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n-teaching employees, as front-liners in the office operations and services, perform daily routine of work which is focused on the tasks at hand. Similar with other organizations, the Malaybalay City Division non-teaching employees are not exempted from stress which may be attributed from the constant change and challenges in governance. Apparently, this ripples through the Office and de-motivates the entire workforce which most likely contributes to individual and organizational ineffectiveness. As pointed out by WebMB Medical (2013), stress is a fact of life which people may not be able to get rid but can look for ways.
Creating awareness enables the non-teaching employees learn how to manage stress and appreciate the value of teamwork and collaboration. As stated by Eliaz (2011), the importance of reducing stress is vital for maintaining overall health like improve one’s mood, boost immune function, promote longevity, and allow productivity. On the other hand, Healthfield (2014) emphasizes the development of a team-oriented environment that enables employees to produce positive results and attain success.
Considering this premise, this Office conducted a two-day seminar-workshop on stress management and team building which aims at creating a new level of enhancing their knowledge, skills, and abilities on managing stress and enabling them to experience a team-work focused context of team building and collaboration activities. This was conducted on May 26 & 27 at the Loiza’s Pavilion, Barangay Casisang, Malaybalay City through the extensive support of SDS Edilberto L. Oplenaria.
SDS Oplenaria talked about Stress Management and gave emphasis on disputing unreasonable beliefs, challenging unproductive emotions, negative beliefs, and elaborated on the main topic stress management. He discussed the concept of “ABCDE (A-Adversity, B-Beliefs, C-Consequences, D-Disputation, and E-Energization) Model” developed by Martin P. Seligman, Ph.D. which is a system for overcoming anxieties and fears that hinders us from facing up to challenging situations.
Team building activities include the orientation of the modules like the self-awareness activities (Module 1), NTE as Team builder (Module 2), NTE as Collaborator (Module 3), and NTE as Builder (Module 4). The camp jargons, de-inhibiters, getting to know you activity, expectation setting, full value contract, group name and yell, camp ground rules, and energizers was presented and executed. In every module, lecture-discussion of important concepts and principles, series of activities, debriefing, and processing questions were done.
Highlights of the activities include the tree of life, trust activities, teamwork activities and problem initiatives, collaboration activity, carousel, journeying the vision, revealing the secret angel, among others. In the concluding part, the participants crafted their vision and five core values (committed, goal-oriented, God-loving, pro-active, and service-oriented). This was facilitated by the author, Janice Maglangit, and Cecile Dayak. Meanwhile, Dhairyl Jean Fajardo served as the program in-charge. Two committees were organized such as the Planning Committee and Technical Working Group Committee for this purpose.
The leveling up of team building activities is also manifested in the high level of energy among participants which facilitators usually check in every team activity. Obviously, this high level of energy continued to magnify among them in their respective work stations even after the training. Having undergone this training, it is now the challenge of the non-teaching employees to apply it in the real workplace where incremental changes and challenges continue to take part in our daily work.
Due to the overwhelming success of this training, the MCD non-teaching employees extend gratitude to SDS Oplenaria, School Principal Pariso L. Orong, and co-employees for the warm gesture of support. To everyone, let us give ourselves five ups (limang taas) for a job well done! (more photos…)