Finish Strong for a Better Christmas and 2026

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

• How to finish the year without burning out
• Choosing supportive people rather than draining ones
• Allowing space for grief and mixed emotions
• Managing expectations and perfection pressures
• Practical strategies to reset before the new year

RESOURCES

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Transcript from the interview

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SPEAKERS

Graeme Cowan, Anna Feringa, Melo Calarco

Graeme Cowan 00:00

Greetings to the last episode of The Caring CEO for 2025 and I have an apology to make,  just up front, and that is, we haven’t published too many episodes recently, but there’s a really good reason for that. I’ve just finished editing a new Wiley book, which is called “Great Leaders Care”, and it’s how we develop safe, resilient and successful teams, and many of the interviews on this podcast are included in the book, which makes it, I think, particularly powerful. I’ll be talking about the three elements of self care, crew care and red zone care, and it’s coming out in April the first April Fool’s Day. But yeah, we’ve got a bit of a different we’ve got a we have a different podcast today, and in the past, we’ve interviewed some amazing and inspiring senior leaders. But today we’re going to be having a panel discussion with Anna Feringa, who, as you may know, is very prominent advisor to leadership teams and also boards about reducing harmful work stress, and Melo Calarco, who is the author of The Best Selling beating burnout, finding balance. And as you’ll hear, this is really a Christmas holiday message. So we asked everyone that came on board to nominate what what they find most challenging about this period. And people mentioned things like, well, I’ve got to see people I don’t like. We spend too much money. It reminds me of loss. So you’ll hear some really great reflections on this from myself and the WeCare365 team, we’d like to wish you a fantastic break. I think it could help if you listen to this panel discussion, but may you also have a much better and healthier and happier 2026.

Graeme Cowan

Hi. Thank you for joining us, and a real treat that you’ve given up your time at this time of year. It’s very, very crazy, and it’s interesting. We thought it was an important topic, but I think a lot of people are too busy to come which is really, really interesting. You know, we normally have about 120 register, and this time we’ve had, I think, around 40. But this is going to be, hopefully, a service to you and to think of not just about our personal well being, but for those around us, in our teams, our families, but also those that you may know that could be struggling. And we call this self care, looking after putting fuel in our own tank crew care, which is building resilient and psychologically safe teams and red zone care, which is being able to identify and support someone in distress. Just get the slides loaded up. Christmas, there’s what this image chat GPT gave me about someone being a bit isolated during Christmas and I used to run a mental health support group, and in that I really discovered that for many

people it was quite difficult or they didn’t enjoy it. And we’ll introduce Hannah in a second. But now, did you just find mentioning why you don’t really love Christmas

Anna Feringa  17:37

straight into it? Gee, I love it. Well. For the participants, firstly, I’d like to establish that I’m an incredibly joyful person, and I love life, but I have not had great experiences over the Christmas period, through my youth and so forth, and so Christmas time makes me very anxious. It’s like walking on a bridge just made of eggshells because you you’re just waiting on someone to tee off. There’s heavy alcohol use, there’s family tension, there’s family members that don’t talk to each other. There’s it’s just, it’s a time that I just can’t wait for it to be over, and I feel terrible about that, because I see how much joy Christmas can bring people, but as a lived experience person with not liking Christmas, for many a reason, a lot of people get quite judgy about it, and they’re like, it’s such a great time of year. And you know, everyone’s happy, and it’s actually the opposite. Okay, so we’ll crunch some numbers later, but it’s just a very anxious time for me. And even when people say, Oh, it’s December, even December’s almost like a trigger. I’m like, great. I’ve got to start arranging how I’m going to get through Christmas and not have a complete breakdown and get home and enjoy my summer safely.

Graeme Cowan  19:02

Thanks for that like you know. Thank you for being honest about it. I know many people that feel that way. For our attendees, we’ve got a really good panel for you. You’ve already heard a little bit about Anna, but perhaps we’ll just start with Melo in a moment. But I’m Graeme Cowan, if you haven’t seen or heard of me before? I’m a team care and resilience author and speaker. I’ve got a new Wiley book coming out in April, which is called great leaders care. And I’ve also a founding board director of R U OK, served on the board for 13 years. Melo, can you give us a little bit about your background, please. Sure.

Melo Calarco  19:44

Nice to meet everybody here. Thank you for inviting me. Graeme, it’s awesome to be here. My name is Melo. People, my friends often say Melo by name, mellow by nature, Melo the mindfulness teacher, the meditation teacher. So I’m basically on a mission just to help and support as many. People as possible to help them optimize their performance, to be at their best without compromising their physical and mental health and without burning out. And consequently, I wrote that book there behind me, beating burnout finding balance, two years ago with Wiley and I love getting messages from around the world saying how much it’s actually helped them to beat burnout and find balance.

Graeme Cowan  20:23

And I’ve only just really known you mellow for the last year, but I know you’re 100% consistent with that. You know you really want to make people not necessarily happy but peaceful. And incented Anna, a quick background from you, please.

Anna Feringa  20:39

Absolutely so again. Thank you for inviting me also. Graeme, much appreciated on this topic. So I My background is in Organizational Psychology, so working in all the spaces that I’m sure has been thrown across everyone’s desks, as far as psychosocial risk management identification, I’ve got 22 years in the industry. It does say author there, but I can’t show you a book because mine exists in research papers, so not as sexy as a novel, but yeah, 22 years in the field. I work all over Australia, just helping companies try and grasp what this is all about and how to do it practically and simply, Thanks, Anna.

Graeme Cowan  21:24

So what we’re covering today, we’re going to be setting the scene and just give a bit of background at both the individual but also the organizational level. We’re going to be talking about a Cowan mining case study, and this is something that happened this year, but led to a huge payout for something that on the surface looks very, very simple, of course, most of it today, we hope to be in the Q and A and thank you for all those people. When you registered that, you put down your questions, and we’re all going to get to them. But for you, those of you, if you have a question as we’re talking, please put it in the chat, because we’ve got Jenny behind us. She’s our operations manager at we care 365 and you know, she’ll be behind the control panels at the back, and we’ll give you a little bit of background about we care 365 you know, we’re in the business of creating scalable learning solutions to help managers have better burnout prevention conversations. Does anyone know what this is? Anyone have a wild guess what this is? If you’ve got a wild guess, please put it in the chat.

Graeme Cowan  22:35

What do you think this could be?

Graeme Cowan  22:39

And you’ll notice something is really, really peaking about now, really peaking Facebook. This is time people break up. And this was from 2008 and I haven’t seen anything more recent, but I’m sure there’s a common thread here, that there’s so many things that, and I said right the start, which people find very stressful, about the about this time, for all the reasons that that again, Anna went through before, these are five areas that people often find very hard and stressful. I’m not going to say just about Christians, because there’s a lot of people aren’t Christians. Aren’t Christians we’re watching. But around the holiday, certain things happened. And you know, whether it’s, you know, forced to see people you don’t like, it reminds us of a loss. You know, I lost my two parents in the last three years. It seemed really weird at Christmas time, we neglect our own well being. Drink too much, eat too much. We’re also confronted by what we don’t have. And finally, we’re going to spend too much. So if everyone mind just putting in the chat, what number do you find most stressful? 12345, about this period, and we’ll ask Jenny to read it out when people were in there. But yeah, what do you find most stressful about this

Graeme Cowan  24:06

period? 123, or four?

Jenny Thomson 24:10

Number two, the holidays can remind us of loss. Have you just spoke about Graeme? We’ve all kind of guess, a lot of us at that age now, where we’re losing parents and and family.

Graeme Cowan  24:20

Yep, absolutely

Jenny Thomson 24:24

is coming in. Is it? Number two is the number one?

Graeme Cowan  24:28

Number one reminds you of loss, and that’s very much the case for me, very much. We’re gonna have a very, very small Christmas this year for a whole bunch of reasons. But yeah, it does remind us of what we haven’t had. Now, if anyone feels really deeply, would like to see solutions to this? I’ve just written a long form blog on this about

Jenny Thomson 24:52

how, for some reason.

Graeme Cowan  25:03

So this is on my LinkedIn, and I posted it yesterday, and I go into a lot of depth about what to do about each of those five different areas. And we’ll send you a link to this, to this blog after, after this session I have hosted with the We Care Team, the caring CEO podcast, and had some amazing leaders on here. Mike from Bunnings, Emma from New South Wales, Department of customer service. Bob chapman, who’s built a mega organization, wrote a book called caring matters. Amy Edmondson, a global expert on psychological safety, and I’ve got metal blank. What’s her name? It’s it’s the one

Jenny Thomson  25:52

on the right, on the right, on the right is Ellen Ellen Derrick,

Graeme Cowan  25:55

thank you. Ellen Derrick from, from Deloitte. And so I would like to package this up today as an episode for the caring CEO. So when we answer, when we think about things, we ask questions, we can answer the question as is, but maybe just sort of add, if I was to be advice to a CEO, this is what I would say about this issue. There’s a lot of time. Talk about psychosocial risk, psychosocial risk and hazards, psychological health, psychological safety. And it becomes very, very confusing. But what psychosocial risk is is harmful work stress. So you may know that some stress is good for us. You know it’s called New stress, but then if it goes over a certain point, and it goes and starts to affect our sleep, our appetite, how we interact with others, that’s when it’s harmful work stress. So just keep that in mind as we talk through this that you know, this isn’t complicated. There’s things that contribute to harmful stress, and we want to talk through each of those areas.

Graeme Cowan  27:14

And it’s really interesting. Last week, I did a session for for an organization, and we had the whole board there and the whole executive team. And what’s really interesting about psychosocial risk and stress is that

Graeme Cowan  27:33

there’s very there’s not great understanding, even at that most senior level, what it is. And I’ve given a number of presentations of places like construction companies, mining companies in the last year, and they have incredible sophistication around physical safety. You know, they can show you their top 10 injury levels, and they’ve tracked each of them for 10 years, and it’s become part of their DNA to look at how that’s affected. That hasn’t happened yet with psychosocial risk on the whole, even with boards and executive teams. But I hope to really prove today with what I say and what Anna and Melo say, that you know, this is incredibly important, not just from a organizational performance, but also from us as individuals, our colleagues at work, etc. So how are we situated here? You know what’s happening. And these figures came from a joint paper put together by EML and Monash University, and they reveal some pretty extraordinary staff and look at that six years, it’s up to $288,000 for every mental health claim. Less than 50% return to one year. And I should also just share now I was on a claim for life insurance, income protection insurance for for over five years, I was out of work. Couldn’t work for five years, so I understand a lot about the return to work side of things, like mine was 20 plus years ago, and I know there’s been great progress, but still less than 50% return to work one year later, three times the cost of a claim, longer to resolve, and a bit of a warning sign Safe Work. New South Wales have just appointed 99 new psychosocial risk inspectors. So if you’re not an you know, if you’re in leadership, if you’re a CEO, listen to this or a board member. This is something we can’t ignore. And this came out last week. So it’s from the Council of Australian life insurers. So these are all the life insurance that’s groups like AIA. It’s like, Tower, it’s like, you know, a MP, big insurers that cover. Uh,

income protection insurance and disability. So look at that 732% increase in permanent disability. 46 average age that someone is permanently disability. Just huge quality of life implications, 70% 5% of employees, 81% of Gen Z have left a job for a mental health reason, 81% of Gen Z. So I just like to ask now, Anna and Melo, just your thoughts, what is the gap? Why is this happening? Why is it growing? What’s the difference between perception and reality?

Anna Feringa  30:47

Anna, okay, well, I know that you would probably all be familiar with the Gallup Institute, but they’re the guys that first established that people that are at board and executive level have a very, very different perception of what or how safe their organizations are in comparison to how middle or frontline workers perceive safety. So there’s a gap there. So what organizations need to do is really start to forecast, rather than react once injuries have occurred, and there’s lots of work being done around this. So we know that there’s a huge disparity between the attitudes of executives when it comes to safety and how work is designed and how the company is organized, as opposed to how safe people actually feel. So closing that gap is a really, really good start, and people are only just starting to learn to do that now we’re it’s very much in its infancy.

Graeme Cowan  31:43

Very true. Mila, what are your thoughts on this?

Melo Calarco  31:48

I agree with Anna exactly like in regards to forecasting rather than being reactive. I work in many different companies and many different industries. In fact, just this week alone, I’ve worked in construction companies, financial institutions, manufacturing companies and a whole range of different industries, and very often mental health is often reactive, and it’s after the fact and after the problem has happened, then let’s try to fix it. But what I see the gap is, is also consistency, consistency over a period of time and keeping those messages going. Obviously, here in Australia, we’re quite ahead in that. We have R U OK Day, we have mental health awareness month. But even that’s not enough. Like I believe just keeping those conversations going consistently, when I work with a company, the more touch points that I have over a period of time, the better results we get.

Graeme Cowan  32:41

Yeah, great, thank you.

Graeme Cowan  32:52

Like, this is unbelievable, but it’s true. This happened from two accounts that work for Cobar management. They reported to a finance person in Switzerland. So there was obviously really terrible time zone situations. And over a period of time, they began to feel really, really stressed, and they reported to their bosses, who basically said, you know, suck it up. And, you know, work it out yourself. And they then reported it, and it led to an investigation. And what then transpired was it ultimately led to them having an enforceable undertaking with $1 million including, you know, diagnostic surveys, psychometric tests to see people were right for the role, had the right strengths for that role, and and most people I speak to basically say that if they’ve done this a year before, they would have cost them like 100 grand, 150 grand. So you can see that it’s much, much cheaper, with prevention, rather than addressing things after the fact. One of those accountants never came back to work. You know, he’s got permanent disability. He’s not going to work again, basically, so And surprise, surprise, it was two accountants, but when they went in and investigated, they found out that many, many, many others in whole organizations had no position descriptions. They didn’t have a good clarity around what’s expected of them. And this can no longer be ignored. There’s also really big penalties coming in place in New South Wales, a company can be fined up for $11 million for a severe damage, psychological damage with an organization, sadly, that usually includes suicide. But there’s also many other things as well. Individuals can be fined over $2 million Dollars, if they’ve played a direct role. Now it’s an officer. They call it an officer. So that typically is the board and the executive team. Sometimes it can include people below that as well. So yeah, you know, companies need to get on board with this and know what to do. So I want to talk now about a mindset that I’ve been talking about for a long time, which really summarizes a lot about work culture. Because ultimately, work culture is about teams. The biggest impact on our well being, our engagement, is our manager. They contribute 70% and so everyone. So I call it great leaders care, but it could also be done as great teams care, because all of us can play a role in this situation. So the first thing is self care, that’s keeping fuel in our own tank. We can’t help others if we’re not in good shape ourselves. Secondly, crew care, having teams that are supportive have each other’s back, more resilient, and encourage each other. And then finally, red zone care. These are people like those accountants, who gradually got distressed and it didn’t turn around, didn’t change anything. Now, if we get these things right, we build our growth, we build our resilience, and we reduce risk. Now, with regards to a system or a culture or a company organization, there’s, there’s three levels of really intervention with an organization. So the first is called Tertiary, and this basically happens when people fall off the come injured, psychologically injured, or physically injured, they’re in the red zone. And so, you know, lot of companies say we’ve got an EAP system. We’ve got some Mental Health First Aiders out there, you know, got this covered. The second one is called secondary second, called second. What a surprise. But that’s about interventions that can slightly help, you know, prevent things happening. So, for example, in self care, you know, you might have a, you know, a resilient session by mellow or myself, and that will make some difference. You could also have leadership training about how to build more belonging, more safety and encouragement to grow together, and that can play a role as well. But by far the most important is called primary or proactive prevention, and this is about what Anna talked before. It’s where we’re measuring what’s happening before something even happens. And there’s many, many ways to do that through, you know, through surveys. There’s a number of survey groups out there. They’re just looking at the stats, looking at, you know, your information on turnover, your information on absenteeism, your information on presenteeism, that this is now very feasible, and all the authorities say this is something that we have to do. It’s not a nice to have. It’s a have to do. You

Graeme Cowan  38:25

yeah, as I mentioned, really, really excited to have this book coming out in April. It’s sort of my whole life’s work. It includes all the interviews I did in the caring CEO and very, very grateful that Mike Schneider from Bunnings is really believes it’s something that’s worth seeing. And in that book, I do talk about the four pillars. So the first pillar is self care, second pillar, crew care, fourth pillar, red zone care. And then the fourth pillar is code green. How we, you know, keep our self well? How we keep our teams world, in the world of work, and it’s not theory. You know, these are real leaders, included here. They’ve got amazing results, including Mike Schneider. Just give you an example about Mike Schneider, and you can find so it’s called the caring CEO, and he’s their number one first interview. And just an amazing one. But I got into I heard about his 4h and and Mike leads with his four H’s. And so what that stands for is honest, humble, helpful and happy. So he guides his life with that. He guides his leadership with that. And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Bunnings are the most trusted corporate brand in Australia. All right, we’re now coming on to the Q and A section, and we’ve got Jenny helping us in the background here. If any questions come up, please let us know, because we want to make sure that everything that happened. Is addressed as much as possible. We’re going to be going probably for about the next 25 minutes with questions. And so, yeah, Jenny, could mind start off. We’re going to be going through self care questions, then we’ll go to crew care, then we’ll go to Red Zone care. And yeah, work our way through that.

Jenny Thomson 40:20

Okay, so looking at self care, first of all, when does eustress become a distress, and can we draw a line?

Melo Calarco  40:29

Bella, sure, I talk about this a lot, actually, in my workshops that I do, and I often ask the question to the people in the room, whether it’s 10 people or 50 people or 100 people, what does stress mean? And most people put up their hand and they say pressure and overwhelm and exhausted and all of these negative stressors, basically. And they’re talking about distress the other side of it. But actually you stress the term EU plus the word stress is positive stress. It’s that green zone where we actually need it to drive us, to motivate us to help us achieve our goals. So I look at it in four different zones. So the green similar to you there that you’re talking about, the green zone there is that everyday stress that you stress. It’s like, if you ask somebody in the green zone how you’re going, they’ll say, that’s great. You know, lots of opportunities feeling good and feeling pumped. I’m loving what I’m doing, and they’re just, you know, managing their stress on a daily basis. The next zone is the sort of yellow zone, that chronic stress zone, where a lot of people unfortunately operate from and now we’ve got adrenaline and cortisol going through the body. We’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, feeling a bit stretched, and as we’re noticing that at this time of the year too. And then what I see is this tipping point. And usually the word around the tipping point is either something around overwhelmed or overstimulated or a bit manic at the moment, or just can’t keep up. And that sort of language starts happening in the workplace, and then it turns down the slippery slope, down the other side, in what’s called the orange zone, or Allostatic stress. I’m not sure if you heard the term Allostatic stress or allostatic load, and now this constant stress is starting to wear us out and starting to make us tired. So the language has changed from too much, too much, too much, to now, I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’ve got nothing left.

Graeme Cowan  42:09

And there’s another, there’s another very interesting thing about stress, which, you know, I’ve gone about for a while, but I included it. I’ve got a chapter on well being mindset, or, sorry, psychological mindset mindset. And it’s a work by Kelly McGonigal, and she wrote a book called The upside of stress, and it’s pretty extraordinary. She followed 30,000 people and over a period of years, and found out that how we think about stress matters a huge amount. Absolutely, those that think, like Melo said, it’s bad, terrible of getting burnt out. It is really harmful, and it can lead to burnout. It can lead to fatigue, it can lead to other things. But those think that it is helpful, it it doesn’t disable them, you know? So they think, they think to themselves, well, you know, this, this is a great book. They reframe it. And so they say, Oh, this is stress. It’s really terrible. Of saying My body’s giving me energy so that I’m can be at my best right now. And so, and how you think about that makes, makes all the difference.

Melo Calarco  43:23

Yeah, it changes your physiology, basically, like if you if you view stress as an opportunity, as a challenge, it’ll change the chemicals that go through the body. So in an interesting thing, a Chinese friend of mine told me is the word crisis itself. The word crisis has two Chinese characters. One of the characters means danger and the other character means opportunity. I love that.

Graeme Cowan  43:48

Jenny, can we have the next question, please?

Jenny Thomson 43:50

I’m going to pass this one to Anna. So somebody’s asked, Does domestic and family violence impact the workplace more over this period? Absolutely, you’re already shaking your head

Anna Feringa  44:03

absolutely but I’m going to give you just a little tidbit before I break into why just quickly domestic violence. You would think that Christmas and the New Year’s Eve period is the highest in the year, but it’s actually not the highest records from all of the states and territories across Australia report the most domestic violence occurs at Grand Finals. You’re kidding. Whether it’s NRL or AFL, that’s where the highest spike is. And I just wanted to throw that in, because, I mean, domestic violence has just much like your graph with the breakups Graeme it there’s peaks of the year where it increases, but yes, a very close second is, is Christmas. So depending on what state and territory it can it can go from 24% increase right up to 100% increase to the median measurement. Across the year.

Graeme Cowan  45:02

Sure, Anna that would relate to men drinking a lot more at the Grand Final, right? Absolutely?

Anna Feringa  45:07

Yeah, absolutely. Or even, you know, you know, couples that are drinking, or friends that are drinking. And again, you know, as alcohol does, it distorts us, and it can make us additionally paranoid, or say the team loses. And I’m going to, you know, come home, come home, and take that out on someone. But also there is the, there’s the pressure that a lot of people feel with the build up to Christmas and then the Unleashing and so again, you know, everything on that day and around that period is to excess, socializing, drinking, decision making, pleasing is another big one. I know that’s that’s what exhausts me, is trying to please everyone and balance everyone’s personalities, and it’s exhausting. Yeah, yeah, with, with domestic violence, I don’t I think a lot of people on here would have a fairly good idea as to why. Number one cause is alcohol. Number two is family conflict with or without the booze. And number three is just that, yeah, that indulgent release of pressure, whether people choose to do it in a healthy way or not. And unfortunately, that does result in, yeah, a lot of domestic violence occurring.

Graeme Cowan  46:21

And for CEOs, I’d just like to share something I learned from Chris, who was the CEO of programmed, huge outsourcing group. He saw Rosie Batty speak and found out about, you know, the incidents in country towns, or incidents per 10,000 population. And they that time, I think, had 30,000 employees. And he said, Well, this is like a big country town. And so here, the executive team did something quite extraordinary. They said that we’re aware this problem. Want to support you through this problem. If anyone is experiencing this, please call these three people. And these people were on the executive team, they weren’t HR, they weren’t work or safety. They were on the top leadership team. And what he said is that we will give you unlimited support now what? What he now is board freaked out when he said that. He said, what we mean is that if they need money for lawyers, they did transport, they need security, we will provide it, no questions asked. And it led to a number of people, mainly women, calling these executive teams, so they got this incredible insight. So there are some really, really fantastic ways to address this, and we will send out after this, the the my conversation with Chris from programmed, if you’re interested in knowing more about this next question.

Jenny Thomson 48:07

Oh, this one will pass to you. Graeme, so what would be your top tips for managing those dress levels at Christmas?

Graeme Cowan  48:18

I think like I just share some background that I really crashed and burned. You know, I was out of work for five years. I never thought that I’d be productive again. But actually I was, I’m up here in Foster, beautiful Foster, and I was at that time my parents were alive, and I was living with them because I couldn’t look after myself. Remember being really, really sorry for myself and saying to my mom, why

me, why me? And she said, I believe you use this situation to help other people. And I thought she was crazy, but it did sow a seed, and what I came to understand is that we do have a huge influence over our mood. And Professor Sonia Mirsky has a book called The upside of happiness, and she says three things impact our mood, there’s our genetics, there’s the events that happen to us, and then there is what we choose to do each day. Now I always bring this up where I’m doing a keynote with a room, and ask me, What do you think is the biggest contributor, and usually the top ones, they say, are the events or what you do each day. But the actual largest impact is our genetics. You know, some people just have a predisposition to struggling more, and they’ve done this and found this out through separated identical twins. So we have so if genetics is 50% events is only 10% but 40% is what we choose to do each day. And so I talk about three elements of wellbeing. There’s vitality, which is our physical health. You know that’s eating well, moving well. Well, resting. Well, there’s intimacy, which is our social connections the people around us, whether at work or whether at home. And you know, there’s another extraordinary research by Gallup. It says, If you strongly agree that you have a best friend at work, your engagement just goes through the roof. So relationships at work are really important. The longest well being study ever done is the Harvard adult development study. Started in 1929 and went followed 600 men until they died. And there’s one overwhelming finding, and that was that those that have the longest life, the longest sex life, the most affluent life, the lowest stress, are those that had caring and supportive relationships around us. So really think about who are your green zone crew that you need to stay in contact with during this period of time. And finally, is prosperity, which is how our career well being. And this isn’t necessarily just just paid career, it could be volunteering, you know, with your local sports club or church or charity, and people have a sense of purpose, who feel they’re making a difference outside themselves, have very, very strong sense of well being. You know, with charities or people that are volunteers, they call it helpers high it’s an actual thing that does help those things happen, and those three things, vitality, intimacy, prosperity. VIP is the acronym, and so I invite you all to act like a VIP in the walk up to Christmas. You make sure you top up. You know your physical well being, your emotional well being, and your contribution and career well being.

Jenny Thomson 51:39

Next question, we’re going to move now to the crew care section. So a question for Anna, what signs should we be looking out for if we are monitoring our team for burnout?

Anna Feringa  51:53

There is a lot of a lot of signs, actually, and this applies it to any time of the year. And the classic one is, obviously, you know, the workload and end of year stress. So people are still coming to work. They’re trying to meet deadlines because, you know, classically, things need to be completed, or at least proposed, by the end of the year. So there’s a lot of PACE pressure, plus obviously, personal pressure, because of the period of time there’s the pressure to participate. So, you know, people are going to feel a lot more anxious, and they’re going to be quite negative, and you’re going to, you may even witness reduce effectiveness. I’ve seen a couple of workplaces, actually. I’ve seen a lot of workplaces that get this so very wrong, because if you’re if you’re distracted, you don’t have your your eye on the prize at work, and you start making mistakes, we generally automatically start to kick into performance management. And sometimes this person just needs a conversation and a bit of relief. So that’s one thing I’m very committed to improving. Across Australia, people are going to have disturbed sleep. They’re going to, you know, they’re going to have emotional distance from work. You might notice people will be, you know, not attending, you know, the Friday afternoon drinks because they’re burnt out, or they’re coming to those Friday afternoon drinks and wiping themselves out. So there’s, there’s, they’re going to take more sick days. They could be self medicating. But mostly, I think, and I’m about making things simple for leaders of all levels is just look for a change in performance and a change in behavior. That’s all you need to remember, okay, is performance and a change in behavior that’ll give you your green light to go in and ask someone if they’re all right.

Jenny Thomson 53:34

100% so Graeme, what’s the best way to casually build on your relationship with staff, perhaps in a social event without crossing any lines.

Graeme Cowan  53:45

Yeah, it’s interesting. There’s been lots of, you know, publicity around really not great things that happen in the workplace with parties and late night and drugs, and it’s a formula for things going on the line. And, you know, I think a big element is really considering, you know, the environment you have when you’re having a celebration with the group. And my wife, Karen, she’s a very successful cancer researcher, she leads the world in knowing the most cost effective way to eliminate cervical cancer. And her team have put together the plan for Australia, which will be the first country in the world to eliminate cervical cancer. Extraordinary, isn’t it? But you know, I was just speaking to her yesterday, and two of her people said, you know, we’ve got a we’ve got a really celebrate what we’ve achieved, what we’ve done. You know, we just move forward so quickly. And so team really thought about all the things that happened, and they decided to have something in the office. Decided not to go out. They decided to have food brought in. They decided to, you know, just celebrate the major highlights they’d had. They asked people to share, you know, what’s happening for them over this period of time, but it’s just built this sort of general excitement. And I think that, you know, they had some grog there or some wine, but you know, it’s not going to be a big deal. And so it is being intentional. You know, it’s great to celebrate these things, but you know, just know that certain things are high risk, and you’re best off to plan for that and avoid that high risk side of things. And you know, Melo, Melo and Anna love to get your thoughts about this as well.

Jenny Thomson 55:46

So a question for Melo kind of touched on this before with Graeme, but some of you, we’re all juggling a lot of balls. We’ve got family, we’ve got work, we’ve got social engagements. How do we keep ourselves safe?

Melo Calarco  55:59

Good question, and it is this time of the year, is it exaggerated version of it? Because it happens all the way through the year. Typically, if you ask somebody, how are you how you going? What’s the response? I’m busy. I’m busy. There’s so much going on, so much going on. So what I try to do is actually help them to categorize what they’re busy with. So ask them a specific question, so what are you busy with? And they often can’t answer it, because there’s just so many things our family and and friends and workload and all those sort of things. So I think one of the best exercises to do is to really compartmentalize and categorize different areas of your life. It could be family life, it could be your work life, it could be your finances at the moment, at the end of the year, obviously, you know, counting all that it could be your own self care and all those things you need to do. And if you categorize each of those, put them as a separate title, then put underneath that all the things you need to do for that thing, you know, what do you need to do for your family? What do you need to do for your finances? What do you need to do for your workload? And also put the things you’re not going to do before the end of the year, because that’s always a big thing at this time of the year, it’s kind of crazy. We have all year to catch up with friends, but then suddenly, like, December, it’s like, oh, we need to catch up before Christmas, and it’s only three weeks to go. So it’s like, let’s just put things in their place. What are the things we can do and what are the things we’re not going to do, and it’s okay to say no to you’ll

Graeme Cowan  57:25

notice the three questions as well on this, on this model. And this actually came from when I interviewed Emma Hogan, and at that point she was the secretary, aka the CEO, for the Department of

customer service in New South Wales, 15,000 people, lots of, you know, different parts of it, including, you know, WorkSafe and lots of other things like that. But I interviewed her for the caring CEO, and she just basically came up and said, Well, I, you know, really like to ask these questions all the time, am I okay? Are we okay? Are you okay? And as you can see, it perfectly aligns with the three components of this model, so managers and also anyone can play a role in considering what’s the answer to those questions, and what can we do about

Jenny Thomson 58:22

it? Jenny, before we send all our staff off, what’s the best way to to advise them in recharging so that they can sort of overcome high levels of fatigue and strong emotions?

Anna Feringa  58:33

I think that one’s for mellow.

Melo Calarco  58:39

I can continue. Yeah, I think it’s like giving yourself permission to stop, giving yourself permission to slow down and not feel guilty about it. It’s so easy to get caught up in the mania and the busyness of all this period of time. But actually, the hardest challenge that I have when I’m working with my clients is actually doing doing, doing is not always productive. So you know, giving yourself permission to slow down, to stop, to pause, to have renewal breaks, to have recovery breaks, most people are on this fast treadmill notched up at 11 right now, trying to get to the finish line. But actually it’s more productive. If you stop for five minutes, your next two hours will be more productive. If you stop for another two minutes, your next two hours will be more productive. So introducing recovery breaks into your day, and you’ve had a big year. So give yourself permission to slow down and stop, please.

Anna Feringa  59:32

I’ll tack on to that too, because it does scoop in both what you’ve said, Melo and Graeme, what you’ve said when I when I’m doing keynotes, I have a picture of a human with a low red battery, and then I actually have a mobile phone with a low red battery. And I said all of you wouldn’t take a second guess in trying to find the first available PowerPoint in this room, because your phone’s nearly on empty you’re going to go into it’s like when you’re about to run out of petrol. You know? To be fighting over it, whereas we just don’t seem to have that same sense of urgency or awareness for ourselves. And I also think that there still is a huge perception out there that self care is actually selfish, you know. So I hear people say it all the time. I probably shouldn’t have spent that much money, but I put myself in for a massage on Sunday, my question to them was, when was the last time you had a massage? Oh, a year ago. So, you know, it’s sort that we almost carry that sense of guilt for doing something kind for ourselves, and I see it in so many conversations.

Graeme Cowan  1:00:35

Great, Jenny, there’s a a red zone question there. Can you just read that out there? Yes.

Jenny Thomson 1:00:41

So this one will pass also to Anna, and this is about asking how to recover from trauma as a result of eight months of workplace bullying by management.

Anna Feringa  1:00:54

Look, it’s a difficult question because, I mean, there’s so many ways in which it could be responded to. I mean, there’s the litigious way, there’s the physiological and psychological way, but, you know, I think the first thing to do is to make sure that you’re seeking appropriate and professional help first, regardless of where the situation is. Now, I’m not backwards in coming forwards, and I’m not, I don’t run

from Justice either. But if something has affected you that much over that period of time, leave, and I know people want to get in there and fight, but you just, you have to put your health first. So it’s about, you know, getting that professional support, you know, you might want to go and have a few sessions with a psychologist or a counselor. There’s some great trauma counselors out there, and I would put them leaps and bounds above a lot of psychologists. You know, regardless of what the situation is, I’m not, I’m not sure of what the situation is, but it might have been resolved, and now it’s about rebuilding safety and trust if they’ve decided to hang around, you know, because and it does trauma, it erodes your psychological safety, and unfortunately, I do respond to workplace suicides, not from a clinical psychologist perspective, just as an additional org psych support. And you know, the there’s, there’s no studies done on it, essentially, Tony Lamon Tanya and Peter Kelly spoke about it at the University of Tasmania about work related suicides. And the result of it is that there’s a large component of these suicides that are related to the workplace and so, and if they’re not taking their lives, they’re living very, very poor ones because of they’ve got post traumatic stress, right? So it’s about finding the right help. And then, of course, you know, the company itself needs to have adequate policies and procedures, but some of them, I can just screw up and throw out the window people. People throw codes of conduct at me, and it’s all beautifully written, but it’s not practiced. So, you know, it’s that there’s a sense of organizational protection. But let’s talk about the person recovering, access treatment, evaluate your support services, so whether it’s your mates or your family, and then whatever situation that that person would be in at an eight month mark, if you’re still at work, re evaluate why and is it worth it? And number two, just make sure that you get an advocate in your corner to make sure that that you get, you get the right treatment, because there’s, you know, significant, polished up Regulations now around this stuff and companies have a bigger price, price to pay, and they can’t run. They can’t really run and hide as as often as what

Graeme Cowan  1:03:56

they used to. There’s a significant study that came out of Europe by a union basically looking at the cost of issues in the workplace, and they actually found that suicides, deaths by suicides, deaths by cardiovascular illness related to work accounted for 75% of the deaths versus physical accidents. And that conversation hasn’t been had in Australia. It hasn’t been measured. I remember speaking with Alex Cowley, who’s, you know, a academic that covers some of this area, and he wasn’t aware of anything Australia that did this. And he also said that there was some issues around how suicides were classified to make that happen, but it’s very, very, very real. And like you, Anna, I’ve spoken a number of workplaces following a suicide. And, you know, people are absolutely devastated. Not surprisingly, they’re absolutely devastated. Alright, well, thank you so much. We’ve had some wonderful questions to get through there, and we’ll be sending out the recording of this and and some of the resources we mentioned on the way. I also just want to tell you, I guess, a little bit about we care 365, and we really believe the largest untapped resource is a manager who wants to do the right thing but doesn’t know how. And I learned that massively in my 13 years with Are you okay? You know when we started, are you okay? In 2009 the number one reason why people didn’t ask in the workplace was they didn’t know how to start conversation and they didn’t know what to do. Someone said, No, I’m not okay. So I’ve always thought hugely about this side of things, and are you okay? It’s getting better and better at this but I think there’s also some things missing. So this is a program that the weekend 365 made, and my co founder of this is Brendan Carter. Brendan’s a real e learning expert. His team have won the Best e learning team in Australia for the last two years in a row. And he shared with me something really important about learning, and it applies to this as well.

Graeme Cowan  1:06:26

No matter how good we do a presentation, we’ll forget 75% in six days, unless it reinforced by space learning so with weekend Manager. This is, this is a 50 minute course that takes a manager through this takes it through scenarios. There’s a huge number of help sheets That’s right.

Graeme Cowan  1:06:55

Huge number of help sheets that will help people to make decisions. After you finish the course, you then get 12 nudge videos, and each of those videos of one to two minutes, which gives the manager a hint on how to put this information into action. And then we also have a client portal where there’s a whole lot of checklists, videos, help sheets that help to keep the momentum going, because this doesn’t happen in a day a week or a year. It’s got to be a multi year operation. Rome wasn’t built in day. And mental health workplaces certainly weren’t built in a day. And this is the framework that came from my fourth book. It’s how we identify someone who’s struggling. Anna just mentioned, change in mood, changing character, change in circumstances. Well, are they going through divorce or financial difficulties or having a parent die? So all those changes, that’s how we identify. See is for compassion and asking, are you okay? And listening with empathy, and that’s the most important part. Open ended questions, probing, probing until they feel that they have shared what’s really going on. Access experts. How do they find a good GP, a good psychologist and an EAP? Revitalizing work is the science of recovery that tells us, in the vast majority of cases, we are better off being connected with our teammates than sitting at home by ourselves recovering from what happened to us. It may mean cutting back workload hours or whatever, and finally, eat for exercise. You know, exercise is a great one to put in place. But despite it being so simple, you know, we’ve had organizational psychologist review it. And, you know, say, friends. When he first did our course, he said, I wish I had this when I started the job, it would have taken me, saved me so much time and grief. And you know, we’ve had the good fortune to roll this out with fujisu, firstly, to train every manager they had in Australia, then roll it out to APAC in the in the Asian region, and we are now rolling out in four languages globally. This isn’t just a this works, and they obviously wouldn’t roll it out unless they got great feedback and see changes in behavior. You know, another amazing organization, Aldi, have used it to train 2500 managers. We also have a shorter version, which is about 25 minutes, and trade 15,000 employees. And you know, these are some of the companies that work with and have tried it. You know, you might notice their Nova Scotia Health, you know, we’ve got partners in Canada who have put it into whole health province. And Anna, you’d be pleased to see this city of Newcastle. This is one of Anna’s clients, and she did a lot of the strategy and working. With the top team, but she was in a position to train all the managers there. So she introduced us to do a custom version for city of Newcastle with photos of their people in their situation. And you know, it how to have a really big impact. SPC, that are there, you know, an Australian food icon, they they have every person go through. We care when they come on. So even illiterate or people with a English as a second language, they have it go through. It’s part of part of the onboarding, and that’s why they really want to build that capacity in the organization. So today, you know, hopefully you’ve heard from us about why this is really critical. Hopefully you’ve also heard about, you know, Christmas and the strains and stresses around it and practical cases. As I said, we’ll send that long form article I wrote and showed on screen a bit for about the five mood vampires for Christmas, Q and A, you know, thank you so much for to Anna and Melo and for helping us with this. And you know, I really, sincerely wish that each of you has a good Christmas. You know, do the things as Melo talked about, as Anna talked about, be proactive about keeping yourself well. And I talk about a number of strategies in my long form article as well. So be safe and have a great holiday coming up.

Melo Calarco  1:11:41

Thank you, thank you, bye, bye. All the best for

Attendees  1:11:46

attending, guys, thank you. Thank you everyone.

Anna Feringa  1:11:53

Thank you. Thanks all.

Graeme Cowan  1:11:59

Oh, there’s Cassandra Jordan,

Anna Feringa  1:12:02

yeah, thanks, yeah, I’m fine. Graeme, yeah, yeah, I’m good. I’m really good. To be on your webinar again.

Graeme Cowan  1:12:13

Thank you. Thank you. And when we last spoke, I think you’re in the library, the healthcare library, sort of areas you’re involved.

Anna Feringa  1:12:21

Yes, I’m a Yep, health information manager. Still, I’m just taking a break from work just to support my husband and son. My son’s now second year lawyer, so he’s We’re just helping him out and but all good. Graeme, doing whatever I can and doing still doing a lot for my profession. So great. And it’s always inspirational to attend your webinars and spread the word.

Graeme Cowan  1:12:55

Thank you. That’s very, very kind, and thanks, Graeme, Anna and Melo will include you in the follow up email.

Anna Feringa  1:13:03

And yes, thank you. And it will, will find the camera here a video.

Graeme Cowan  1:13:11

But we will also, I think we’d be able to turn it into a podcast. So we’ll, you know, it’s wonderful. It was the final podcast of the year for the caring CEO,

Anna Feringa  1:13:23

yes, yeah, you’ve had a big year. Yeah,

Graeme Cowan  1:13:25

has been a big year? Yeah? Yes,

Anna Feringa  1:13:27

very, very active.

Graeme Cowan  1:13:30

Thanks so much everyone. Thank you. Really appreciate

Anna Feringa  1:13:32

your time. I have a good have a good Easter. Easter, Christmas. Oh, where’s the year gone?

Graeme Cowan  1:13:41

Thanks, for having bye. Bye, you.

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