Stress

There is little doubt that regardless of your station in MSIS that there is stress and stressors we are in the context of every day, every hour and for some...every blog post.  We are quite deliberately in an area of service that is often viewed as the cause of and solution to so many of the UMHS issues. Additional to that we have a couple long years of organization changes, process changes, methodology changes and so on. Here are a couple trends that I see albeit subjectively we should collectively pay more attention.

1.) Staff are not using their vacation and they should.

Your vacation is as much as part of your compensation as your salary. Not using your vacation or letting your vacation max out is not a badge of honor that you work harder than others and in some cases is throwing money out the window that is rightfully yours. We are doing more in the area of reducing our single points of failure and individual dependencies so that one person or technology cannot cause the whole darn place to fall apart. We do not want vacation to come at the price of insurmountable "digging out" upon your return.   Certainly there is an appreciation for individual expertise, but if you cannot take a vacation because of work that cannot continue on with out you, we have an obligation together to remedy that for your well being and the sustainability of the services we provide.

If you feel that you would like to use more of your vacation but the team or technologies are not allowing you to do so, I ask you treat this as an important issue to resolve with your supervisor or any member of the management team.

2.) Staff are not availing themselves of professional development in the discipline of reducing stress and overall mental wellbeing as much as they could.

UM HRD has a number of seminars and resources on how to address stress. Stress itself is not a personal failing. Everyone has stress and few have the skill-set to naturally manage it. Just like playing the clarinet, learning to manage stress takes instruction and practice.

Look here:
http://hr.umich.edu/mhealthy/programs/mental_emotional/index.html

3.) Forgive each other.

It sounds easy enough but I know that it is not. Every day we all have more on our to-do list than we have hours in the day. We are extraordinarily lucky to have the MSIS team work together as it does. So many of our peers do not get the same opportunities as we do but it comes at a higher price. Part of that price is that we are always working on new technologies, methods and relationships. Mistakes and missteps happen. Incorrect perceptions happen and indeed correct perceptions happen that we all need a little more leeway with. I am not asking you ignore or forget minor professional indiscretions, but I am asking you forgive them and work through them.