Humansolutions Bulletin - August 15th 2019

Stress is increasingly being recognized as a serious problem in the modern workplace. In this practice manual, Neil Thompson uses his decades of experience of helping people tackle stress to provide a clear and helpful guide to the key issues and lays the foundations for a positive and constructive response to the challenges involved. This is an essential guide for anyone wanting to keep pressures within manageable limits. Available for purchase along with many other books by Neil here or from the Avenue Learning Centre here.

In working with people emotions are never very far away. Being able to tune in to other people’s emotions, to be aware of our own and get the balance of head and heart right is often referred to as ‘emotional intelligence’. A key part of this is being able to tolerate silences. When someone is distressed or otherwise in the grip of strong emotions, they may fall silent, and that silence can feel very uncomfortable for us. We can be very tempted to jump in and ask a question or just fill the gap in some way. Understandable though this may be, it can be quite problematic because we are, in effect, giving the person concerned the message that dealing…

  Skills are vital in enabling individuals and countries to thrive in an increasingly complex, interconnected and rapidly changing world. Countries in which people develop strong skills, learn throughout their lives, and use their skills fully and effectively at work and in society are more productive and innovative, enjoy higher levels of trust, better health outcomes and a higher quality of life. This is your chance to debate the issues. The OECD Skills Strategy dashboard shows the UK is a relatively strong performer overall in developing and using people’s skills. However, the UK is not a leader in skills development and use. The comparatively low levels of basic skills among tertiary graduates in particular is a concern. There are important…

(Unless they want to) Humans are unique in their ability to willingly change. We can change our attitude, our appearance and our skillset. But only when we want to. The hard part, then, isn’t the changing it. It’s the wanting it. Click here to read more

Over the past decade, the narrative around inequality has changed dramatically. Inequality is now widely accepted as one of the – if not the – biggest issue of the 21st century. Think tanks and charities produce endless research and reports on inequality and its effects, but real people’s voices and stories of inequality specifically are not well evidenced in this work. There is currently no platform or forum providing information or access to the lived experience of inequality or its everyday impacts in the UK, especially not in an accessible way. There is also a general lack of shared knowledge about what it is like to experience inequality everyday, what that includes and how its specificities range across different contexts. We think…

Please click on the relevant link below Facebook page Facebook Social Work Focus group LinkedIn Twitter YouTube channel Neil’s website The humansolutions website Information about Neil’s online learning community, the Avenue Professional Development Programme