Rachael Green:
Hello, everybody. Good morning. Great to not see you, but really be cognizant of the breadth and the scale of people here. It's wonderful. I'd like to formally welcome you all to our first leading for wellbeing health safety seminar. Thank you for prioritising it and thank you for the numbers that are really demonstrating. This is a critical need for workforces across sexual assault, family violence and prevention. So I'm Rachael Green. I'm the executive director of the Centre for Workforce Excellence in the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing. I'd like to start of course, by acknowledging that we are meeting on traditional land, unseated land and like to pay my respects to elders past and present of the lands that I'm on and those all the lands that you are on, and any aboriginal people here with us today on this call as part of this forum.
I'd also like to acknowledge victim survivors who are here with us today. We'll keep you and the experience at the forefront of our minds. It informs what we do and how we do this work. Of course, in all forums, please if you are affected or impacted by the content of this, please take a moment and we're putting in resources and phone numbers in the chat.
So I spoke to you all last year at the launch of the Health Safety and Wellbeing Guide and Safe and Equal's organisational self-assessment tool. July last year, it was. It feels like only a short time ago. We'll include the links in the chat. At that launch, we invited people to offer, put in an expression of interest rather to be part of a pilot in relation to what we call in the health and wellbeing safety pilots. We've got eight excellent submissions. So we are currently testing those tools and resources right now.
We're going to come back to you with a workshop to share the learnings, share those resources. This is such a critical space we need to make sure all of the evidence and expertise and particularly the tailored expertise that this kind of broader programme of work is developing for our specialist sectors is shared and accessible to all. So the guide, just as a reminder, includes a workplace wellbeing survey. It's been adapted to family violence, sexual assault prevention workforces. The survey itself can generate team programme, organisational survey reports. So a really useful tool.
The other point about the Safe and Equal self-assessment tool, a really point reminder that we talked about last year, there are many factors that contribute to a healthy, safe and wellbeing workforce and organisation. They include organisational policies and procedures, appropriate supervision, workload support, job role design, and professional development.
So we're talking a really broad span of what are the critical elements here. The tool covers a lot of ground. We really want to thank Safe and Equal for developing that and know that they've been really working with agencies in relation to how to use that tool. There's a lot to cover, but how you can think about using elements of that as part of reflective questions for organisations starting to grapple with what they need to do differently or might want to do differently.
So this forum is based on the feedback we got from you back at the time of the launch, what you wanted to hear more about. So one of the key questions that you came to us with was what is the tipping point for struggle? What's the point that it impacts on job survival and tips into burnout? So this seminar is based on that and design to really support those conversations.
So we want this seminar to cover a chance to check in with each other on how we're caring for wellbeing, what some of the things that are working really well, providing you with some of the easy to action insights from the latest research. Michelle McQuaid and her team are extremely experienced in this area. What is happening? Where is the latest evidence in relation to this? And to make sure you've got access, what are the resources that are currently out there? And share the stuff that you are using too that is proving effective where you are.
It's always a critical time I think, to talk about health and wellbeing. We learn so much about this during the pandemic and even though we are returning to a semi new normal, the demand that you are all managing and experiencing is of course huge. And being mindful of how to support yourselves, your team in relation to this work is fundamental.
I think the couple of other points I just want to make is the elements about what it requires from an organisation. So that point about organisation policies and procedures and developing cultures that requires very strong leadership in relation to that. Practitioner resilience is of course a critical factor, but it's not the sole response and we need to think about what sits around that and really hoping we're testing some of what that collective effort needs to be and how we can support that with tools and resources and what that needs to look like in terms of supporting that.
Not all organisations have large HR departments access to resources on that scale looks different across our sector. So part of that is really being mindful about how do we tailor that and think about resources that are going to work in this context.
So I think without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Michelle, who you've already met. One of Australia's leading health and wellbeing and experts from the Wellbeing Lab, one of our key speakers last year in the 220 Leadership interviews which was very, very popular. So Michelle and her team have such a deep expertise in this area. And yes, handing back to you, Michelle with thanks.
Michelle McQuaid:
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Rachel for that beautiful introduction. So as Rachel mentioned, I'm Dr. Michelle McQuaid. I'm a director of the Wellbeing Lab and today I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the Kulin nation on which I'm joining from today and to pay my respects to their elders past and present and to extend my respects to any other Aboriginal people we have joining us today.
I'm also joined by our wonderful team member, Shirley, who you will see in the chat. If you're needing any technical support throughout today's session, please, you can just message there to everybody. Shirley is keeping an eye there in the chat and she will be able to assist you if you're having any problems. We are so honoured that you've taken this time out of what we know are very busy days to invest in learning more about how to care for the health, safety and wellbeing of your people.
And as Rachel mentioned, this series is designed to build on the work that was done with the health, safety and wellbeing guide that so many of you contributed to over the last few years and helped us launch several months ago. So we're so excited that you are here today and as somebody who has benefited personally from the important work that you do in the world during my early life, I'm so grateful for what you are out there in the world supporting your teams to help others every single day.
So to give back a little to healthcare for the wellbeing of yourselves as leaders and your teams feels like a very important thing to be doing this morning with you. And what we've tried to do is assemble some really practical, real world examples of tools that you can take away from this conversation to help support the health, safety and wellbeing of your teams.
Everything we're sharing this morning is evidence-based, but of course we want to share that with the absolute caveat that of course when it comes to being able to understand what works for caring for our wellbeing, that when it's human based research, even the best research only tells us what works for some of the people some of the time. And so before we dive into that data, we want to make sure that we are honouring your hard-earned wisdom and experience and to bring your voices into this conversation.
So we're going to start with a quick poll. It's completely anonymous. We're not gathering this data anywhere other than to help shape our conversation today with you. And so Shirley, if we can pull that poll up onto the screen when you are ready. We thought that we would start by just checking in on the wellbeing of your team and how they are doing.
So in a moment we'll get you just to think about the last two weeks in your workplace and how your team have been going overall when it comes to caring for their wellbeing. And to just use a little gut check, a little like, "Okay. How might this work?" And so what we're going to do is just ask you, hopefully you can see on your screen right now the poll there that's saying, "Have my team been really struggling? Have they been feeling on top of the world? Have they not been feeling terrible but they're just getting by?" Or have they been living well despite some struggles?
I can see responses coming in thick and fast there right now. I'm going to give you just a moment while we get everybody's voices in there. And again, understand if you're on a phone that may not be easy to do. So my apologies if that's the case. We're going to help share though with you what we are finding from everybody here in just a moment. We're pretty good. We're about 80% of participants there so far. So I'm going to just give it five more seconds in case you're still looking for where on earth is this poll on my screen? I want my voice heard in there. And then I'm going to close the poll now for us.
We've got about 85% of your voices in there, so that's not a bad result and I'm going to try and share that on the screen for you, but I'm going to read out those results in case you can't see it either. So what you just told us is that when it comes to how your team is doing for wellbeing right now about 8% of them are really struggling.
We have 0% feeling on top of the world. So we'll come to that and what that might mean in just a moment. We've got 40% who are not feeling terrible, but they're just getting by and we've got 51% who are living well despite some struggles. And to put your numbers into context here, we asked more than a thousand Australian workers in September 2022 last year, just how they were doing that exact same question that you've just answered.
And of the team members, so people who weren't in leadership roles or business owners, we had about 517 people out of that thousand Australian workers. What they told us is that about 16.8% of them were consistently thriving. Now, this is representative of workers by gender, age, location. We try for nationality and we also try for industry, but it's a little harder sometimes to get quite that mix there the way we would want it to be.
But we can look at this picture on the screen of the chart that's telling us 16.8% of Australian team members were saying they were consistently thriving. What you might notice for team members is specifically for community and social services. On the other side of this page is 11.5%. So a little bit lower, not quite the zero that we've got in our poll this morning, but certainly not as high as we might like to see there and as high as the general population experiences.
That's okay. I'm not entirely worried about that number to be honest. What I often think is the even more important number is this living well despite struggle number and what you can see for Australian team members, it was 37.3% said they were living well despite struggle for the very small sample and acknowledging that at 26 of the community and social service team members, there's about 38.5. So pretty similar. Not dissimilar also from what you had, although yours was a bit high, 51%.
And honestly we think about these workers as our most resilient workers. And so I'm okay with resilient workers over people who are just consistently thriving. Don't get me wrong. Consistently thriving is a nice place to be if that's where we are. But it can sometimes also feel a little fragile if our context suddenly changes and there's more challenge in our context than what we might have experienced before. So if we've got 51% according to your poll this morning of your teams feeling like they're living well despite some struggle, I actually think that's a really healthy place for us to be.
Then we can see down the bottom of this chart when it comes to not feeling bad just getting by, we've got about 35.8% of Australian team members and similar for community and social services, similar for you as well. We had about 40% of your team members there this morning. And then when it comes to really struggling, we had in September, remembering still coming towards the end of lockdowns and some of the real struggles that the global pandemic created for us at that time, which is not to say that it's all done by any stretch, but certainly I think having the summer and the ability to move around and connect and restore some of our relationships, and get a bit of rest and recovery since September is definitely helping us here.
But we can see that often in any population there's about five to 10% we might expect of our workers really struggling. And again, in your poll this morning, you had about 8% of your workers there. What might all of this mean for wellbeing and burnout? Burnout we were particularly measuring in September because it's been such a topical issue. Of course, even pre the global pandemic, but absolutely the last two years have not made that easier.
What you can see on the screen now is again that result for all Australian workers who identified as a team member role. So the 500 odd people there. And then next to it, the community and social service team members. So we can see for workers who are telling us they were often experiencing burnout at work in September, about 15 to 16% of workers both across Australia and in the community and social services team there.
I'm curious if we use that chat function perhaps just for a moment, what you were experiencing on the ground more recently. So as we think about perhaps 2023 and how the year has started in terms of what is supporting wellbeing or undermining wellbeing as the case may be for your people right now. So what's having the biggest impact on wellbeing right now for your teams? And if you can pop those into the chat, it would be great just to get a bit of a sense of what's happening on the ground for you right now as we get ready to dive into some tools to support them.
So you can see Nicole is saying, "Workload." Denise, "So much to do, so little time." Iva is saying, "Life stress." Sharon, "Highly complex clients." Of course. Michelle, "Workload." Michelle Barns, "Competing demands." Hala, "The mandatory return to workplace. That loss of flexibility, workload, shortage of staff," I can see coming up there for others. Rosa is saying, "Workload and life demands." Iva, "Earthquake back home." Our thoughts and prayers with people.
Alicia, "Workload, inconsistent funding and competing demands keeps telling us fatigue and change." Workload, workload. I don't know if you are reading the chat like I am. It's coming up there. Hala is also saying difficulty to recruit. Libby is saying workload, competing demands, family situations overseas, short-term funding. So there's a lot of themes here that we can see coming up that make our context challenging even when as leaders we are doing the best we can to support our teams.
And of course, as you appreciate many of those challenges that you're naming there are not short-term situations. They're not things that are easily fixed with a better team conversation, right? They are systemic and ongoing challenges that we face every day in the sector and for the work that you're doing. So just want to acknowledge that. Those are not easy things to protect our people from.
They are though part of our ongoing reality. And as social justice activists for us supporting our teams in the work they do every day, there is this intermediary role while we lobby both our workplaces and systems for better accesses to resource to funding for balancing those competing demands with how we support our team.
I love Dr. Meg Wheatley talks about how as leaders can we be the islands of sanity in a stormy sea all around our people at times. And so today, I don't want to in any way diminish or ignore the systemic challenges that we are facing around safety, health and wellbeing for our people.
In our next session, we are going to go into that in a lot more depth and detail and look at changing legislation requirements, look at how safe and equal have created tools to help us navigate that in some parts of our work, talk with each other about what we do for those systemic challenges. And the day-to-day lived reality is still as leaders, we need to be supporting our teams. A.
So today we want to make sure that we are providing as many practical, easy to use tools in amidst that context as possible so that you can support your teams from these experiences of burnout and the struggle and build more of that resilience where that is possible through collective care together. The challenge of course in doing that is as leaders, we are human beings as well. And so before we dive into those tools, I just want to make some space to also check in on how you are each doing.
So again, if we can launch that poll up, Shirley, that would be wonderful. I want to ask the same question that we asked for teams, but for you this time. So if you were to take everything together over the last two weeks at work, how did you feel you were doing? Were you really struggling, feeling on top of the world? Not feeling terrible, but just getting by? Living well despite some struggles?
And again, I'm just going to give you a moment while we get that in. This is completely confidential. No one can identify here what you're telling us. This will not be shared anywhere else outside of this conversation. It's really just we want to honour where you are at and make sure anything that we're suggesting or sharing today is respectful of what the lived reality is for where you are.
So I can see we're about 82 participants, so we'll just give it one more moment and then we're going to close this poll. Okay, Shirley, why don't we end that poll and see where we are landing. So we can see here that 18% of you are really struggling. And I think this is consistent with what we found both in the data for Australian leaders but also in the data, particularly in communities and social service leaders, that you are likely to be struggling at a greater level than your team members are.
Often that's because you are carrying a lot of that additional load. It often feels like we're the person trying to rally the workplace and the system for better support for our people whilst we're also trying to care for our people and provide what protection we can so that they can do the important work that they do every day. And that is not an easy place to be. We had 0% of you feeling on top of the world, and interestingly in that general public survey in September when it came to our small sample of leaders, there are only 17 of them in community and social services.
We've got far more of you today, but that same pattern was reported that we had 0% consistently thriving. What we did though have a lot more of in that community and social service leaders from that Australian population, you might be able to see on the screen there was 70.6% of them said they were living well despite struggle and that was significantly larger even than leaders in general workplace place population.
Again, you've got 47% of you here saying you were living well despite some struggles. So again, we think of that as often we're in that sweet spot of where we feel like, yes, we can navigate so many of the challenges coming at us every day and still find ways to keep moving forward.
Sometimes it's that vicarious resilience that we often hear talked about in the literature and we're going to in a moment dive into some stories and examples of your colleagues around that. But we can also see there again that not feeling bad, just getting by number and most importantly, that really struggling number. And as you can see, even compared to that Australian population data in September for our small sample of community and social service leaders, also, there that real challenge around how many of us are struggling because of the space that we are asked to hold every day.
Again, I want to acknowledge that. I don't want to diminish that struggle, which is real and felt physically and psychologically in every way. I also want to make sure that there is no shame in that struggle either for you or for your team members.
Struggle of course is our body's way of making us uncomfortable and letting us know that something that matters to us is on the line and it's needing our attention and effort and we are also most likely needing help to be able to navigate that. So we are so happy that you are here today. Hopefully some of what we can share can assist, but we would also absolutely be encouraging you after today if you are in that really struggling part to think about who around you is providing space for you.
I love Dr. Vikki Reynold's work talks about our solidarity teams and who is that person? Who is our howl at the moon person? A person that we can let all the feelings out with and know that we will not be judged, but we will be sat alongside with all of that complexity, all of that pain, all of that suffering that often comes when we are struggling and we are not yet knowing how to move our way forward.
Who is your howling at the moon person? Where are your resources to support you? As leaders, we are highly contagious for our teams. And so if we are not finding our howl at the moon people or the resources and support we need to care for our own wellbeing, then it's definitely harder for us to care for our teams as well. So here was what that looked like for leaders. Again, not surprising. We also saw far more burnout among community and social service leaders. It was one of the highest industries that we saw at this level of burnout in. It was also high just as you've reported than what you were seeing perhaps in your teams when it came to that level of struggle. So what does all of this mean for us? Where is the hope as well as the acknowledgement in all of this?
I think in addition to normalising struggle, we want to make super clear today that burnout is not a problem in your head or your people's head. It is an ongoing imbalance between the demands of the jobs that being asked of us and the resources that we have available to us. So just as many of you noted in the chat for your people, it is this lived reality every day that creates so much of this pressure on our health, safety, and wellbeing.
Safe and equal would go even further than this simple definition. And they would note that it is the prolonged physical and psychological exhaustion from continuous exposure to structural oppression and social justice work. I think for you as leaders and for your teams, there is no doubt that the context in which you work and then the work that you do each day makes caring for health, safety and wellbeing harder than what we see for many other workers all around Australia.
Again, in our next leadership series session, I'll put the dates up at the end of this in the form to join us, we will talk very much at this US level, that systemic level of what is being done, what can we do to influence, how do we navigate this constant tension between the demands that are being made of us and our teams and the resources that are available for them.
It's not the only factor though in terms of burnout, and I love this lens from Vikki Reynold's work that part of burnout is also a reflection of our collective ethical and spiritual pain of being social activists in the social justice field. When we feel that either the resources or our own fatigue or perhaps just things that we're still learning to navigate ourselves and in our teams, pull us away from the values that we hold so dearly and call us to this work, then perhaps this ethical or spiritual pain is another way.
Vikki suggests that we can understand some of the harms that are done rather than necessarily just burnout alone. So what is within our power to be able to influence and what we need to allow other people to be responsible for and expect and demand they are responsible for and influence that. But as you all appreciate working in family systems, it's never one part of a system alone. There's always an end. There's that interconnection. And so today, again, we want to focus on what can you influence directly and immediately as leaders for your teams. And again, in our next conversation, we're going to talk more about that workplace and systemic level to this.
So to help us dive into this and just sanity test, is that tension even possible to hold? I'm going to invite Kelly Gannon to join us. Kelly is the manager from the Winda-Mara Aboriginal Corporation. And Kelly has been one of those pilot sites that Rachel mentioned who have been working with us around health, safety and wellbeing with her team. We've had some of our wellbeing coaches who've had the privilege and pleasure of getting to know Kelly and her team and how they care for their wellbeing, how they support more vicarious resilience rather than perhaps feeling overwhelmed by the vicarious trauma or burnout they may experience. So Kelly, welcome. It's so wonderful to have you here with us today.
Kelly Gannon:
Thank you and thanks for the opportunity. I'm by no means an expert and I'm a team leader, not the manager.
Michelle McQuaid:
Thank you, Kelly for correcting me on that. We absolutely appreciate both in feeling that you're not an expert, your willingness to come and just share what has worked for your team in this space right now. And knowing that that changes over time too, as context shifts and things like that. But in particular, I know that you've really tried to help your team build a regular reflective practise to help care for their wellbeing. Can you talk to us a little bit about what you've done and how that's working?
Kelly Gannon:
I've been in this position now for nearly a year, a year come April. And there's been a lot of work trying to open up an access point for the orange door at our service as well. So a lot of that by the previous team leader was their focus of work and there wasn't a lot of supervision done of the actual team. When I came on board, the other thing that probably to understand is that as an aboriginal organisation, we don't always have qualified people in positions.
We have people with lived experience that have good cultural knowledge or come from community that will be good workers with the support and mentoring that they need. So knowing that, and having been in the organisation in family services for over eight years and having to mentor a number of workers, supervision was a priority for me and understanding, doing an assessment of where everyone was at when I first came on board, to know what experience they had, whether it was lived experience or qualifications, where they were in their case management skills, that sort of thing.
We had one senior worker that I already knew about because I'd been the specialist phase one family violence worker. So she'd been on board after I left that position. She was a good worker. I knew that she could carry a heavy load, but then I had a junior worker who needed a lot more support and mentoring in the place. So it was about going out and being with her out in the field role modelling how I would interview someone, letting her have turns doing it, that sort of thing, taking that on board.
So similar too if you had a new grade coming into an organisation, similar to that. And it was really about understanding where they were at. So I also had an orange door worker that we had to support as well, and a community development worker. So I had a team of four.
We went straight away to caseload meetings on a Monday morning so that we did that line management stuff every week looking at caseloads, looking who was carrying and what needed to be done, having a talk. And that was done as a group. And then we went to monthly one-on-one supervision where they had turns at being able to have that critical reflection, starting to develop an awareness of what their practise looked like, understanding what stuff they brought to this situation as well so that they became aware of their triggers, that sort of thing.
And understanding too, I think being a team leader, we've got to not jump in all the time and not carry cases for others and to try and minimise our caseload because our caseload is actually the workers. That's my view of it anyway. So why we brought on the reflective practise was because you tend to have a high turnover if you've got people that aren't coping.
So it was about, we had a good team, they all got along well and they'd been doing that debriefing with each other but not really having an outlet for it. So it was about formalising all the structures around it, making it a regular occurrence, looking at how they could understand the triggers that they bring like if they were having a difficult client and they didn't understand why they were being triggered by that person and unpacking that, giving them opportunities for that, so that they could perform better.
And it really is all the things that you were talking about before when you were saying about structural oppression and the workload, the supervision, how the organisation works. We've had a complete turnover of all our executive staff and all our managers, so there was a lot of uncertainty amongst the workforce as well.
So it was navigating all that sort of stuff. And actually if I said I was going to do something, making sure that I followed through with it and in between stuff. It was also about having an open door policy so that they could have those in moment supervision opportunities where if they were stuck, they could come in and talk to me and we could talk that through. But it was really unpacking that work-life balance, how to keep stuff at work, not taking it home, putting boundaries around expectations, not carrying the load for the client, but how do we do that reflective practise back to the client?
What is it that you can do about this? That sort of thing. Just those simple things. So it was really all that basic stuff that I had to put in place when I first came on board and build the team up. Now we've got everyone at full caseloads and we make... At times it will change because as we all know, life happens. I've got to the point now where I can walk in the office and I can tell by the looks on people's faces, how they're travelling. The beauty of a small team.
Michelle McQuaid:
And being a boss.
Kelly Gannon:
Yeah. So when you said about the prompt questions half the time, I just have to look at them.
Michelle McQuaid:
So when you look at them [inaudible 00:33:36] how you see something, what do you ask next?, Kelly? What's the next question after that?
Kelly Gannon:
Yeah. Well, it depends on which one it is actually.
Michelle McQuaid:
Yeah. I think that's so important that there's some cultural... What's culturally appropriate for each of us.
Kelly Gannon:
Yeah. And it's also too understanding that it's also... The one thing that I think is really important is that we drew up supervision, contracts. So we had contracts of how do you want to receive criticism? How do you learn best? Are you a visual learner? Are you someone who likes to read stuff? That sort of thing. So the contract was really important because then it also gave them, and we both signed it a designated out where they would have time. They knew that that time was theirs. We'd shut the door and make sure that no one came in.
In that then it gave me an opportunity of how do I give feedback and how they like to receive that. How do they learn? So what's the best way for me to support them in their learning? So we had to put in a lot of training into the unit when I first came on board because with COVID, no one had been able to do any anything. And it had hampered a lot, so it really had a bit of a slow start.
So there was a bit of online learning, and now everyone's booked into their courses for the mandatory qualifications, and they're starting to do that. So now it will be about how do we manage caseload with study load and workload and home time with family, that sort of thing. So it is really about that. Kirsten has been a really good resource and the recovery rocket that she gave us has been a really good way of doing things, knowing the balance of what to do with soothing the nervous system as well as distracting the brain with different activities, that sort of thing. And looking at how that works for each of those individual people because one will do yoga with the family at home. One will go and sit in front of her aquarium with all her indoor plants around her for half an hour before tea has to be done when she finishes work here.
And another one will go do gardening. So it's knowing what everyone's interests are, paying attention to that sort of thing, so you know how you can work that into their wellbeing.
Michelle McQuaid:
Kelly, I think the challenge of course then is where's my time to do this every day with all the things that you are juggling as a leader? But I think your point earlier is so important that your caseload is your team. And so that is where your priority of time is going is what I'm hearing. Is that right?
Kelly Gannon:
It is. When I have to prioritise other stuff like acquittals and all the other reports that you've got to do, then I will actually say, "I'm going to go into my office and shut the door." And they know then. They'll knock. And if I say, come in, they can. But it's also too taking time for those impromptu moments of when you can do supervision in the moment and just in a general conversation when someone asks a question rather than shutting it down until supervision.
And that's been really good because in the early days there was lots of moments where that did happen. And because everyone is out on the road and there will only be one person in the office or whatever, that might be their time when they actually bring up something in there and you can really unpack it. An instance was one of our workers was not sure why this particular client triggered her. And when we unpacked it went right back to her early years. So we could actually unpack all that talk that through, refer her on to [inaudible 00:37:21] so that she could have that opportunity to work through that better. And then that freed me up for the next bit. So it's using that combination of the ability to do the ongoing therapeutic stuff with someone else and then also doing that in the moment supervision that gave me the opportunity to do that referral. And she had never really actually made that link until we started unpacking it.
Michelle McQuaid:
That's so helpful.
Kelly Gannon:
Because everyone... Yeah, go ahead.
Michelle McQuaid:
No, I was saying it is such a beautiful example again, of that just holding space. I think what's so important to understanding how to do that effectively, and you've outlined so beautifully how each person might have different needs is that supervision contract piece that you explained earlier. We're almost out of time though. Now, somebody asked in the chat, Kelly, if you could explain the Recovery Rocket, that rocket that Kirsten taught you. Are you able to give a little bit on that?
Kelly Gannon:
So that has two tables. One is indoor recovery, so soothing the nervous system. So that's things like massage, yoga, meditation, catching up with friends, a warm bath, relaxing music, all that sort of stuff. Outdoor recovery is more... That's the distracting of the brain and it's more like being physical. It'll be like doing a sport, going for a walk, gardening, fishing, sightseeing, all that sort of stuff that keeps you distracted from pondering over work when you're away from work.
And what it does when she gave me... I actually brought it along just in case, but it's based on the South Melbourne footy club. And it's a 1, 3, 30, 300 and 365. So it's based on days and how many times you do it. So number one is the off season. Can you tell that was a footy group? And that's when you're on holidays, you're on holidays. Leave work at work.
Michelle McQuaid:
Good.
Kelly Gannon:
Number three is mini break. So making time like those mental health days, having a long weekend going away somewhere, completely destressing and having those little mini breaks away. And then the things like 30 is the recovery points. And for me, when I got to my unit the first time, I found them all eating lunch at their desk. Well, I shooed them all out and sent them outside.
Michelle McQuaid:
Good.
Kelly Gannon:
'Cause to me, if you are having lunch at your desk, you're not having lunch. It's just doing work. And they didn't realise that they could leave their desk to go have lunch. Because also busy just being busy.
Michelle McQuaid:
Yeah.
Kelly Gannon:
And so that's part of those 30 weeks of recovery points. They've based it on their footy season and training season, but it's about you have to have a hundred points in each of the activities, and I'm sure Michelle could send it.
Michelle McQuaid:
Yes. We'll share it out.
Kelly Gannon:
We have it.
Michelle McQuaid:
We can send it out as part of the art resources for people.
Kelly Gannon:
So each of the activities has a number and it's about having a hundred points at the end of each week-
Michelle McQuaid:
Love it.
Kelly Gannon:
... of the recovery points so that you know you're actually doing that wellbeing stuff for you.
Michelle McQuaid:
Wonderful. That's fantastic, Kelly. And I guess this is the gift of having a wellbeing coach, working with the team as part of a pilot who can maybe bring in extra tools to help support the wonderful practises that you already have. Kelly, I know you've got to jump to facilitate a session of your own. So thank you so much for joining us today. Can I ask in the chat if you've got any feedback, a little appreciation for Kelly taking the time to be with us today, please pop that in there. Kelly, we'll jump off shortly. Kelly, on behalf of me and all the team that have made today possible, just thank you so much for both sharing your wisdom and lived experience, and for being open with your team as to trying to find new ways to keep caring for their health, safety and wellbeing. I can see lots of love happening there in the chat window, Kelly. Hopefully you can as well. Thank you for being with us.
Kelly Gannon:
No, that's all right. I hope that it will... There was a little bit of stuff that people could use. It's only part of what we do.
Michelle McQuaid:
Absolutely. I'm sure there was a lot of stuff in there that people can use. Thank you, Kelly.
Kelly Gannon:
No worries. Thanks for that.
Michelle McQuaid:
You're welcome. So what else can we add? Again, we want you to come away with some really practical, easy to apply things that you can do to help support yourself and your team. And Kelly's supervision agreement is a lovely example of some of the work that Dr. Sandra Bloom talks about around the importance of having a safety plan. And so in addition to addition to Kelly's supervision agreement, another tool that you may want to use is Sandra's safety plan template. And we'll send this out as well as a follow-up resource for you from today. So I want you just to reflect for yourself for a moment. When you find yourself in a stressful, challenging, or dangerous situation at work, what are some of the simple, effective, immediate actions that you need from others to support you in those moments?
I'm going to ask you to pop these in the chat as well, just so we can try to help build a little toolkit for each other that you can steal and borrow with pride from. So Kelly gave us lots of beautiful examples there in the Recovery Rocket details that she talked through. But I'm wondering for each of you, so when you find yourself perhaps a bit triggered or challenged at work, what are the simple, effective, immediate actions that you need from other people around you to help you in those moments?
And again, if you can start putting them into the chat, we are keen just to help you build a bit of a shared toolkit from each other's lived experience before we dive into Sandra's research. So you can see Emma is saying, speaking to a trusted and supported teammate or to a team leader. So a safe space. Again, I think about Vikki Reynolds, who's my howl at the moon person that I can turn to that I'll have no judgement and just be my space to let it all out.
Samantha is saying, "Listening to her, acknowledging of her skills and affirmation." Iva is saying, "Leave me alone, just give me some space while I get myself together." Completely relate to that too, Iva. Jessica is sitting down and talking it out. Ursula is saying, "Having permission to take a five-minute break and go for a walk." So again, those little mini breaks of recovery can be so important for us. Sharon is with you, Iva. She needs space too. I understand.
Michelle is saying, "Debrief that safe space to talk that reflective practise as Kelly was just speaking so beautifully to us." Donna is saying, "Supporting and reaching out to others. If you can, a quick walk." Again, I think Kelly was giving us some of those beautiful descriptions about getting back into our bodies, putting that default brain network so that we are not ruminating over and over, but distracting our brain while our body recovers and rebalances. Jody is saying, "Time to myself as well to regroup leaves curiosity from others in proximity."
I think this is a big one often, right? We're feeling triggered. It's easy to judge other people and what we see of their behaviours in those moments. But how do we have that space for curiosity about, "Hey, this is somebody struggling here. What can I do to help." Ja was saying, "Sharing of stories. You should go for coffee, reassess the situation." Irene, I'm with you. |Music helps and some fresh air. Asking for support, validation from others and mini break in coffee."
What I love about all these beautiful ideas you're suggesting is none of them really require any budget, maybe other than an emergency coffee fund if you need to go with somebody else. But often it is just that moment that break in what has come up for us in the feeling of the struggle to give our bodies, our brains a chance to reset and go forward.
This is what Sandra's really suggesting in her safety plan. She's saying, our brains in order to think rationally and act appropriately need to feel physically, physiologically, socially and morally safe with each other and within our organisations. And of course, when we are navigating struggle or challenge, when we feel in danger in some way, it's very hard. Our brain is wired to not feel safe for all those good reasons that we need to fight, flee, or freeze sometimes in those moments or simply that we feel so uncomfortable in ourselves that those feelings need a way to be expressed and come out of us because our brain is trying to alert us to the fact that something that matters to us is on the line and we need to get ready to take action, pay attention, do something, ask someone for help in order to navigate what's in front of us.
So one of the ways that Sandra suggests that we can preemptively prepare for these moments that we all encounter is what she describes as a safety plan in her work. She suggests that a safety plan has at least five simple, effective, immediate activities like so many of the ones there that you popped in chat that we can do anywhere, won't be embarrassing, won't make it draw more stress to ourselves when we find ourselves in those moments. And so you just put a tonne of them there in the chat that you can again be noting through and stealing with pride or inspiration.
Kelly gave us so many examples. We're going to add a few more before the end of our time together today. And so again, this safety plan is really at its simplest. What are my five go-to actions? Because of course when we're triggered, when our brain is moving towards that fight, flight or freeze mode, the blood is running out of our heads and into our arms and our legs and our muscles to get ready to act.
So thinking clearly in those moments is often not what we do best. And so having a safety plan with these five simple, effective, immediate things you can reach for on standby really is what we need to know that we have a different choice than the one we might feel first the urge to make. So Sandra suggests that these plans aren't just something that we do for self-care. They're not a "me" level responsibility, but they are actually a relational tool in our teams. Much like Kelly was talking about the supervision agreement that while, yes, we might each think about what are the five activities that work for me because as Kelly was so beautifully demonstrating each of her team had different ways that they cared for their health and wellbeing.
She then really encourages in her research, Sandra, that we share those plans in a conversation in our team while we're feeling safe and calm so that we know how to best support each other. A little, again, as Kelly was saying, she can tell by the expression on one of her team members face what they might next need. What is the right question to ask or what is the right suggestion to make to be able to support them in those moments?
So while our individual plan will be unique to each of us, the sharing of our plan is a team activity that you could absolutely go back and if you haven't already with your team, undertake this exercise very simply. To help you do that, we have put together and we will send out as a resource, a little safety plan template inspired by Sandra's work. And so this safety plan template helps us to think about, well, what is the data my body gives me when I'm struggling, when I'm challenged, when I'm feeling in danger? What are some of the triggers and scenarios that might prompt those feelings for me?
What is the support that I need from my team, my supervisor, the people around me, my workplace? And who do I feel okay sharing my plan with? So again, the suggestion of course to help people feel safe is not that we mandate you get vulnerable and tell us what you need in order to be safe, but that we invite as leaders. And so in the first instance, providing a template like this to say, "Hey, I went to this crazy workshop, or hey, I read some of the amazing Sandra Bloom's work. I thought this safety plan may be a good tool." If people are happy to use it as a team, great.
If you are willing to share it either with me or as a team, that would be wonderful, but you don't have to. And then what can we learn from that in terms of how we support each other? So even sharing as a group when it comes to the support we need, what do we need to ask of each other and of our workplace? And that may be going through the plans if people are happy to share, or it may just be a more general conversation.
When we're taking good care of ourselves and one another, what do we notice? And when we are not taking great care of ourselves or others in the team, what does that look like and what impact does it have so that we're in this together? I think sometimes often as leaders, we feel it's all our responsibility to hold this space of safety and care and wellbeing for our team, but the idea here is collective care. Yes, you may be the person more offering opening up the invitation, and yes, you may be the person more often providing support, resources, tools.
And yes, as Kelly talked about, it will be more your job to see your team as your caseload and your team also have a role to play in this. And that level of burnout and fatigue struggle that we were seeing for many of you earlier on suggests that sometimes we need to get better at leaders and also asking our team for some collective care support as a whole.
There's also something incredibly empowering for our teams when we normalise that as leaders, of course, we struggle as well. We do not have it all figured out. It is not working all of the time. Of course, sometimes we can be triggered. And when we are triggered, this is the support that helps us.
Now, that may not be asking your team members to take care of you. Again, ideally you may have supervision or a howl at the moon person or a mentor or a sponsor, that is your safe place to be able to unload so that your team aren't carrying that weight for you, but it doesn't mean that you also can't say to your team, "Hey, today's a bit of a hard day. I'm going to sit out and have my lunch in the sun as Kelly was talking about. Anyone wants to join me, you're more than welcome."
Or even just, "Hey, I've just had a really hard meeting. I'm going to take a little bit of a walk and just regroup for myself. I'll be back shortly to help with anything else that you need. It's okay for you and in fact, not just okay, but really healthy for your team to know that you also struggle in this way.
Now, some of the organisations Sandra works with on this safety plan go as far as actually laminating their five activities and putting it on a card in their wallet or putting it on the back of their ID cards, so that may be an idea that feels appropriate for you or your team, or there might be other places that you want to have that safety plan in urgent reach. I know some teams put it as their screensaver on their iPhone in case that's a useful way to be able to see it in a moment where we're feeling stressed.
Just thinking about how does this safety support live within our team and the work that we're doing together. And most importantly, what these check-in chats allow is that normalisation that we all struggle sometimes. We all need to be asking for support and there is no shame in that.
As Sandra notes, everyone should have a safety plan that's regularly updated because our skills improve and the demands change. Some of those activities will be a better fit than others for us. But also say that having a safety plan is actually the social norm in your team so that you can provide the support and care that you all want to be able to for your clients.
So here's another tool that we could add. I want to give you one more and then we're going to hear another example from one of your colleagues in the field. And the next one I want to give you is the work of Dr. Vikki Reynolds around are we in our zone of fabulousness? So I want you just to reflect for yourself. You don't need to share this in chat or anywhere else. And I just want you to think about the last time people across your team were really feeling the demands of their work were greater than the resources they had available. So based on what we were sharing at the start of this session, that shouldn't be too hard to imagine and perhaps is the lived reality of what you're stepping back into today.
So when this imbalance is coming between the demands and the resources available to us, what tends to be the pattern of behaviour? What do you see in your team? Do you see people feeling consumed by their work? They start to take more and more on. There's that reluctance to ask for help because they don't want to be a bother to what everybody else is already struggling with and so they find it harder and harder to switch off.
A bit to Kelly's example, they're eating lunch at their desk, but they're working as they go, or they're logging on often late at night and cleaning up pieces, working on the weekends and the like. Or perhaps the pattern you see more in your team is people increasingly feeling detached from their work. They're struggling for motivation. They're feeling a sense of hopelessness about the system that they're in and what they're trying to be a social justice activist for. And as a result, they're cynicism creeping in. "That'll never work. We never get the support we need. We're never recognised or valued for our work. It all just starts to feel overwhelming."
Or perhaps the pattern that you see is that, yep, people are challenged and they're supported by their work. They're definitely feeling that pain, but they're able to share their struggles with each other. They're asking for help in the ways that Kelly was describing with that supervision conversation. They're providing each other with feedback and support as they're going.
So again, just gut check knowing different people will have perhaps different patterns here in your team, but generally in your team right now, when you think about that struggle between resources available and the demands of your team, which of these might best describe the pattern that you're seeing. And what impact then is that having on the health, safety and wellbeing of your team?
Not only are you highly contagious as a leader when it comes to health, safety and wellbeing, but your team will infect each other. And particularly if you have team members that can exert a strong influence on other people, be that a formal influence or a more social influence, you've probably already seen in the past, how those feelings can spread quite quickly, good or bad, one way or the other because our thinking, our behaviours, our wellbeing habits do have this contagious nature we see over and over again in population studies.
So what does all this mean and how might Vikki's research help us? So Vikki notes that vicarious trauma and burnout tends to play out in our teams of one in two ways. We either become super close like in that first instance and enmeshed more in our clients the work that we are doing. We can't switch off. It's all on our shoulders to be the hero and save everybody or we tend to move too far away and we become more disconnected, cynical, overwhelmed with those feelings of hopelessness. We can't impact it. It's never going to change.
Vikki suggests we think about this like a continuum and the two ends of this continuum being that two enmeshed and the other end being too disconnected. What she describes as the zone of fabulousness is this kind of spot in between these two ends. So she notes that in the zone of fabulousness we can be heartbroken, but as workers we also recognise we are not the centre of the heartbreak our clients are.
So there's that slight perspective and separation from the pain and the struggle that we support people through every day and what our role is within that. Vikki notes in this moment when we're in that zone of fabulousness, we understand that it's not our tragedy, but that we are here to try and help and champion and advocate to become more informed and educated, to become more active around asking for the resources that we are needed, connecting people to the resources that are available and doing the best we can with what we have and then also knowing when we need to switch off at the end of the day to give ourselves the rest and recovery and care that we need so that we can come back again and do it all tomorrow.
So the way that Vikki suggests we think about this is not that when we're at the two ends of this continuum, there is something wrong with us individually or that team member individually like, "Oh my goodness, they've lost the plot. They've become so enmeshed or they've become so disconnected." Instead, Vikki advocates that we take collective responsibility when our team members become a meshed or disconnected and we understand that as a team, we are not doing enough right in those moments to keep each other in that zone of fabulousness and we need to think about that collective care and support that our team members need, that we do this not from a place of blame and shame for those who may be experiencing enmeshment or disconnection or blame and shame of ourselves as leaders or blame and shame on our team. But actually we step into collective shared responsibility and we think about how do we navigate this better together?
And to help do that, we pull together out of Vikki's research and work a little collective responsibility checklist that may be useful for you and your team. To be completely clear, this is a model that the Wellbeing Lab has put together from all of Vikki's wonderful research and writing. We were fortunate enough to interview Vikki last year, so this is not Vikki's model. If you go looking for it. We've tried very hard not to put words in Vikki's mouth that were not her own, but to pull together her research in a way that might make it practical and actionable for you.
And to the extent that that is a useful interpretation, you are most welcome to use it. We will send this out with the followup resources as well or improve upon it if you've been in Vikki's trainings or work or replace it with something else of Vikki's that you love around this. But I think her idea around our collective responsibility and how we enact this in our teams is such an important one. And so there are three parts of Vikki's research that really stood out for the US around this.
The first is how do we stay centred in our ethics? How as a team do we continue to agree on the ethics that are alive in our work when we are serving our clients at our best? And you may have done a A values exercise, a vision exercise, something like that with your team in the past. And if you have, fantastic. If you haven't, this is a great place to begin.
But even if you have this needs revisiting periodically, I would suggest at least once a year, maybe even every six months if there's a lot of change in learning going on in your team, but I love this question from Vikki around what are the ethics that are alive in our work when we're serving our clients best? If we don't have agreement on those ethics in our team that shared collective sense of ethics, it's very hard to know what we're accountable for, what is okay and isn't okay as we do our work together.
The second step it comes through again and again in Vikki's research is do we have a culture of safe enough so that we can have uncomfortable conversations with each other quickly and proactively as we need. Kelly talked about that informal in the moment supervision that needs to happen so often in her team. So when we see something that's moving away from our ethics, we see perhaps a team member veering more towards disconnection or enmeshment. How do we invite each other back to accountability even if it's uncomfortable?
So having that ability to just say, "Hey, I noticed perhaps this is happening right now, or I was curious about that. Can you tell me more about your experience there? Or is everything okay right now? Is there any support that you need?" Having these conversations quickly and early rather than letting things go on for a while, so that little things become much bigger problems is so important. And so even if it's uncomfortable, Vikki urges us not to get stuck in the politics of politeness, but to have this candour and vulnerability with each other, not to blame or shame, but to call each other back to what centres us in our work for the clients we are trying to help.
And then the last piece is how do we shoulder each other up in Vikki's research? And this is that collective repair that it's not on one person to fix, but hey, as a team, how better then can we help support and care for each other's health, safety and wellbeing so that we are not feeling so disconnected or we're not at risk of becoming enmeshed? How do we sustain our energy for the justice work that we are doing together?
So I love this as a little checklist for me as a leader to just keep coming back with my team. Where are we in the work that we do around this? But also even occasionally in our team meetings, I will use this periodically once a month to just how are we going through these things? Is there adaptions we need to make? Are there reflections that we need to have so that we prioritise the time for collective responsibility and it doesn't get lost in the busyness or the fatigue of what is so much about every day.
So again, to the extent it's helpful, you are welcome to use it. To the extent you want to amend it and make it aligned with other parts of Vikki's work, please do so. Vikki nudges us to note that we cannot side with the politics of politeness. We cannot sit with our lack of moral courage or our willingness to smooth over the ethical issues with each other. If we are committed to caring for each other, we have the uncomfortable conversations quickly and proactively and we don't let little things become big wellbeing challenges.
So to help think about, "Okay, that all sounds great in theory, but how does that work in the real world of what is day-to-day for us?" I'm really thrilled to be able to introduce to you the wonderful Marianne Hendron who is the CEO of Women's Health Grampians. And Marianne again is one of the pilot sites that Rachel mentioned earlier where we've had some of our wellbeing lab coaches there and they've been using that PERMAH Wellbeing Survey tool. And Marianne, welcome. It's so wonderful to have you with us. Thank you for your time today.
Marianne Hendron:
Thank you, Michelle. I hope I can contribute something useful.
Michelle McQuaid:
Oh, I have no doubt. Well, and we were amazed when we measured the wellbeing of Marianne's team, just how healthy their levels of wellbeing are, even with all the challenges that they're facing. And when we came back to Marianne's team with these results, we got the most beautifully humble and accountable response to that. Marianne, can you share, when you saw those results as a leader, what was your response?
Marianne Hendron:
Well, I'd say a few things about that, Michelle. One is, I mean there was a great sense of reassurance, particularly around the domains of psychological safety and the sense that people felt safe and comfortable in their workplace. I'll just add that I think some of our staff might be online here. So I'd really encourage you to chip in on this and make me accountable. I don't want to sugarcoat this at all. I was also really aware that this was a moment in time and that this was not something that I or we could take for granted as being a norm or something that we could always expect to be the outcome of a survey like this.
So I have reflected. I don't want to be negative to start with, but I have reflected on some of the conditions that were in place at that particular time. It was emerging out of COVID. People were feeling, I think a sense of optimism being back together again, in person. I think another factor that came into play was that we had recently had some really positive funding use. What that did was enable us to provide some certainty to staff who had uncertainty in regards to their contracts.
A huge bit of our sector is that we operate off short-term funding and that means short-term, fixed term contracts, insecurity for people. We prioritised in considering how we're going to use that funding, obviously, in line with the requirements of the funding, but to try where possible to provide certainty to staff by extending contracts.
I think that's a really important thing in our industry is that resourcing, where resourcing is inadequate. We have to cut corners. We can't treat people I guess with the respect that they might deserve or that we might want to. So I think that was a recent occurrence as well.
Now, I'll say that within a few weeks of that, we had our first in-person agency event for three years and it was a super spreader event. And so something like a third of the staff fell with COVID. We were heading into November, which for many of us in the prevention sector know was a really busy time with 16 days, frantically busy, getting ready for Christmas, people taking Christmas leave.
So had, I think, the survey happened a month later, it might have looked a bit different. But the other reflections that I had around it are... You talked earlier about values and having the time, taking the time to consider our values within the organisation. We had in fact done that a bit earlier in the year in preparation for our new strategic plan.
One of the values that emerged from those conversations that was a new feature of our plan was recognition of courage. That courage is an intrinsic part of the work that we do. So we're in primary prevention. We're about that big picture, long-term cultural change effort that takes a long time and is about often challenging or presenting different ways of working and acknowledging that for our staff, that is courageous. And I think in hand with that then is recognising that when we're talking about courage, we need to recognise people's fears and anxieties around undertaking that work.
I think there's been a bit in the chat, I didn't want to read too much of the chat because I wanted to be ready to speak to you, but I think there's been a bit of discussion go on there about vulnerability. And I think that that's a really important aspect of our sector. The work that we do in our sector is to recognise and be able to express our vulnerability in a safe and trusting environment.
So possibly those things are at play when people are reflecting on how they feel about our workplace, or were at that time. The other thing I'd say is that our core business is very much about focusing on standards. We have an alliance called Communities of Respect and Equality. We are going into organisations and workplaces and talking about safety and respect. And we have responsibility ourselves to model.
I mean, you talked earlier about modelling, I think, and we have to walk the talk in that respect. I'm not saying that we're by any means, we're across that, or we're perfect, or consistent in regards to that, but it's got to be front of mind in how we practise that in our workplace is really key, I think, to being able to do it authentically when we go into other environments.
Michelle McQuaid:
Well, thank you.
Marianne Hendron:
I'm probably a little bit scattered in how I-
Michelle McQuaid:
That's okay. I think there's lots.
Marianne Hendron:
... discussed that.
Michelle McQuaid:
I think there's lots of richness in there and the importance of the courage, and the learning culture I think, and the ability, you're absolutely right to sit with compassion with each other's pain. And you're right, it's not always just the client's tragedy. Sometimes it is our tragedy in the work as well because of where we sit in intersectionality and sometimes just because of the experience that we're having in that moment. And that is valid and important and needs to be recognised as well. So Marianne, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your wisdom with us. We appreciate it and everyone will have a chance to see what you guys end up thinking in terms of practises of that when we had the final showcase in a few months that Rachel mentioned. So thank you for being part of that work.
Marianne Hendron:
Thank you.
Michelle McQuaid:
Again, if you can in the chat, please share some appreciation for Marianne, any feedback for her. It takes a lot to come on here with all of you beautiful people listening and watching. So we are so grateful to both Marianne and Kelly today.
As we get ready to wrap out, there's one tiny piece that we'll add to this and Marianne and Kelly both touched on this and of course we know that we should be doing it and it's often so hard to be able to do effectively, but it's the piece around how we set boundaries. And so as we get ready to wrap up today and you think about where you might eat your lunch, I'll get you just to imagine yourself as a pie sort of a big round pie and to think about how big a slice does work take up for you right now. And based on how big that slice of pie is for your work right now, what impact is it having on your own wellbeing and what impact might that be having on your team's wellbeing as well?
Part of where we land on Vikki's continuum of fabulousness is that sometimes our passion for our work feels so important, particularly in the work that you do, that it can take control of us and it makes it difficult to engage in other things or with other people. Professor Robert Vallerand talks about this as our obsessive passion and he actually suggests far more than compassion fatigue, which neurologically researchers have found compassion works the same way as love in our brains.
So it tends not to fatigue, but we can definitely become fatigued by our passion for our work, for the difference we feel we are making for the social justice fight that we are in. And so when that pie starts to consume too much of us, even when it's a healthy thing overall, we are dedicating our work too. Robert's research does suggest, it puts us more at risk of burnout. We need other slices of that pie to keep us well and to keep each other well.
So I love Professor Brene Brown's work has found that Marianne's point before around how do we sit in compassion with each other around the mess and complexity of navigating this every day in our teams is that actually the most compassionate people have the most well-defined and most well-respected boundaries in her research. They do this by being really clear about what is okay and what's not okay and why that's the case.
So the last little tool that we will send out as part of the follow-up today with the slides on the recording and all that goodness for you is a bit of an example around how you might create a list for your team about what is okay and what isn't okay as a group in terms of how you are honouring your collective ethics. And based on Vikki's research, we put some examples in here, but of course what matters most is what is true for your team based on your shared ethics of where you are most alive in the work that you are doing for your clients and how you're supporting them, based on the things that you want to be accountable to for each other when it comes to collective care and how you'll nudge each other more often towards that healthy heart space and less towards that cliff of absolute heartbreak that comes when we are burnt out or we are suffering from vicarious trauma or the like in our work.
So again, this is intended as an example, feel free to steal it with pride, use it if it's helpful. But more importantly is the conversation that you could have with your team using perhaps some of those questions from the checklist, using perhaps the safety plan, what we value, where we struggle, how will we keep nudging each other towards that are things that are good for our collective care, knowing that we are in this together.
It is not just your responsibility as a leader, it is a shared responsibility we all have as a team. But yes, as a leader you will set the tone as Marianne was describing so beautifully. And Kelly was role modelling in thinking about her team as her caseload in terms of how important is this in all the things that sit there for your team to navigate each day. Brene talks about what boundaries do our teams need to have in place in order to stand in our integrity and support our generosity with each other and with our clients.
So as we get ready to wrap up, I'm going to ask just quickly, get those chat fingers going one more time. If there was one aha that you would take away from the conversation today around collective care in addition to not eating your lunch at your desk next, what might that be? It might be something that Kelly shared or Marianne shared, things that you saw shared in the chat, perhaps something I've offered from the beautiful researchers we've been sharing with you today. Maybe something Rachel shared with us earlier, but just pop there into the chat if you can in our last few minutes, something that you might take away and use or an insider framing that's helpful for you.
So I can see Sharon, and Libby, Amanda saying safety plans. Jackie is saying the rocket recovery plan will be sure to include that in the followup resources for you. Carla is saying the supervision contract, the safety plan. Emily's safety plan. Dee, yes, please take a moment to regroup always. I think our bodies and brains are no different from our teams or anybody else's. We're human. Give yourself that permission to be perfectly imperfect and embrace that humanness.
I can see lots more safety plans popping up. I can see Ursula is saying your team is your caseload. I think that's so important. We so often work with leaders in all sorts of industries and over and over we try to use the research to justify that as a leader, your most important job is caring for your team. There are decades of research that would back that up.
Maureen modelling behaviour for the team. Thank you so much. Julie is saying Marianne talked about accountability using that reflective practise. A bit more rocket recovery. Thank you so much Kelly for that contribution. Karen is saying lots of great resources to share and implement. Pi is saying collective responsibility and that negative feelings are contagious. I know as leaders, and we certainly had a bit of this going on last week in our team, I don't know what was in the wind, but it's easy just to go, "Oh, I'm just going to hope that settles down and pass by. Or Oh my goodness, I don't have the energy for this. I had 20 other things I had to get done today to now untangle a team member or team members together."
The thing I've learned over and over again in this work is the faster I helped just create a safe space for people to pause, to maybe talk to me or talk to each other about the things we need to untangle, the quicker we move forward and the less energy we keep wasting repeating the same cycles over and over again.
So I strongly encourage to think about what can you take today. Just one small thing and apply it. And if that is just eating your lunch at your desk, then that's okay. As we wrap out here, we will just pop back in the chat for you some of those resources we mentioned today. Even if you're not in the pilot, you can use this wellbeing survey tool that was created for the sector specifically and use that in your team so that URL, permahsurvey.com/fsv has more of that. And of course there's a Safe and Equal self-assessment tool as well. We will be talking more about that tool in our next conversation when we talk about the workplace level responsibilities on this and the new psychosocial hazard legislation that's coming. That is seminar two on the 29th of March. We'll put the link in the chat. If you're not already signed up, be wonderful to have you.
We are also just sharing in the chat now a link for your feedback. Any feedback will be welcome, good, bad, everything in between. For myself, for the structure of the session, any feedback for Marianne and Kelly, we'll be sure to pass on with them. So if you can just take a moment or two and pop some feedback in the form, that would be wonderful. We are here to learn right alongside you. We are not pretending for a moment. We have this all figured out. We are just grateful that you're in this space with us and willing to learn and give us the space to do so as well.
Again, we'll send that link out for feedback with your follow-up resources today. And just I'll leave you with this last thought that we will make mistakes. We will bump up against our limitations and we will absolutely fall short sometimes of our ideals. And this is the human condition. So the more, as we've talked about today, you can be at peace in that for yourself. The easier it is to role model for our team and to give them the permission to do the same, creates more safety.
It makes vulnerability easier. And then hopefully many of the tools you've shared today can help you live in the complexity and the mess and the magic of being in that space with each other. Thank you so much for joining us. We are so grateful and we look forward to seeing you for the next seminar. Until then, take care. Have a great day. Eat your lunch not at your desk. Thanks, everyone. We'll unmute the line, Shirley if we can, in case people want to say a fun farewell as they're heading out today. Thank you so much. It's wonderful-
Speaker 5:
Thank you.
Michelle McQuaid:
... to have you with us. Thank you, Marianne. It was just wonderful.
Marianne Hendron:
Bye, now.
Michelle McQuaid:
Thank you, everybody.
Speaker 6:
Thank you.
Michelle McQuaid:
Take care. Have a great day. Stay well. Thank you.
Speaker 7:
Thanks so much. That was excellent.
Michelle McQuaid:
... for the work that you do. Thank you for being here. [inaudible 01:22:23] Bye, everybody. It was wonderful to have you with us. Thank you for your time.
Speaker 8:
Thank you, Michelle.
Michelle McQuaid:
Thank you. You're so welcome. Take care. Have a great day. Thanks, everyone. Stay well. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 9:
Thank you.
Michelle McQuaid:
You're so welcome. [inaudible 01:22:43] Thank you.
Speaker 10:
Bye-bye.
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