Derek Mowbray
UK, Gloucestershire
Derek Mowbray is the founder of The Working Well Group, a group of services focused on helping organisations and leaders to prevent psychological presenteeism at work. Derek Mowbray promotes the implementation of a Positive Work Culture, The Mindful Manager and The Resilient Workforce through OrganisationHealth, the Management Advisory Service and The Resilience Training Company Limited. He initiated The Wellbeing and Performance Agenda which underpins the Manager's Code that he developed on behalf of the Institute of Healthcare Management and a broad range of Professional Organisations serving the NHS.
Derek Mowbray is visiting Professor in Psychology at Northumbria University, an Independent Technical Expert for the European Commission, and has had a career that involved being the Chief Executive of three NHS organisations, a King's Fund Fellow, a Secretary of State Fellow, and founding several private sector companies all relating to psychology, wellbeing and performance. He has a
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Comments (96)
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Comment on: Staff should be protected from 'never events'
This is interesting - is the never event the suicide or the investigation? It is interesting because this is an issue of psychological wellbeing. One of the overriiding never events should, of course, be the prevention of psychological distress at work, as this will have some impact on the events that do take place that are already on the never event list. A culture that provokes psychological wellbeing will, also, provoke peak performance. which is about the capacity to concentrate. Concentration is impaired by feeling psychological unwell (amongst other causes that divert the mind), and this is often found in organisations with a culture that is not actively provoking psychological wellbeing. As culture is determined by leaders and managers, anything less than a positive work culture is unethical. and should be an overriding never event.
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Comment on: Stress levels on the rise in Britain
Whilst it is useful to have the results of surveys published in this way, the real problem is finding the right people to do something to prevent the misery behind the figures. The cost of waiting for people to become stressed is enormous; using the same time to prevent people from being stressed would save the economy and organisations a phenomenal amount of money but, at the same time, improve performance. These figures indicate that psychological presenteeism is rising; the cost of psychological presenteeism is about twice the combined costs of sickness absence and attrition (staff turnover), and is the biggest challenge, by far, that organisations face. Yet we don't have the type of leaders in place to understand and resolve the problem. We are about to hear more about Mid Staffordshire and a need for cultural change. Yet we don't seem to have anyone in place who knows what to do to change culture. This is my expertise. The Wellbeing and Performance Agenda is based on the knowledge that if you feel psychologically well you perform at your peak (if you also have the right skills, knowledge and experience). Feeling well is governed in large part by the context in which you live and work. The workplace can provoke workers to feel well by adopting some well researched, well understood and well founded ideas. The workplace should be the oasis from which people retreat from the challenges of everyday life as we experience it. The workplace is a controlled environment, controlled by leaders and managers. Yet we don't seem to have the right people in place to make this happen. Why not? It must now be one of the crowning ethical issues facing organisations - they are set up to perform at their peak, yet we have leaders and managers that allow organisations to flounder and for workers to suffer misery. Why? Why haven't we got the right people in place to lead and manage organisations in a manner that provokes peak performance, performance that only happens when people feel terrific.
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Comment on: Mike Farrar and Sir Andrew Cash set up consultancy supergroup
This is obviously an outstandingly brilliant idea.
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Comment on: Demystifying the I in QIPP
Having just facilitated a workshop in the NHS on corporate resilience in times of challenge, this model that Helen outlines seems perfect in the context of sustaining resilience - the need to be a healthy organisation by constantly re-thinking purpose and process. But there needs to be a coathook. Improving quality doesn't really do it for me, simply because I think the workforce element of improving quality is often forgotten. So, I'd like to see the coathook as improving wellbeing and performance through a constant process of rethinking, but orientated towards commitment, trust and engagement, as when these are achieved, quality exists and is made even better, and encouraging innovation (however defined) is a key element of commitment, trust and engagement as it provokes challenges, and challenge is a strong feature of commitment and engagement.
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Comment on: NHS chief executives should be 'held to account' for improving staff health
As psychological presenteeism is one of the largest avoidable costs of any organisation it is pleasing to see some movement to address this massive but resolvable problem. However, the link between wellbeing and performance is not yet directly made, although the words are edging towards this basic connection. One strategy and four approaches are suggested - the strategy is to promote wellbeing and performance. The four approaches are: to create and sustain healthy organisation; to adopt adaptive leadership and effective management behaviours that provoke commitment, trust and engagement; strengthen personal resilience, and improve lifestyle@work - the environment, life balance, support services, nutrition and exercise. Programmes to implement a wellbeing and performance strategy are offered by MAS (www.mas.org.uk) and OrganisationHealth (www.orghealth.co.uk). Gratifyingly some parts of the NHS are taking up these programmes now, but there's a very long way to go.
