Engrained

Rather than a tick-box exercise, or a siloed role, make worker support part of how your organization lives and breathes. Ensure that support of your people becomes a non-negotiable basic, as is health and safety or non-prejudice practices. Make it part of your culture and your language. This comes from the top, and from making it an expectation of everybody in the organization. Find ways to measure the wellbeing of your people and include promotion and protection of workforce wellbeing in the role descriptions and key performance indicators (KPIs) of senior leadership and those who have direct reports. In doing so, remember that supporting your people will increase your effectiveness in relation to your mission, not compete with or detract from it.

Have structures in place. For example, you are only allowed to volunteer x hours per week or work this amount of time…. If you work more than that then you need recuperation and you need to take time off, and ensure the resourcing to make this possible. This is protecting people—it is not about their capability. It is a system so that volunteers or staff do not feel pitied or nursed, it is just how it is, for everyone. Louise Steen Kryger – IFRC PS Centre

It has to come from the top. It sets a precedence for the rest of the company and what their values are. I think it has to be a value. And that value has to inform the actions and what management instill. That managers take care of each other and managers take care of their staff. It really comes right from the top. And if the CEO doesn’t believe in it, it trickles…  Kerry Symons - Visiting Nurse Service of New York