44 CONTEXT 183 : MARCH 2025 Notes from the chair Just one thing If, like me, you do most of your work from home, you may have listened to the late Michael Mosley’s series Just One Thing on Radio 4. These programmes, about improving your health in simple ways, are only 15 minutes long, so admirably fill a tea break. They cover anything from the benefits of standing on one leg to changes in diet and activities like volunteering. I will come back to that later. Post-Covid, many of us, whether self-employed or not, are spending more time working from home. This has led to many issues in terms of life/work balance, team building and mental health. It is now clear that there is increasing tension between employees who have become used to working at home for three or four days a week, and their employers who are requiring them to spend more time in the office. The effect of Covid on health and wellbeing in the workplace have yet to be fully analysed and appreciated, but recent reports have highlighted the exhausting effects of too many online meetings. Apart from that, there are many aspects of health and wellbeing in the workplace – and the workplace may be an office, site or home. The issues for each can vary. Angharad Hart’s article in this issue (page 23), ‘Workplace wellbeing in the heritage sector’, covers the issues very well. In my long career in local government I was fortunate to have had good employers and, in the main, supportive managers. One of the advantages of working for a larger local planning authority is that at a junior level you will be part of a team which will have peers who you can rely on to share (and offload to), and senior officers who can act as mentors and support training. I can appreciate that management practice varies enormously from authority to authority, and those potential benefits may be missing for those who have worked as a lone conservation officer in a small authority. Unless managers, and particularly development management officers, are on your side, what should be a fulfilling profession can be demoralising, to say the least. Making your voice heard can be just as difficult in the private and third sectors. We need to be effective advocates and educators about what we do in the workplace. That is easy to say, but when you are under pressure, finding the time and opportunity is a big ask. Following my retirement from local government and before Covid turned working practice on its head, I worked as an independent consultant, but my work at home was frequently broken up by meetings elsewhere and site visits. The improved life/work balance suited me, and there was still the social benefit of getting out and meeting others. I also valued the experience of being an active IHBC member, giving the opportunity to share professional experience with like-minded individuals as well as gaining valuable CPD. Which brings me back to Just One Thing. One of Michael Mosley’s programmes featured the benefits of practising yoga. I listened with great interest, because that has been my method over many years to unwind from the stresses of life and work. Mosley listed the many benefits of yoga, which included boosting the brain, lowering stress and reversing the effects of ageing. The latter was one characteristic that particularly appealed to me at my stage of life. Yoga, which originated in India, has been practised for thousands of years, bringing together physical and philosophical activity into a unified whole. It has been widely practised in the West since the end of the 19th century and recently has become extremely popular. I have attended yoga classes for over 30 years. There are many types of yoga. Today’s classes, which may be online or in person, usually consist of exercises, breathing and meditation. It is this connection of mind and body that is its strength in promoting physical and mental fitness. It has certainly served me well over the years, particularly during my period as conservation and design team leader at an inner London borough. It is the ‘just one thing’ that I would recommend as a stress buster to anyone in a pressurised work environment. Finally, I would encourage you all to complete the IHBC’s questionnaire on health and wellbeing, as recommended by Angharad Hart, when it comes to you. David McDonald, chair@ihbc.org.uk
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