Nurturing Emotional Resilience and Worker

Wellbeing in Your Organisation

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Dr Louise Grant

Professor Gail Kinman

University of Bedfordshire

Outline

• Understanding resilience using a systemic approach

• Strategies to nurture resilience for you and your organisation• Developing team resilience

• Creating support networks

• Promoting and modelling emotional resilience for wellbeing

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Current context and challenges

• Rapidly changing social policies

• Public scrutiny and mistrust

• Heavy caseloads and admin. burden

• Limited resources/cuts to services

• Recruitment difficulties/high turnover

• Absenteeism and presenteeism

• High risk of work-related stress and burnout

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Developing resilience : a systemic model

Organisational resilience

Emotionally

Literate Leaders

Resilient Teams

Resilient individuals

What works?

Evidence-informed interventions

needed at each level

Public policy supporting resilience and wellbeing

Developing resilience – building a systemic approach

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Provides strategic leads with evidence-informed approaches to enhance resilience in their organisations; introduces targeted

interventions

What is individual resilience?

• A quality that helps people bounce back from difficulties and maintain personal and professional wellbeing

• The ability to respond to a challenge, setback or stressor by drawing on a range of personal, psychological and professional resources and capacities

• Linked to mental and physical health, high performance and flourishing

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How can we build resilience?

Reflective supervision

Mindfulness

Reflective ability

Time management/personal organisation

Peer coaching

Social Support

Self knowledge/appraisals

CBT thinking skills

MindfulnessCoping

Reflective supervision

Mindfulness

Bounded Empathy

Mindfulness

Reflective supervision

Emotional disclosure/writing

Emotional Literacy

Developing resilience – an individual approach

Developing resilience – an individual approach

Provides a tool-box of strategies grounded in

research evidence to help social workers build their resilience

and protect their wellbeing

What does organisational resilience look like?

Secure Base Sense of Appreciation Learning Organisation Clear Mission and Vision

• Self efficacy and self confidence

• Self aware • Understands duty of care• Knows about job demands

and stress• Leads by example• Tackles difficult issues• Personalised approach• Personally resilient

• Trusting and empowering• Knows their staff• Builds effective teams• Knows about job demands

and stress• Warm and approachable• Inspiring

• Knows their staff• Can tackle difficult issues• Aware of support

strategies• Appreciates the need for

life-long learning• Building effective teams• Recognises and celebrates

achievements but recognises areas for improvement

• Interested in the experience and opinions of others

• Leads by example• Warm and approachable• Inspiring• Optimistic• Understands duty of care

The ‘golden thread’Strong commitment to maintaining values

Managing changeCommunication

Emotionally literate

What does a resilient team look like?

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What is team resilience?

A dynamic, psychosocial process

protecting a team from the potential

negative effects of the disturbances they

collectively encounter

▪ Disturbances can be external or internal: stressors,

setbacks, disruptions, pressure, challenges, adversity

▪ Team members use their individual and collective

resources to adapt positively to maintain wellbeing

and performance

Markers of team resilience

• Challenge resolution• Addressing problems quickly &

effectively

• Health• Maintaining function while

boosting team spirit & mood

• Resources• Preserving social & emotional

resources when resolving challenges

• Recovery

• Bouncing back to

prior levels

• Ongoing viability

• Meeting future

challenges

optimally

Enhancing team resilience

• Developing a secure base

• Fostering a sense of belonging • Building self-awareness as a

leader• Enhancing social connections

in teams

Developing a secure base

• The organisation offers a sense of protection, safety, and being cared for

• It provides a constructive challenge for workers to explore fears and threats relating to practice and organisational change

• This safe haven provides support, giving renewed energy and resources for improved practice

Fostering a sense of belonging: self awareness• 360 degree feedback: from

self, manager, peer and direct report

• Who will give you honest feedback? Who knows you well in your current role?

• https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Learning-development/social-work/asye-child-family/360-degree-feedback-tool.aspx

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Being aware of your ‘shadow’ side

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The importance of support networks

• Social workers need to feel safe and secure within an understanding and compassionate supervisory relationship

• Crucial to balance safety and challenge

• You need your own support network

Your personal Board of Directors

• Someone who is a major support for you personally and professionally

• Someone who helps you be creative

• Someone who has practical solutions

• Someone who has accumulated wisdom

• Someone who you can accept criticism from

• Someone who knows you better than you know yourself

• Someone with relevant skills and expertise

• Someone who is a role model for you

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Promoting and modelling emotional resilience

• What is wellbeing?

• How well do you manage your energy?

• The importance of being mindful

What is wellbeing?

• Staff perceive a deep commitment

to staff wellbeing – wherever

possible, stress is reduced at

source and conditions improved

• Staff feel able to thrive in a job that

is rewarding and manageable, and

make a difference to service users

• For these reasons, people are

committed to the organisation and

their role within it

How well do you manage your energy?• I rarely have 7 to 8 hours of sleep, and often wake up tired

• I don’t get enough exercise

• I don’t take regular breaks to recoup my energy

• I am easily distracted during the day

• I react to crises and demands rather than longer-term issues

• I am often irritable, impatient or anxious at work

• I don’t take enough time for reflection and creative thinking

• I work in the evenings and weekends, and often check e-mail

• I don’t stop frequently enough to express appreciation to others or to enjoy my achievements

• There are significant gaps between what believe is most important to me and how I actually allocate my time and energy

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Mindfulness for wellbeing

Mindfulness can help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain and improve sleep

Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations

Role modelling emotional resilience

• Have you got a healthy work-life balance? Do you take care not to make working long hours a badge of honour and achievement?

• Do you model self reflection? Are you open to feedback and do you seek it out in your practice and communicate your learning to others?

• Are you able to regulate and manage your own emotions? Do you recognise when you need to take some time out to check your emotional reaction?

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Some closing thoughts

• Social workers need to protect their own wellbeing while ensuring the best possible outcomes for people they work with

• Well developed and carefully integrated personal and organisational resilience resources are required – a tool-kit is needed

• You can be part of the development of a truly resilient culture in your organisation and supervisory practice

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A toolkit for organisational resilience (RIP)

• Part 1: SWORD Social Work Organisational Resilience Diagnostic• Provides Social Work organisations with an accessible

research-informed diagnostic tool

• To assess if they have the conditions underpinning a resilient organisation, to support the wellbeing of staff and promote optimum social work practice

• Part 2: A practical workbook• Provides targeted, evidence-informed guidance to address

issues identified in the diagnostic tool

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Questions

Do get in touch: Louise.Grant@beds.ac.uk