{"id":1001,"date":"2019-12-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/reports\/does-your-team-take-athlete-engagement-wellbeing-seriously-enough\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:12:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:12:26","slug":"ais-athlete-engagement-wellbeing","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/ais-athlete-engagement-wellbeing\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Your Team Take Athlete Engagement & Wellbeing Seriously Enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\n Dec 06, 2019 <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>Articles<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t

Does Your Team Take Athlete Engagement & Wellbeing Seriously Enough?<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n \n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Category<\/div>\n Human Performance<\/a> <\/div>\n
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Matti Clements of the Australian Institute of Sport runs through the organisation\u2019s first steps as it seeks to remove the stigma around mental wellbeing in elite sport.<\/p>\n \n \n \n

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How seriously is your organisation taking athlete wellbeing and engagement? Do you even couch it in such terms?<\/h4>\n
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By John Portch<\/h6>\n

Any discussion around mental health had long been taboo in elite sport and Australia was no different. Athletes were underserved and too often performance in competition came at the cost of mental health. Attempts to break this paradigm were hindered by the stigma attached to sport, and society at large, when it came to discussing mental wellbeing.<\/p>\n

The ground began to shift when the Australian Sports Commission, a governmental department, perhaps mindful of the high profile cases of Australian athletes suffering from mental health issues, decided to create an executive role around athlete wellbeing and engagement at the Australian Institute of Sport. Their first step was to appoint Matti Clements as Deputy Director of Athlete Wellbeing & Engagement at the AIS in January 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy vision is that this space is seen as important as any other area in high-performance sport,\u201d Clements told the press at the time. Clements, a former AIS psychologist who has worked across elite Australian sport, added: \u201cIt needs a seat at the table in the high performance environment and I think that’s clearly indicated by this role. It can’t be something that sits down the bottom of the servicing model. It has to be just as important as everything else we know is really important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast forward 16 months, and Clements has barely completed her journey from Melbourne to Manchester when she takes to the stage at the Leaders Meet: Wellbeing<\/a> summit at Etihad Campus to discuss her work across Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth sports in Australia.<\/p>\n

Today, the AIS pays for athlete wellbeing & engagement managers to operate in each of those sports under the stipulation that they report directly to the national sporting organisation\u2019s [NSO] high performance manager or CEO. The aim is to serve the athletes who had been let down by a system that failed to recognise that all too often high performance came at the cost of mental health. \u201cEverything is transparent,\u201d she continues. \u201cWe\u2019ve also clearly stipulated the money for able and para sport because historically, across the system, para has missed out.\u201d Clements sat on the panel that recruited each athlete wellbeing engagement manager and emphasised that the funding could not be used elsewhere.<\/p>\n

What is athlete wellbeing and engagement?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

Firstly, as she reveals, Clements and her colleagues needed to ask athletes in the AIS system how they defined \u2018wellbeing\u2019 and \u2018engagement\u2019. She says: \u201cWe threw around a lot of definitions and we ran these past certain focus groups of athletes and this is what we landed on.\u201d She presents a slide to the room that reads:<\/p>\n

Athlete Wellbeing<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Every athlete:<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. a) Realises his or her own potential; can cope with normal stresses of life; and<\/i><\/em><\/li>\n
  2. b) Feels productive and content in life.<\/i><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Athlete Engagement<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

    Every athlete:<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. a) Meaningfully contributes to their community;<\/i><\/em><\/li>\n
    2. b) Seeks to learn and gain life experiences; and<\/i><\/em><\/li>\n
    3. c) Is connected with others socially and professionally.<\/i><\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      With those definitions in hand, the drive to recruit athlete wellbeing engagement managers for each NSO could begin based on the AIS\u2019 clear vision and purpose, both of which she lays out in a later slide:<\/p>\n

      Vision<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

      Australian athletes can learn, thrive and contribute to the community during their time in high performance sport and life afterwards.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

      Purpose<\/i><\/b><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

      To lead and support Australia\u2019s sporting industry to understand that a successful high performance culture includes athletes finding the right balance between wellbeing, engagement in activities outside of training and competition, and the requirements of elite sport.<\/i><\/em><\/p>\n

      Then, as Clements explains, the network of athlete wellbeing engagement managers that serve the NSOs of Australian sport will deliver upon bespoke frameworks that her team develops throughout each sport. \u201cIt gives them a roadmap for what they need to deliver to change a high performance culture in this space. If we can develop it and drop it down through 20-25 different sports then that\u2019s a sustainable model and what it does is free up the time of the individuals in the daily training environment to spend with the athletes and coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Clements and the AIS deliver services and programmes based around five streams.<\/p>\n

      <\/b>1. Mental health<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

      The first step was unprecedented in Australian sport. Clements and the AIS have developed a nationwide mental health referral network of psychologists, psychiatrists and neuropsychologists, which can be used by coaches, athletes and high performance staff. \u201cThere\u2019s a hotline number and a clinical psych who sits in our department takes the call and triages them into a service based on what information is provided in the interview,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt can be a time-intensive method but then we can track the data. We do this so we can tell an accurate story to the Australian public and we as educating the system around themes, which is really important. We\u2019re destigmatising and educating the system.\u201d To that end, there is also a mental health literacy programme that gets delivered to athletes, the high performance system and family members. \u201cThat programme gets delivered throughout the year and can be cut and diced according to their availability.\u201d<\/p>\n

      <\/b>2. Conduct & professionalism<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

      The AIS has appointed a Conduct & Professionalism Manager to oversee this stream. \u201cWe develop the templates, the critical incident management plans, social media policies for athlete wellbeing & engagement managers,\u201d says Clements. \u201cThey can tinker with it to make it bespoke to them and their national sporting organisation but we\u2019ve done all the hard work on that. We also do the education around how to implement a critical incident management plan. Other things in there include ethical decision-making, education, respectful relationships, respectful behaviour and that will be rolled out throughout the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

      Clements also explained that the AIS undertook a benchmarking exercise across Australian sport around duties of care. \u201cWe interviewed about 120 high performance stakeholders around where are the gaps, what we need to do, and where are the red, orange and green areas. That gives us a roadmap. That information will then inform a cultural health check that gets delivered every year for every NSO to ensure we\u2019ve got a minimum level of safety and wellbeing for our performance system.\u201d<\/p>\n

      <\/b>3. Personal development<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

      Personal development can be found across the other four streams an encompasses anything from post-sport careers to life skills. \u201cWe have created a range of curriculums, content and programmes to be delivered face to face or online around financial literacy or issues such as developing a growth mindset,\u201d says Clements. \u201cThere\u2019s a help-seeking behaviour literacy programme and there\u2019s a values-based decision-making programme. That\u2019s all available to the system at no cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

      <\/b>4. Career & Education<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

      The AIS earlier this year established its Career & Education Practitioner referral network. As Clements explains: \u201cThat is practitioners who can provide high level expertise on vocational pathways. It\u2019s referral-in and we\u2019ll cover the costs of all podium-plus-level athletes and coaches.\u201d There is also help for the athlete wellbeing & engagement managers with the provision of a personal development programme. \u201cThis is so that we can ensure a level of risk management and skillset across those people. What we\u2019ve done is invite the whole system, including professional sports, into that education and we\u2019re creating community practice hubs so that they can actually have some peer support; it\u2019s led by us, but there\u2019s peer support there.\u201d Clements and her team have also devised a national workplace strategy specifically devised for the unique needs of elite athletes.<\/p>\n

      <\/b>5. Engagement<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

      The final stream is designed for athletes to be able to give back to their communities. Clements says: \u201cWhat we\u2019ve done this year is focus on mental health. Why we\u2019ve done that is because we think there\u2019s \u2018bang for buck\u2019 with it; there\u2019s an appetite in the Australian community to hear about and learn about mental health and we see it as really valid for our elite population anyway to raise awareness and decrease stigma.\u201d \u00a0She cites the nationwide coverage of athlete Dane Bird-Smith\u2019s mental health issues and a Players\u2019 Voice<\/i><\/em>\u00a0article featuring track cyclist Kaarle McCulloch. \u201cPart of that is destigmatising that for high performance sport, but also destigmatising it for the Australian population.\u201d<\/p>\n

      How do we know if we\u2019re successful?<\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n

      For all these provisions and highly produced slides, Clements admits that the AIS has not cracked wellbeing. She says: \u201cThat\u2019s all operational from roughly six months of work \u2013 we have by no means nailed what needs to occur across the system for this to be best practice. One of the key things that my team needs to work at: how will we know if we\u2019re successful? And I don\u2019t actually know.<\/p>\n

      \u201cWe do have a couple of monitoring tools around this; we monitor the community perception of elite athletes once a year or every two years; that\u2019s one way we\u2019re going to measure it. We\u2019re also looking at some other internal measures on system measurement on perception of this space; but we need to nail the measurement because questions will be asked. It\u2019s a significant investment for Australian sport and, as we\u2019ve heard today, there\u2019s not a simple answer to that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/div>\n \n \n \n <\/div>\n

      \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Matti Clements of the Australian Institute of Sport runs through the organisation\u2019s first steps as it seeks to remove the stigma around mental wellbeing in elite sport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1002,"menu_order":0,"template":"","categories":[21],"pathway":[],"topic":[],"sport":[],"class_list":["post-1001","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-performance"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDoes Your Team Take Athlete Engagement & Wellbeing Seriously Enough? - Performance Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/leadersinsport.com\/performance-institute\/articles\/ais-athlete-engagement-wellbeing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Does Your Team Take Athlete Engagement & Wellbeing Seriously Enough? 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