The nation remains in a state of perma-crisis with pressure and stress. In the 2022 Workplace Health Report, around a third of people report moderate to high stress. The Mental Health Foundation places 74 per cent of adults feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope in the last year. This is acute in public services and also arguably driving resulting personal crises in our staff.
For FE leaders this raises, in some cases, existential questions as to whether it is even possible to lead a college healthily under these conditions. What might our leadership response be?
David Rock in a recent Harvard Business Review considered the concept of “quiet quitting” stating “in the face of persistent and inescapable stressors people often respond by giving up. When nothing is in your control why event try?”
