Aldebol asks whether supervisors are trained to promote wellness programs
Aldebol asks whether managers are trained to remind employees about wellness programs; Pollack says OLR created a new communications division and acknowledges benefit communication needs improvement, while Outar notes stress and emotional intelligence courses.
Do you know if managers, supervisors are, I guess, trained to...
Talk to their employees about these programs.
You know, I know that if we've had an especially tough week, you know, I remind my staff that these programs are available, you know, and
you know, it's almost a constant reminder because people will just keep plowing along and not think about it.
So I'm just wondering if that's something that you've incorporated or if you know that the agencies have incorporated that in their, you know, kind of like training.
Supervisory training
to remind people that these are available to them.
Yeah, I can just speak initially and then turn to my DCAS colleagues.
So we work very closely with DCAS to provide information and work with them to get information out to agencies about these programs.
As I mentioned in my testimony, I think we have at OLR identified that this is an area where we can improve communicating about our benefits.
It's a hard city, a lot of employees, and we think there are a lot of people who probably don't have full knowledge of what we offer, and we can do better.
So, you know, I'll tell you that we've...
OLR, newly this year, has a communications division.
We never had a communications division before.
And one of something that is very important is communicating these benefits out to our employees.
So it's a priority for us to keep working at it.
And I can let my D-TAS colleagues speak to some of their role.
We also offer a lot of trainings around managing stress, emotional intelligence, as a part of our training catalogs.
And we do, those are some of the classes that we always see a lot of folks that are engaged in.
So each year we try to make sure that we have different courses that can just address the employee's well-being as a part of our training catalog.
And I would also add that in general, managers or supervisors may refer their employees to the agency's HR department who are trained and knowledgeable about the programs that may be available to employees who may need, you know, outside.
support.