We want Brannel School to be a great place to work. We understand that when staff wellbeing is prioritised, teachers and support staff are more able to care for student wellbeing.
At Brannel, staff wellbeing is enhanced through professional learning, celebrating staff strengths and achievements, policies to prevent and reduce staff stress, encouragement to collaborate with other staff, and access to professional advice.
We cultivate a supportive workplace culture. Our school leaders adopt an ‘open-door’ policy which encourages staff to come forward with issues, allowing them to be appropriately addressed. It is also important that our school leaders consistently show their commitment to addressing workload issues. Some ways we are doing this include:
- Limiting after-school meetings and ensuring that only relevant staff are required to be at meetings.
- Making sure staff take break and lunch times.
- Making sure that leaving on time at the end of the school day is not seen as a negative thing.
- Not setting expectations for immediate email responses and encouraging staff to email during reasonable working hours e.g. not at weekends.
We also encourage staff to organise activities to relax and simply have fun together out of school hours. These include things like Christmas shopping trips, barbecue and surfing at the beach, ‘pot luck’ lunches and Friday yoga sessions after school. In addition, all staff have free use of the school fitness suite.