As of August 2022, COVID-19 continues to affect our daily lives in physical, psychological, and financial ways. Many vulnerable individuals are struggling to adapt to returning to work and as a result, employee morale is at risk. In times of crises, empathy is needed in the workplace to support one another, but many leaders and employees may not…

Resilience training for Further Education (FE) managers has become an increasingly familiar aspect of management development. This paper challenges the accepted orthodoxies underpinning resilience as a 'learnable' skill required to succeed as a manager. In particular, it addresses the concepts of toxic positivity, growth mindset (Dweck) and Grit…

Mattering, a concept rooted in social psychology, holds significant implications for organizational leadership dynamics. This article provides an overview of exploration into the multifaceted role of mattering in organizational leadership. Mattering refers to the perception that one is essential and meaningful to others in a given context and its…

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified preexisting challenges for educators as manifested in high rates of work-related stress and burnout, and educators leaving the profession in higher numbers than ever before. In this article, we highlight the urgency for work-related well-being supports for educators, with a particular focus on system changes.…

There is a rising crisis in respect to teacher wellbeing, with emerging international literature indicating high levels of work-related stress, anxiety and/or depression, cited alongside an increasing exodus of teachers from the workforce. Within this available literature, teacher wellbeing terms are typically collated under frameworks of poor…

Anti-Blackness in the academy has the potential to negatively impact relationships between Black Women, which can ultimately influence Black women's retention and career advancement. Through an analysis of existing theories, including workplace friendships, Black feminist thought, and critical race theory, the authors first interrogate how…

Teacher attrition has become a pervasive international issue with research documenting teachers leaving the profession as an effect of several factors including poor working conditions and flawed policy contexts. Such research has been helpful in drawing attention to how the harsh realities of classrooms and schools can disillusion teachers,…

Many people with mental health issues are workless; despite this, good quality work is often promoted as beneficial for wellbeing. In this article, I explore my personal reflections about managing my experiences of mental distress in the workplace, whilst working as a senior lecturer in social work in the UK. The potential of Acceptance and…

This article sheds light on employee wellbeing. We reveal how an 'adapted' action learning intervention (a change laboratory) introduced prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK, enabled learning and action to emerge within an educational programme. We utilise the theoretical lens of activity theory to illustrate the challenges and tensions of…

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the practice of community-engaged scholarship and challenged internal and external boundary spanners to maintain and grow authentic and meaningful relationships. Female-identifying scholars and practitioners faced, and continue to face, extra personal and professional demands in the postpandemic era…

In this conceptual article the authors outline an approach to leadership in higher education that foregrounds attention to wholeness and wellbeing, framing emotion as inherent to the practice of leadership, with all organizing actions inseparable from and influenced by emotion. The article is framed within findings from their research on wellbeing…

The OECD teachers' occupational well-being framework contributes to understanding and measuring the occupational well-being of teachers between and within systems. It provides a pathway to explore the association between the quality of working environments and teachers' levels of occupational well-being. It also covers the association of teachers'…

The intensification of the working life of academics in the corporate world of higher education shaped by new public management, is the backdrop for an exploration of the appropriation of opportunities for silence and quietude through the operation of internalised disciplines of self-imposed control. The paper includes a review of selected…

The journalism industry and particularly the professionals it employs are facing considerable amounts of stress and tension in a living world that is now entangled by many issues and challenges. As a result, making a career in the realm of journalism has brought unique issues that can have a vital impact on the vocational well-being of…

The paper emanates from the Chancellor's address that I presented on the 5th of March 2019 at the University of South Africa. Betrayal Trauma Theory (BTT) was used as a lens in understanding toxic leadership in work places. BTT focuses on the ways in which toxic behaviour of leaders may violate or negatively affect trust and well-being of…