Try radically changing your workplace culture. Why self-care programs don't work.
By Dr. Phoebe Long Franco
The critique of workplace self-care programs
Have you ever attended a burnout reduction program that instructed you to eat more healthfully, sleep and exercise more, or take regular vacations?
Or maybe you’ve heard about workplace mindfulness programs that encourage people to meditate every morning for 20 minutes.
The problem with these self-care approaches to supporting employees is that they don’t change the organizational factors that underlie burnout. Such factors include work overload, unsupportive leadership behaviors, and toxic workplace cultures.
When implemented poorly, wellness programs focused on self-care behaviors signal that leaders believe only employees themselves can change their own feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, or low professional accomplishment with healthier behaviors outside of work.
Other critiques of workplace wellness programs I’ve heard include:
They redirect resources, like funding and staff time, away from efforts that would be better used towards making systemic change.
They are a form of social control to keep workers from demanding systemic change, helping people tolerate toxic workplaces rather than advocating to change them. Employees are told to “self-actualize and think positively” instead of questioning systemic injustice.
They add more workload burden to employees, as self-care becomes yet one more thing employees have to do.
I’ve spent most of my working career designing, implementing, and evaluating programs that teach healthcare professionals tools they can use at work to prevent and recover from occupational stressors.
So you might be surprised that I agree with many of these critiques of self-care programs.
Our approach at the Center for Resiliency, though, is fundamentally different from workplace wellness programs that focus only on self-care strategies.
Well-supported individuals change systems
Systemic changes are made when individuals have the capacity to speak up, change policies, and live their values, like the leader whose behavior can decrease or exacerbate their employees’ burnout, the executive who can make high-level organizational decisions about schedules and staffing, and the colleague who demonstrates their values by going home on time to be with their family or pursue their hobby, rather than work overtime.
Importantly, building capacity isn’t something individuals should only be asked to do on their own, before or after they go to work.
When individuals are supported by their workplace culture to regulate their nervous system, pursue what matters most to them, and use language to discuss and respond to each other’s needs, they are more likely to make decisions within their sphere of influence that lead to systemic change.
Here are five things that make the Center for Resiliency different from other programs
1. We offer tools people can use while working and embed support for using them in the everyday work environment.
Our 6-hour Resiliency Training might sound like other self-care or stress management programs.
Distinctly, our program offers 18 short tools people can use on the job and with each other to regulate their nervous system at work (instead of something to do at home).
Resiliency Training also provides language associates can use in their professional environment to talk about their difficult thoughts and feelings, model for one another how to live their values, and create the workplace environment they want to have with their colleagues.
Rather than being a one and done training, the tools and language in the training are integrated into manager check-ins and reflective practice for nurses, as well as used in team meetings.
People regularly tell us they remind each other to use Resiliency Training tools when they pass each other in the hallway.
Resiliency Training isn’t just for show— it’s one part of a bigger program that promotes collective behavioral change and contributes to a culture of wellness.
2. We’re not checking a box, we’re creating a culture.
At the Center for Resiliency, we work onsite, everyday, with the associates who use our programs. We experience and understand the same workplace stressors, like difficult patient cases, organizational changes, and staffing shortages.
Because we are embedded in the hospital environment on a day-to-day basis, our goal isn’t just to meet an accreditation or grant funding requirement for workplace wellness. Since 2016, our goal has been to contribute to a workplace culture that supports associates as humans (with physical and emotional needs) while they are working.
3. We offer 10 programs so people have options about how to participate in building the workplace culture they want.
Developing a culture of wellness can’t be a one size fits all approach. We offer 10 programs to healthcare professionals across the world, like storytelling nights, panel discussions, team and individual coaching, team retreats, and a book club.
People can attend online or in-person. By embedding most of these programs in our everyday work environment, people can access the programs they’re interested in at a time that works for their schedule.
4. Our programs are shaped by the needs and voices of our people.
That’s why we invest a substantial portion of our work into researching and evaluating our programs. Instead of assuming we know what people need in our particular work environment, we ask them. We are lucky to include the over 6,000 voices of our participants in our curriculum and programs. You can read our published articles and learn more about our current research projects here.
5. We contextualize evidence-based tools for the work environment.
Many programs offer strategies that have been studied on the general population. But healthcare professionals have their own needs, time restraints, values, and language. Embedded in our curriculum and the programs we facilitate is language that will resonate with the people we support. People are more likely to use strategies to recover from stress on their own and with one another when they know how to use them in their particular context. This is why we contextualize how every tool or concept can be used on the job and while interacting with other people.
Taking care of ourselves and one another in community is how we radically change our healthcare culture.
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