WELL Workforce & Culture
For thriving workplaces and professionals in behavioral health, criminal justice, and human services.
Wellbeing & Resilience
Supporting behavioral health, healthcare, and systems professionals to tend to their emotional and mental wellbeing is key to addressing workforce challenges. Organizations should emphasize the importance of self-care and offer opportunities to learn about strategies for managing wellbeing with individual and group resilience practices.
Engagement & Connection
Workforce engagement is the sense of interest, enthusiasm, and passion that employees have for their work and organizations. Engaged employees feel more connected to their organizations and colleagues, are more productive, innovative, and satisfied, and experience better physical, emotional, and mental health.
Learning & Growth
Learning and professional growth are critical for the development of a flourishing, fulfilled, and effective workforce. While burnout is most likely to result when employees feel the demands of their jobs exceed their capabilities, preparing workers with knowledge and skills to succeed contributes to higher quality services, increased motivation, and greater individual wellbeing.
Leadership & Culture
Leadership and culture play critical roles in improving workforce wellbeing, employee engagement, and professional development. Leaders are in a unique position to manage organizational change, serve as models of healthy behavior, and ensure that frontline staff receive adequate supervision and support. Cultures that prioritize high-quality connections and psychological safety set the necessary conditions for individuals and teams to thrive.
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Let's TalkWellbeing & Resilience
While we should avoid putting the onus on individual workers to cope with the stress of work that places them in proximity to suffering or distress without also addressing the environmental factors, organizations should promote individual and group practices that contribute to emotional health and psychological wellbeing.
Many employers have focused their wellbeing resources on providing easy access to support services like Employee Assistance Programs for workers who find themselves in crisis, yet research suggests these offerings are among the least utilized employee benefits and may be only slightly better than doing nothing at all. This raises the question: what should behavioral health workforce wellbeing efforts focus on?
Research suggests several promising areas of focus for workforce wellbeing strategies:
Physical Health
Support employees to maintain good physical health through balanced nutrition, physical activity, and adequate sleep.
Self-Expression
Encourage employees to engage in positive self-expression through creative endeavors.
Mindfulness
Prioritize spiritual health through meditation and mindfulness.
Resilience
Build resilience by cultivating realistic optimism, seeking social support, and increasing gratitude, positive emotions, and attention to positive aspects of the environment.
Engagement & Connection
When professionals in high-stress and caring roles have higher engagement with their work, they invest more of their cognitive, emotional, and physical resources into their performance. They have higher levels of energy and resilience, better relate to the importance of their work, and become fully engrossed in advancing work-related goals.
While individual characteristics of employees can influence engagement, employee engagement is best understood as arising from relationships: those between the employee and the organization, between the employee and their role, and between the employee and their colleagues.
Research suggests several promising areas for increasing workforce engagement and connection:
High-Quality Connections
Promote interpersonal interactions characterized by positive regard, trust, collaboration, support, and fun.
Employee-Job Fit
Encourage employees to seek roles, adapt tasks, and divide responsibilities to harness their strengths and build satisfaction.
Meaning and Purpose
Align work tasks with workers' values and increase visibility of positive outcomes.
Challenge-Resource Match
Create balance between challenging work and adequate resources to reduce burnout and increase innovation.
Learning & Growth
Ensuring workers have appropriate training to perform their jobs well and increase their skills for future career advancement is essential not only because it increases the quality of services caring professionals provide but also because competence meets a core psychological need.
Self-efficacy, one's belief in their ability to achieve their goals, enables professionals to pursue challenging goals and persevere when things get tough, increases motivation, and buffers against mental, emotional, and physical health problems.
Research has identified several elements of effective adult learning experiences:
Contextual
Offer learning opportunities that are contextualized for the care setting and address specific needs of the professional and organization.
Modeling
Provide models of proficiency for participants to observe and replicate.
Practice
Include time for participants to practice using new skills.
Discussion
Facilitate large and small group discussions to explore and refine concepts and their applicability.
Expert Feedback
Use experts with relevant experience to observe practice and give feedback.
Follow-Up
Develop written action plans andfollow-up on progress through peer review and support.
Leadership & Culture
Leaders may be in formal leadership roles or situated by aptitude, influence, or position to implement and sustain needed organizational changes. Whether leading formally or informally, leaders can help by providing a clear vision and direction for the organization. They can also create a culture of open communication and collaboration, which can help employees feel supported and engaged.
By managing organizational change, serving as role models of healthy behavior, and ensuring that counselors receive adequate supervision and support, leaders can play an important role in improving addiction workforce wellbeing, employee engagement, and professional development.
Some key attributes of effective leadership and strong culture for a flourishing, fulfilled, and effective workforce include:
Psychological Safety
Workers must feel safe and supported, even when they make mistakes or come up short. Mistakes are a learning opportunity, and speaking up is encouraged.
Prioritizing
Through assessment, action, and communication, make clear the organization's prioritization of workforce wellbeing, engagement, and learning.
Listening
Engage workers in decisions about operations, processes, challenges, and solutions, and offer multiple pathways for providing input.
Supervision
Provide adequate supervisory support from qualified professionals with relevant experience.
Role Modeling
Serve as a model of healthy behavior by tending to personal self-care needs, adapting work to meet personal psychological needs, and advancing personal professional development.