only experience years of insecurity and low income, they are also being set up for a poverty-stricken old age. Not much well-being to look forward to there.