One of the largest employer’s expectation is to have staff who are proactive, productive, happy, fulfilled and with a positive attitude. Disappointing issue is when there is cases of absenteeism caused by bad health or other personal issues and sometimes this affects general productivity. One major challenge faced by most employees is the Nanny factor.

In the year 2016 World day for health and safety at work we were looking at workplace stress and the possible ways to identify, control, prevent and reduce stress in the most reasonable and practicable way. Some of the psycho-social and human factors hazards should be identified, eliminated, isolated or minimized to reduce stress at the workplace.

Most female employees misses work at an average of five times annually because of their nannies/house manager leaving their job without notice thus making the ‘boss’ not to report to work to attend to the house chaos. This will cause stress to the employee, employer and the fellow employee who will be tasked to also cover the duties of the absent staff.

We are conducting staff wellness awareness program on how to motivate and empower the nannies as part of the family member. We have a pediatric first aid/Life Saver for babies and children course, home safety awareness program, leadership, communication, character and integrity, change management, basic counseling and stress management, decision making, financial management ,food safety and nutrition among other issues which enables the nanny to act responsibly, professionally and motivated. This combined package is a 6 hours session(1 day) and is done inhouse at the company’s premises. Companies invite all the staff’s nannies and they are trained together for the 6 hours and they are also given some goodies to motivate them to work as part of the family and also view themselves as valued members and theirs is  just like any other profession. We also do have church based and residential training. https://youtu.be/TRXvu_6Gm_o

Some of the companies have been sponsoring the training fully where the training is conducted on a Saturday and all the staff are requested to remain at home and allow the nannies to attend the training at the company’s training room. The company also facilitate for other motivational talks and activities for the nannies and from our point of view the impact has always been marvelous. The attached picture is part of a group that we trained and I took them through Home safety and basic first aid.

Workplace stress is a collective challenge that we need to take both individual and collective responsibility to identify, prevent and reduce it.

Let us join our hands to build a culture of safety and wellness at all places and at all the time.

Email training@makinikaafrika.org for any inquiries on the same.