You can use the staff meeting to quickly measure a specific aspect of psychosocial working conditions, such as conflict between colleagues, stress, uncertainty about changes at the shop, etc.
Read below about how you can use different meeting formats, how you can prepare for the meeting and get advice for the chair of the meeting. Also, download different tools you can use during the meeting.
Prepare for the staff meeting
A well-prepared meeting is usually more effective, and you’ll get better results Therefore, you should consider the following before the meeting:
- What do we want to achieve from the meeting? Should the meeting be about psychosocial working conditions in general? Or do we want to focus on a specific aspect of psychosocial working conditions, such as stress, conflict, and bullying, or do we want to follow-up on an unpleasant incident such as a robbery or a conflict with a customer at the shop?
- How should the meeting take place? When and where should we meet? Who should participate? How much time do we have for the meeting? Who will be chairing the meeting? Who will take minutes and sum up? How should we invite the participants? Verbally, by e-mail, via the notice board, or …?
The quick method: A short and focused meeting
If you want to address a specific aspect of psychosocial working conditions at a small workplace, a quick staff meeting is a good place to start. The meeting will help you put in words your experiences and thoughts about the topic. At the end of the meeting, you can all assess whether there is a need to launch initiatives.
- If this page has a video about the topic, you can start by watching the film and then talk about it afterwards: What is it like at our workplace? Watch the videos here.
- If there’s no film about the topic, the chair of the meeting can give a short presentation on the subject. You can then use the form Three questions about the work environment. Everyone completes the form, and you can use what you’ve written as a basis for your subsequent discussion.
- Sum up the discussion: Is there a need to take measures to improve the situation? What can we do? You can also use one of these two forms: Solutions and measures and Action plan.
The horseshoe: A quick appraisal of the situation
The horseshoe can be used to quickly measure your psychosocial working conditions at the shop, or a specific aspect such as stress, conflict or communication.
Mark a scale of 1 to 10 on the floor, for example in the shape of a horseshoe. Mark the scale using a rope or notes on the floor from 1 to 10, with 1 indicating “the worst” and 10 indicating “the best”.
The chair of the meeting should ask the participants to place themselves on the scale according to their experience of the psychosocial working conditions at the shop right now. Ask participants to move places according to how they experience for example:
- Workloads
- Demands at work
- Problems with conflict, threatening behaviour or violence
- Job satisfaction
- Psychosocial working conditions in general
Ask the participants to talk to each other in pairs:
- Why are you standing on this number?
- Why are you here and not further down the scale?
- What would it take for you to move higher up the scale?
- Look at the overall distribution on the scale: What does this make you think?
- What would specifically need to change for us to move in a more positive direction?
Present and collect all proposals, so that management and the health and safety group can use them in their further work.
The meeting as part of a longer process
The staff meeting can also be part of a long process, such as follow-up on an employee satisfaction survey or a health and safety risk assessment (APV). Or the meeting can be part of the actual APV process.
- Health and safety risk assessment using the dialogue method: Read below how you can use the staff meeting as part of your efforts to map and analyse psychosocial working conditions. The guide describes how you can prepare, conduct and sum up a long staff meeting. See Health and safety risk assessment with the dialogue method.
Forms and teels for staff meetings
12 short films for inspiration about 12 aspects of psychosocial working conditions, from stress and bullying to influence and social support. Choose the most relevant film and use it as the basis for your discussion at the meeting.
- Watch the films here.
Form: Three questions about your working environment: Use this form to find out what works well at our shop and what needs to be improved. Discuss your responses and find common solutions.
- Download form: Three questions about the work environment.
Form: Solutions and measures: A short form to write down a description of a problem in your psychosocial working conditions, the causes of the problem, and the solutions you have decided to use.
- Download form: Solutions and measures.
Form: Action plan: A short form that you can use as a template for an action plan for the health and safety risk assessment (APV): You can write a short description of what you want to address, who will be responsible for what, when you plan to finish, and how you will follow up.
- Download form: Action plan.
Chatterbox on psychosocial working conditions: Use the chatterbox (also called a paper fortune teller) at a staff meeting, for example, as a basis for discussing the psychosocial working conditions at the shop. Talk to each other using the chatterbox, either in pairs or in small groups.
- Download Chatterbox psychosocial working conditions (in Danish only).
Form: Four questions about social capital: If you want to address the subject of social capital at a small shop with up to 15 employees, you can use this form.
- Download form Four questions about social capital.