Reflective Journal Essay

Before the main discussion of the reflective journal, the author would firstly like to identify that how the â€Å"organisational wellness† subject affected her. In the beginning, the author chose this subject due to the reqirement that she must choose six units of third-year level to complete her degreee. And she didn’t have any knowledge about this subject before she decided to choose it. When she attended the first lecture of â€Å"organisational wellness† , she only has abstract and vague concept of the unit learning objectives. After the ten weeks’ learning, she has clearer and better understanding of herself and she has known some important concepts which should be considered when addressing the wellbeing problem in the workplace. On the whole, the author will review the material that learned in this subject many times in the future. And the material that she learned in this subject may assist her to solve the relevant problems in her future working life. To achieve this goal, this reflective journal will concentrate on six topics that were covered in this unit. The author will present her understanding of these topics and how these topics can assist to address the wellbeing problems in the workplace. Moreover, the author will illustrate the reasons why these topics are memorable and helpful in the future. Farrell and Geist-Martin’s Wellness Model: The first topic which included in the reflective journal is quite positive to me. It helps me to know the fundamental framework of â€Å"Wellness Model†. And I had a clearer conception of â€Å"Organisational Wellness† after I attended week two’s lecture and read the relevant material about this topic. This is the first topic that covered in the reflective journal. And it is one of the important topic in this subject. It introduced the framework of wellness model and it montioned some concepts that would be covered in other topics. Farrell and Geist-Martin(2005) developed a model of working well. It includes two parts of identities which are organisational health ideologies and individual health ideologies. The figure below shows that Farrell and Geist-Maritin’s (2005) working well model. Figure 1: Model of Working Well The organisational health ideologies include the following four elements: 1) mission, vision, values, and goal statements that incorporate and communicate a working-well philosophy; (2) mechanisms that allow employees to provide feedback about the wellness program; (3) upper management to support the working-well philosophy; (4) a continuous system that allows employees to evaluate the financial, social, environmental, organisational and personal health of the wellness program. And the individual health identities involve four elements as well. It consists of psychological health, physical health, social health and spiritual health. The aim of the â€Å"Working Well Model† is to develop an efficient and accurate wellness program. And the organisations want to improve employees’ production and work efficiency through the â€Å"Working Well Model†. Moreover, as the figure above shows that organisational health ideologies should express their message and idea of wellness to the employees. And then, the employees would give some feedback to the organisations. For instance, employees’ view of wellness and health. The organisations can improve the wellness program according to the feedback of employees. Farrell and Geist-Martin(2005) claimed that the organisation need to know individual’s view of health and wellness and how they response to organisational health ideologies. If the organisation fail to negotiate with employees, the wellness model would not be successful. Therefore, it is important for the organisation to communicate with employees, otherwise they would not develop an efficient and accurate wellness program. However, the organisation’s view of health ideologies may different from the individual’s. For example, the health ideologies of Telstra focus on the economic and productivity goal. There were some news reported that some employees of Telstra can not afford the work stress and chose to end their lives in 2007. Cubby (2007) wrote that employees’ suicide were related to the extreme work stress in Telstra. According to the news, Greg Winn, Telstra’s chief operations officer said that â€Å"WE RUN an absolute dictatorship and that’s what’s going to drive this transformation and deliver results. † (Cubby, 2007) Furthermore, Greg Winn claim that the employees in Telstra must try any measures to persuade customers to accept the service that they offered. And Telstra were tracking employees’ productivity. If the employees don’t operate and satisfy the superior’s reqirement, they would be fired from Telstra. As such a workplace environment with extreme pressure to meet Telstra’s goal and get profit, some employees committed suicide. Hence, the organisation should not only focus on the economic goal, but also should know emloyees’ view of health identities. If they just focus on the economic goal and ignore employee’s health, the productivity of employees would lower than normal level or even worse. Also they may lead to negative effects on employees. In a word, the â€Å"Model of Working Welll† is important to the organisations and individuals. After I learned this topic, I realized that we should consider both perspectives of health ideologies. If the organisation or individual just consider their own benefit but ignore another party’s perspective, the wellness program would not efficient. Moreover, I consider I will apply these concepts to evaluate my health level in the future. If the organisation force me to fulfil an impossible target, I will speak up and do anything I can to protect my walfare and rights. In addition, when I work in a company, I need to consider the organisation’s perspective and my own perspective of health ideologies. It is important to think these two perspective of health ideologies instead of considering personal’s perspective only. Once the organisational’s perspective and personal perspective of health ideologies are quite different from each other, the two parties should communicate with each other to work out the problems. Thus, the â€Å"Model of Working Well† help me to develop an overview of â€Å"Organisational Wellness† and introduce some concepts which are useful to organisations to create a wellness program. And I knew the importance of thinking health ideologies by different angles. Physical Health Identities: This topic has been included in the reflective journal for reasons that helped me identify the symptoms of stress and gave me some idea to release my stress. Another reason for covering this topic in the reflective journal due to the great impact on my stress management and stress awareness. Also, it is the second topic which covered in the reflective journal. This topic is one of the most important and useful topic for me to cover. And the aterial of this topic is quite interesting. Furthermore, this topic can help me to aware the stress symptoms and stress level in the future. And it will allow me to manage my stress in a better method on the basis of stress symptoms and stress level. Before I knew that we should track our stressors for five weeks as an assessment of â€Å"Organisational Wellness†, I haven’t realized that this semester’s stressors have some impact on my study life. I took three compulsory units and one elective unit in this semester. And two of them are quite difficult. Though I knew in advance that this semester would be tough enough for me, I still think so positive and optimistic of these stressors. And I believe that I have got the ability to handle these challenges. Unfortunately, I overstated my ability to deal with the stressors. The stressors came too fast and I haven’t got enough time to deal with these challenges. Moreover, the stressors began to affect on my daily life and my physical health. When I started to record and track my stressors and the symptoms that raised by stress, I realized that the stressors have some impact on my physical health. During these five weeks, the major stressors included the class test, writing the assignment, overcommitted and difficulties with parents. Other stressors involves changing in sleeping habit, sense of overload in school, performing in front of a class, and lack of sleep. Moreover, there were a series of stress events which contained the relationship with friends became worse, family affairs, and the noncooperation among the group member when we planned to do the presentation. The class test and writing the assignment led to highly stressful in week 4. Because the class test was counted as part of my final result. And it was the first time that I took that kind of short answer test. The assignment was another major stressor in week 4 due to the degree of difficulty. I was so worry about that I couldn’t finish the assignment on time. In addition, other stressors led to moderately stress among these weeks. After few weeks, too many challenges were presented to me at the same time. And it beyond my capability to fulfil and operate these challenges. I began to feel the stress and the stress level became more and more higher. Thereafter, the symptoms of stress has appeared. They included powerlesness, depression, irritable, headaches, backaches, insomnia, anxiety, physical weakness and have sleeping difficulties. When I was tracking the stressors, I reviewed some materials which include lecture notes and reading on physical health identities. After I reviewed the materials of physical health identities, I found out that there was a similar pattern has appeared between the stressors and my physical health symptoms. In week 3’s reading from Halpern(2005), he mentioned that there was a relationship between physiology and job-related stress. And he also pointed out that the conflict between two aspects of one’s job would lead to job stress. For example, employees need to complete a hugh amount of work within a limited time and maintain the accuracy, or while other roles and responsibilities have conflict with job demands (Halpern, 2005). For me, the conflict between two aspects of one’s job may refer to my study life and my family affairs. Moreover, I believe that there were some conflict between my individual roles and responsibilities in these weeks. Because I have many assignments and tests to complete for my study and I also have some family affairs to resolve. There were some conflict between the roles. And I could not fulfil these tasks at one time. During the period of recording and tracking my stressors and stress symptoms, I tried some measures to release my stress. The methods included jogging, having a chat with close friends, watching funny movies, preparing the relevant materials that need to review and so on. These methods helped me to release some stress during these five weeks. Therefore, the physical health identities help us to realize the symptoms of the stress. And then we can try to manage our stress according to the symptoms of stress and stress level. If we know the extent of our stress, we can find out more suitable method to manage the stress. It will be useful in my future’s work life because there are more stressors in the workplace. Spiritual Health: The third topic has been included in this reflective journal is about â€Å"Spiritual Health†. I did not quite understand the real meaning of â€Å"Spiritual Health† before I read the weekly reading material and attended the tutorial. And I didn’t think about â€Å"Spiritual Health† so deeply before I attended the lecture. My understanding of â€Å"Spiritual Health† was only on a superficial dimension. Spiritual Health† is a quite abstract and difficult topic for me to understand. Because it can not be totally explained by words. In my own opinion, spirit is the thing that truely inside everyone’s heart. Mitroff and Denton(1999) stated that â€Å"spirit is the basic feeling of being connected with one’s complete self, others and the entire universe†. In other words, no one can force you to accept their point of view. Because everyone has his or her own value of the world, the society and other things. These values that people believe are shaped in people’s childhood. And the society that people stay would have an impact on personal value as well (Rokeach, 1973). Hence, once individual has formed his own value, it will be difficult to persuade him to change his value. When I was taking the tutorial of this topic, I began to think more deeply of my spiritual health. Especially, after I heard other classmates’ thoughts of the things that they experienced during the tutorial. Howell (2005) pointed out that spirituality is a continuous process to find its deeply meaning and purpose in our life. However, the problem that I faced on was I even didn’t realize the spirituality’s importance and I didn’t begin my process to find the meaning and purpose in my life. I grew up in a traditional family and my parents arranged all the things for me include the schools and the major I took in the university. Until now, I have entered into the second year of the course in the university, I still haven’t think about what kind of job would I take in the future. The one really inside me has not been discovered yet. I didn’t have got the things that I really want to do in the past few years. The truly me has not been concerned before I noticed the importance of spiritual health. Thus, I tried to dig out that who I really am. However, how to improve the current thought and understanding of spiritual health inside myself is an intractable problem. If you just simply object to others’ opinion, for example your parents, or escape from the current environment you live, that would not change anything. You just try to escape from the reality. The way of digging out your own spirit is to find out the things that you really want to do and the things that you worth to do. It is important to seek the meaning of our life. We don’t live for other people. We live for ourselves. If we couldn’t find out the things we want to do, the life would lose its meaning. And we might lose the purpose of living in this soceity. Everyone has his or her own value of their lives. It is difficult to evaluate whether other people’s spiritual world is happiness or not. One day, I was watching the news on TV and that news really impressed me. The content of the news was about some children in remote area need to tramp over mountains and through ravines to arrive at the school. The mountains that they need to climb are quite steep and dangerous. When the journalist asked them whether the study life like this is tough, most of them thought it was normal in their daily life. Though the road to the school was tough, they still feel happy because they can study lots of knowledge in the school. I was really impressed by these children’s words. They enjoy the things that they were doing and they think the things were worth to do, though that seems very tough to others. They satisfy with their daily life and feel very happy. But when we think about ourselves, we always complain the society and the daily life. Our lives are inundated with dissatisfaction. Maybe this is due to people who live in a better environment have gain too much and they still desire for more things. Based on this understanding, I decided that I need to work hard in the future and try my best to help the children in China who are in remote area. If I have the qualification to teach these children, I would volunteer to help them. It is a long and difficult process to dig out my own sense of spirituality but I’m trying my best to do it. Overall, the spiritual health is a very difficult topic to understand. Both organisational and personal spirituality are important to us. Though I didn’t metion the organisation’s spirituality in the discussion above because I haven’t got any experience of it. To an individual, if he know the meaning of his life and he has got the living purpose, he might live better in his life. Because he has the appetency to success in his life. For me, the spiritual health is important as well. And I’m trying to find out my own spirituality. Moreover, I have realized the importance of the spirituality in the workplace, and hope my better understanding of spirituality can help me to find a suitable job. And it may allow me to have a better performance in my future workplace.