Episode 197: Unwinding from Work

In this episode of the Leading & Learning Through Safety Podcast, Dr. Mark French explores the psychological importance of the home-to-work transition (HWT) — the intentional process of mentally and physically unwinding after a workday. Drawing from a recent article in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, Mark examines how continuous activation of stress systems throughout the workday requires a deliberate unwinding process to maintain long-term wellbeing.

Mark reflects on his career as a frontline safety professional, often serving as the lone point of responsibility for a 24/7 operation. He highlights the reality many safety leaders face: constant availability, middle-of-the-night calls, and difficulty fully disengaging. He discusses how organizational structures often reinforce this imbalance and argues that leaders must implement clear escalation policies, flow-based decision tools, and supervisor accountability to protect both safety teams and operational continuity.

The episode also explores the research surrounding cognitive, emotional, and physiological recovery — including how poor transition habits can impact rest, alcohol use, and tobacco consumption. Mark emphasizes that unwinding must be intentional, not accidental. Whether through exercise, gaming, nature walks, meditation, or small rituals like grounding at a favorite tree, each person must find their own meaningful method of decompressing. 

Ultimately, the episode is a reminder that leaders cannot pour into others if they are continually depleted. To lead effectively — and safely — we must prioritize our own recovery so we can show up fully for the people who depend on us.

Transcript

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This week on the podcast, I'm moving into an idea of home to work transition, and how do we psychologically disengage to create a better psychological approach for us at home? Yeah, it's interesting, and it's a little bit of a stretch, but I'll get you there this week on the podcast. Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode and now here is Dr Mark French, hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So happy you have joined me as always. I say this every time, and I truly mean it. I am honored to be part of your podcast rotation this week, as has been for the past few weeks, I've come across another journal, journal article that has caught my attention, and I think is very pertinent more to the safety leadership side. So if you're a safety person and traditionally in a safety role, I think this episode is really going to ring true for you. If you are just a leader who's looking for better leadership tools and looking for ways to improve, and that's your reason here to just learn about how do we make our workplaces better for our people? There's still a lot here for you, I promise. But I really am going to focus back on my days as the safety person, the one that was in charge of a manufacturing site had one safety person. They ran 24/7 or sometimes 24 hours, five days a week, but it was around the clock, and I was the sole person that was responsible for it. In the truth of the matter is, as I continue to be Now, interestingly more in the recruiting world, in my HR role in my real job. I continue to see like I see you talk more to recruiters. I'm seeing more job postings that come through. And when I see your typical frontline safety person, it's still that way. It's still very much a they're asking for a single person to run a 24 hour shift that they have office hours, but they're on call 24/7 they have to pick up the phone. They have to be there. Yeah, that's still part of the world of the safety person with smaller manufacturing sites in smaller groups. And there's a lot to untangle here that I'm looking forward to, kind of pulling the thread and looking at from this idea of home to work transition, or they call it h, w, T, homework, transition. So this week, I was flipping through the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. This is the October edition, and there's a great article in here that's a qualitative, one of my favorite types of research, a home to work transitions and psycho physiological unwinding from work, a qualitative, episodic approach. So a lot of words there, as a good journal article should have true but what we're looking at is that home to work transition and how beneficial it is to our physiological and psychological well being that there's a lot of jobs out there, that there's some that it feels like they never leave the office. But the one that I'm most familiar with is the safety professional, the one that you are expected that if the phone rings, you pick it up. 24/7 365, actually once had a plant manager point that out to me later in my career, when I was a little bit more cynical. Mm. I when I was had the ability to be a little bit more cynical. That said that to a lot of he was said especially to younger people who were coming into the workplace, young office people, young engineers. And he would make it very clear that we are a 24/7 operation, seven days a week all year. Eat Christmas, Thanksgiving, we are always running, so pick up your phone, be ready to come back to work. Get your work done. It was, uh, wow. It was something. I'll put it that way. In this case, Safety has always been that way for me. And going back to my to early on that it was one of those that the phone rang, you pick it up. And so the reason I really enjoyed this article is because it starts to put light on. There should be, for those who do come home, there should be something, some way, that there's a, like, a true psychological transition between I'm working and I'm home. There's some circumstances, some other professions I'm going to use safety, because I know it well, but I know there's a bunch of other professions that are that way too, that can there be a transition, and how do we get to the point where we can transition, because there's not emergencies, I hope not for you. I hope it's not every single night getting that call, or every Saturday, every Sunday, getting those calls, but that's what I want to talk how do we help make that transition? What leadership principles do we put into place, how do we become the influencers to give us a chance to actually create that home to work transition? I want to dive a little deeper into the kind of the research here that talks about this home to work transition, how important it is for mental and physical health, because we can't always be on. And there's been, I've had some other podcasts where we've talked about that, where the idea of, can you always be hyper focused for risk? Because sometimes the safety policy, their safety policies, just be careful. No, you can't always be on and so let's talk about this home to work transition. It's actually a recovery method. Recovery can be viewed as the process of psychophysiological unwinding that is the opposite of the activation of the system during expenditure, big words. But basically, when you step into work and you start to engage in work, you activate something. You are activating the mind. You're activating the body. You're probably activating a little bit of stress. And again, stress is not bad until it becomes overwhelming or too consistent a little bit of stress, there's a stress curve that shows this, that when you put a little bit of stress, it creates, like the need, I mean, when you exercise, that creates stress on the body, but it's a good stress when you're done, but if you push it way too hard, it's a bad stress. Same thing with working, it engages you activate a little bit of that stress response, to bring you into the work, to bring you active, to turn on the mind, turn on the body, to get ready for the work. But then that other process is the unwinding. I love the word unwinding. It's like that you've you've torqued yourself up throughout the day continuously, like during the day, you keep turning the ratchet and you're getting tighter. And then as you get to this home to work transition, you have to find a way to back it back out. You don't just release the tension. You don't just push the button. It has to be a process of physically taking whatever stress happened during that day, and unwinding it. And it's an active piece of work. This is something that I still struggle with, something fierce, but it's something I am glad to see it written like this, and that's why it's the first time it really struck me, is that it has to be a process to unwind yourself from that activation, because you're continually activating throughout the day as you're engaging in whatever is happening on your calendar in the normal course and scope of your day. And so how do you take that process and unwind it and begin to start to bring that back out so that you can begin that rest period knowing that there could be more stress later. Now what I'm really focused on is, what if you can't fully take that tension out, because you know that call is going to come later. To that night, 2am or, you know, it's frequently. Could happen, can you still create that same set of unwinding? Or can you even fully un torque? What is created when you know you have to be on 24/7, and my honestly, from what I can see, it's not exactly perfect, of course not, but let's talk more about that on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. You are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French dsda Consulting. Learn you lead others. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. Problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building, stress management, communication, conflict, management, and so much more, individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at TS da consulting.com Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So continue our discussion on that's home to work transition. And this study takes a few episodic episodes and looks at heart rate variation, studies it, and how that unwinding. But what I really found interesting was some of the background work they did to get us there and to look at like restfulness and emotional demands, cognitive demands, other items that could drive different ways of coping with this lack of home, to work, transition and so as leaders. One thing I've heard so many times when I've brought up the fact like gone to a not all the time, but I hear this frequently, and I have encountered it where you bring up that, you know, this is getting bad. I'm working 810, hours a day. I'm getting phone calls all night, 2am This isn't working. Like something is broken here. And the answer is, like, it's the easiest thing in the world. Well, that's the supervisor's job. They should be doing it. Okay, yeah, because they should have it shouldn't be a safety issue. Happens and I pick up the football and I punt it to safety. There has to be that I can handle it. And then I'll leave the information for safety to know what I'll put it in. I'll take care of it. I'll do something with it, until it's it's handled, unless it's significant, like escalation style, that is where we create some peace, is through that process. Now, what does that require? One an escalation policy. And I love a good flow chart. I love a good flow chart. No surprise probably, of showing that if this happens, do this, if this happens, do this, if common things that will come up in a supervisor's night, how do you report it? How do you document it? Here's a template that takes time, though, and that takes energy to create that, then what do you need? You need training, and then you need accountability. You've got to have commitment from the management that says, Yes, we will follow this. And if they're not following it, we'll talk to them, we'll coach them, not that they should be punished for contacting safety. I would never say that. I would much rather be contacted and answer a question and help someone out than not. But what I don't want is someone who just wants to escape accountability or escape the responsibility of being a supervisor. We can't escape that. That's part of being a leader, and so sometimes that's coaching that says you have to own it. This is your team. You own it. You go with it. So if we can create those things, then, then do we actually begin to create up a system where, yeah, we're never completely, like, off the clock, because, goodness, we never want the worst thing to happen. But can it? Yeah, we can get that call. It can happen, and we try to put everything in place that will prevent it, but yet, yes, that call can happen at 2am sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not, but we can begin that unwinding, because that unwinding is very important. And in the study, they look at things like, are you able to recover cognitively, emotionally, and I like the fact that they also look at tobacco use and alcohol consumption as part of the study and how it's affected by this home to work transition. Or are you able to transition in a way that is body positive, psychologically positive? What does that? They don't really go into the the process thereof, or recommendations of that. But there are some recommendations out there of ways to unwind, and there's not going to be a one way fits all, a one size fits all. Approach to doing this. It really depends on what you enjoy. Are you an exercise person? Are you a video game person? Are you a nature Walker, deep breathing, yoga person, the key is, is exploring within yourself. How do you make that transition? It has to be intentional. You're not naturally going to unwind from a work day without intention to unwind from the work day. I've even heard of one psychologist that recommended that was talking about this issue, and recommended that like someone had a tree outside, and it was a big old tree that had been around their property for years. And basically, they would walk up to that tree before they went in the house, they put their hands on it, and they would ground themselves. They just imagined, like did the intentional mind to work that would say, I'm giving you the stress from today. I'm letting it ground out, back to back to the earth, and I'm going to go in my home now and enjoy my family. And that was their way of being able to create it was very quick home to work transition. Maybe that's all they needed, but it was that intention of I am here and letting it go. So there has to be a methodology that we use as leaders, because we are on and self care is important. I never want to forget that. As we are protecting others and we are watching out for the best needs of others. As good leaders, we also have to make sure we are doing okay so we can perform that job. And that's not selfish, and sometimes it comes across that way, that oh, well, that's no, it's not. It's something that's necessary for us to be able to recover enough to be able to do the work we do, no matter what that work is. If you're a leader, you have a requirement to take care of the people around you that is inherently what a leader does. And so to do that, we have to be prepared to be able to do that. And this unwinding process, this home to work transition, is so critical. And this was a great reminder of looking at this brand new research that explores this idea of, how do we actuate, to go into work, how do we unwind? This is my reminder to you to think about your intention between work and home. What is your intention? How do you take a little bit of time and begin to unwind the day so that you can let yourself rest and enjoy what you do outside of work, because that's why we work. It's for those around us. It's for the things we do outside of work. It's for all those wonderful things around us. So as we exit this episode about home to work transition, think about what you like to do and make it intentional. Don't make it just an absent thing, because I've done that in the past, and one of my faults is walking in and just blankly playing video games for hours and hours and hours. There was no intention of playing for a little bit and then letting that be my unwinding. There has to be an intention. So I ask you, as we close out this episode, think about your intention on how you unwind from a work day. Thanks for joining me on this episode. I've really enjoyed it, and until next time we chat, stay safe. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot tsda consulting.com all the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. You i This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast.