Supporting students’ health and wellbeing on placement

While you’re in education, taking part in a work placement can be a fantastic way to build real-life experience. Depending on your placement, you may experience a change of pace that throws your usual routine off-balance, or you may be in a sector that involves working long hours. And if you don’t keep your mental and physical wellbeing in check, it can quickly lead to burnout. For some students, especially those who are younger, it might be your first experience in the working world, so support is absolutely necessary to not only succeed, but thrive.

The struggles of placement

Taking part in a workplace placement can be an exciting time for students, but it can also lead to nervousness and apprehension. You may feel a sense of imposter syndrome, especially if you were selected to take part on the placement over others. You may worry that you aren’t prepared to be in the workplace or worried that you won’t get on with colleagues. All of these thoughts and feelings are perfectly valid. Here are some common concerns students face on work placements, as well as ways to overcome them.

Work-life balance

Due to the nature of a workplace placement, you may essentially be working full-time hours with complete workplace responsibilities for your role, alongside college or university coursework. This can be an awful lot to get your head around. Add basic life admin such as food shops, cooking, cleaning, exercise and maintaining a social life, this can become overwhelming. Without the right support and boundaries. this can lead to burnout, and possibly stress, depression or anxiety, which may cause the quality of your work to decline. This can add further stress, creating a vicious cycle.

To manage this, you can try blocking time out of your day to dedicated tasks and/or commitments. For example, this might involve creating a dedicated morning routine, specific mealtimes, having certain days for life admin, develop a set sleeping pattern etc. Doing this leaves time you can set aside for academic responsibilities, coursework, training, and then you can identify times for exercise, socialising and general self-care to be able to effectively maintain the work placement lifestyle without sacrificing performance.

Financial difficulties

Student work placements can be extremely beneficial to your future career prospects, as well as be incredibly rewarding in the work that you carry out. But with it might come some financial worries. This is primarily due to the regular financial struggles of being a student, in combination with low or no pay from your placement. You may need to pay extra for transport to your placement or pay increased fees for specific accommodation.

There may be a myriad of other factors that might influence your financial circumstance during placement, including the fact that certain courses where placement is required and there are reduced, or zero tuition fees may result in decreased bursaries and loans. In such circumstances, there are the standard approaches you can take to manage money such as effectively budgeting on a term-by-term, month-by-month, week-by-week, etc. basis, and keeping complete track of your finances.

Intense workloads

As has been established, work placements during academic study can be stressful for some due to the level of responsibility and workload they must juggle. It may feel as though new tasks are coming through every single day whilst you are still trying to stay on top of learning and developing your skills during placement. If you begin to fall behind in either your development or academic work for whatever reason, it can negatively impact work performance and grades.

That’s why stress management will be key to avoiding overwhelm, as it can negatively impact every aspect of your focus during placement. If you do feel you are struggling with the workload, it is best you speak to your tutors, access student counselling, consult trainers and manager on your placement to discuss your concerns and get the necessary support.

1. Preparing for placement

To manage your responsibilities during placement, you have to do the necessary preparation to succeed. The difficulty with this is knowing where to start, especially if it is your first job in the world of work. We have compiled a few tips to help you prepare for placement which will give you the head start you need to manage the pressures:

2. Research your placement location

Much like when moving away from home to a new location to continue your education, entering a new place of work you are unfamiliar can be daunting, especially if you are fresh to the industry and are still developing your skillset. Researching the details regarding your work placement such as what the role entails, the organisational culture, and travel time from your home to the site, may alleviate some of your initial apprehensions.

3. Set goals

Student placements set you up to succeed in an industry or even to simply understand if this is the career for you. To ensure you are getting what you want or need out of the opportunity, it is necessary to set goals for yourself. These goals can be specific, and skill based such as “I will be able to perform this responsibility by the end of my placement’ or it can be slightly vaguer and be based around an attribute such as wanting to feel more confident and assured. Whatever it is, understanding what you hope to achieve out of your placement can help you to develop and embrace the opportunity to the fullest.

4. Embrace the opportunity

This can seem like a ‘feel-good’ moot point equivalent to ‘just enjoy yourself!’ but it more relates to taking advantage of the opportunity, asking questions to understand the industry and building connections. You will be surrounded by people who have the same ambitions as yourself at a similar skill level, but you will also be around senior professionals who understand what is necessary to succeed in your industry. Utilising this opportunity to gain first hand insights as well as open doors to a future career through connections provides the springboard to fulfilment in a future career.

Reflecting on progress

At the end of your work placement, you will either be returning to full-time academic study or beginning to consider your future career. It can be a quick turnaround, and you may miss the chance to reflect on your placement. Reviewing your progress and skillset pre and post-placement can help you identify what you’ve learned, whether you want to proceed with a job in the industry or potentially pivot.

How a Student Assistance Programme can support you on placement

Even though a workplace placement can be an enviable opportunity where you can gain a multitude of skills and develop, it comes with its own unique challenges. It can even begin to feel isolating as you deal with the associated struggles. In these instances, you may need expert support. Using HA | Wisdom Wellbeing’s Student Assistance Programme (SAP), you can access a host of wellbeing support, including a 24-hour helpline to connect with expert counsellors, 365-days a year.

If you are experiencing high-levels of prolonged stress, burnout, anxiety or depression, our team can provide solution-based counselling to help you manage your mental wellbeing. Coupling this with access to the Wisdom app, you can take your wellbeing into your own hands with a host of resources including articles, physical wellbeing resources such as healthy recipes, exercises and more.

Conclusion

It can be difficult to manage the stresses and responsibilities of a workplace placement as a student and if it becomes overwhelming, the opportunity can begin to diminish as you aren’t able to take full advantage of your placement. Managing your health and wellbeing during placement is the key to succeeding and gaining the skills to work towards your future career.