People working in social impact have had to deal with COVID-19 and its varying impact at two levels—on one hand, they have to manage themselves and their own lives in this pandemic, and on the other, they are daily witnesses to how structural negligence, violence, and badly designed policies affect the lives of the communities they closely work with.
In this way, the pandemic has emphasised the need for organisations in our sector to develop highly-resilient, thoughtfully-designed, and responsive systems so that teams can continually build on their competencies and engage with their work, while also taking care of themselves. In social impact, we often speak about the importance of compassion for the people we work with, but fail to meaningfully engage with nurturing compassion for ourselves and focusing on our own well-being.
We often speak about the importance of compassion for the people we work with, but fail to focus on our own well-being.
While there are plenty of organisations that are interested in supporting their teams’ mental health and well-being, the lack of knowledge on how to do so, combined with the constant struggle for funds, the corporatisation of the development space, and systemic deprivation of resources in the sector often limit the possibility of them doing so meaningfully.
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At Apni Shala, we believe that it’s not a ‘good thing’ for social impact organisations to build care-based policies. Instead, it is a non-negotiable if we want to serve our communities in the best way possible. That’s why, over the last seven years, we have worked to centre team well-being in how the organisation is designed. While our systems aren’t always perfect and we have made mistakes, we have a commitment to taking feedback and improving what we are building. And of course, we try and do this all in a cost-effective way.
Over the years, here’s some of what we have learnt, and what I think other organisations looking to start might find useful:
It’s important to be intentional about an organisational desire to support team mental health and well-being. And of course, that intention has to result in action. When thinking about how to put it all into practice, it’s especially useful to map out actions and policies against this intention to ensure that they are aligned. Some questions you can ask yourself to help with this include:
Management can be an exciting space to restructure relationships centered in well-being. Organisations should look at how they can thoughtfully design these practices, and what role a manager can play beyond ‘leading’ or ‘supervising’ a team.
An essential step to building this meaningfully is to get the inputs of your team. For example, last year, a team of ten supervisors came together and co-created the organisation’s management framework through an interactive process over 10 months. At the end of it, some of the practices that either shifted or have become more intentional include:
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Different staff members may need different kinds of support at different times, and as an organisation it’s important to plan for the same. In doing so, the mental health spectrum is useful—think about what a team member may need when they are well, when they are in distress, and when they are experiencing anxiety—all of these states will require differentiated responses.
Likewise, people are coming into your organisation with varying lived experiences and realities (for example, some may have experienced discrimination and systemic oppression). Keeping this in mind, think about how your organisation can structure and create a care-based work environment.
A few options organisations can explore include:
Building in systems to understand team members (where they come from, what they need, how they want to grow), and get feedback, as well as creating a space for conversations about the same, helps nurture a community that supports and cares for each other in the organisation. Importantly, doing so does not require an extra investment of funds, only time.
Here are some things to think through:
Related article: But, what about mental health?
As we say in narrative therapy, “People, including the young and very young, possess expertise regarding their own lives. They are always taking action in response to circumstances in their lives.” As organisations, it is important that we honour this. When you are thinking about investing in your team’s well-being, ask them what would work for them.
We recently did a reflection survey with our team where we asked them about current systems, processes, trainings, and policies that have supported them in their work, what changes they think can further support them in the future, and an open-ended question where they could share anything they wanted with the leadership team. Everything shared in this piece as best practices have been culled out from that survey, based on validation from the team. After all, asking people what they need, listening, and responding to it, is the mantra.
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