Supporting staff amid collapse

Each time something new emerges in the world, I get asked how Fractured Atlas thinks about supporting staff. It feels ever more urgent to help the helpers — people trying their best to support the people in their organizations. I’m talking about managers, HR/People people, senior leadership, and anyone else who has some amount of institutional power within organizations to make decisions about resources and activities. I’m just one person working in a People role in an organization, and I’m by no means doing things perfectly. But together we know a lot, and hopefully I can share things I’ve been thinking about to get your ideas rolling. And I want to hear if you have other ideas that I didn’t mention, so comment away!

But first, take a pause

Before we dive in, I want to remind you to pause. Most of us in staff support roles didn’t get training in supporting other people’s emotions in the same way that some other professions do, so we often have to figure it out on the fly. It also attracts (especially in the nonprofit sector) people who are predisposed to ignoring their needs to caretake for others, people who feel a lot of personal responsibility to ✨do the right thing✨, and people who tie a solid amount of self to their jobs. I’ve been there and fully include myself here!! This combination can make it hard to show up when people are asking for support because it can feel like a failure. But guess what? We can’t fix the world by ourselves, and our teams are not asking for that. We’ll be in a better state to support our teams if we take a pause and make sure we’re managing our own emotions — including guilt, shame, hopelessness, and any other activating emotions. This is particularly important for those of us in these roles who hold privileged identities.

If we’re showing up in an activated state, we’re not going to be able to support our teams. If we stay in an activated state, we’re more likely to respond with defensiveness to requests and generally not act in a way that supports our values or our team. So please, take a moment to check in with yourself and manage your own needs. Have you eaten, are you hydrated, have you connected with your people? Figure out what works for you to move out of that activated state so that you can support your team. I find the feelings and needs lists for nonviolent communication to be a really helpful place to start.

Within collapse, it’s impossible to meet every need of our team members. But we CAN commit to doing what we can to make things a bit more easeful for the people that work to make sure our organizations run. There is always more that we can be doing. Moving through the overwhelm to do something, even if it’s in draft form or needs to be tweaked later, is essential to building the future we want to see and live in. 

When you’re experiencing something urgent

If your organization or your people are experiencing something urgent, you’re not going to be in long term planning mode. If you’re just starting on a journey in figuring out how to support your staff, this might be especially hard. A lot of the long term work of supporting staff takes a while and can’t be created overnight. Most work under capitalism (shoutout to co-ops!) is not set up for the benefit of employees, so supporting staff can mean pushing up against enormously powerful systems. That’s going to be hard in an emergency state. There are for sure things you can do now, but just know that we also need to be thinking about this when things feel calmer. 

Figure out what work is the most important/urgent

If people are experiencing some kind of emergency, they’re going to be less resourced to get work done. Figure out what the most important work is and what you can put on hold. Lifting the pressure a bit can help support staff so they can balance work with taking care of themselves and their communities. For example, paying people and getting reimbursements processed are incredibly urgent and important. But maybe you can temporarily pause or extend the timelines on bigger and longer term projects.  

What kind of support can you provide?

This one is going to be really dependent on your specific organization. When Covid was emerging in early 2020, Fractured Atlas had already moved to a fully remote organization and was in the process of liquidating all of our office supplies and things in our headquarters office. We offered that people could come and get hand sanitizer or toilet paper for themselves or mutual aid networks. What are things that you can offer? 

• 🏫 Space — If you have a physical location, can you offer your space as an after hours meeting space? Or as a supply drop off/pick up zone?
• 🖨️ Tools — Can staff and/or community use your printer to print things? Your camera to film?
• 💸 Benefits — Can you offer a short or longer term financial benefit to team members to support any emergency costs?
• 🕰️ Time — Can you be clear on how flexible you can be with people’s schedules in case they have other things to prioritize? Are people able to flex their schedules at all? Can you offer any additional time off for people to support with community needs?
  
  

When You Have Some Capacity

It feels like there is some kind of emergency every week, but there are going to be times when you have a little more capacity and breathing room. These are the times when you need to be longer term planning and setting yourself up for having a smoother time when there are more urgent things happening. Think of these things like a primary care provider instead of emergency medicine. These are the things that help set you up for longer term stability and set the framework for staff support.

⚠️ Figure out staff and board appetite for risk

It can be really helpful to figure out on your staff and board side what your risk tolerance is. This can help you be more nimble when things emerge. It’s much easier to have these conversations when you’re in a more resourced place. 

💜 Foster a Culture of Care

Culture work takes time and needs to be embedded throughout the entire organization. But if people feel like there is a culture of care they’re more likely to tell you what they need when things emerge. Some things that can help you do this include:

• Practicing shared decision making and being transparent about how decisions are made
• Offering solid benefits and paid time off
• Providing manager training and support

🌱 Take a look at what changes you can make to align with your values

As mission driven organizations, there are so many areas where we can align our decisions with our values. In every area of your organization there are opportunities to make changes that are values aligned. Some things that can fall into this include:

• Moving 401k and other investments to mission-aligned investments
• Cross team budget planning and decision making

In it for the long term

I know everything feels urgent right now (because things are), but we also need to be thinking about the longer term. Building a new future will take time, and figuring out how to shift and sunset systems that aren’t working is going to take a while. People are core to our organizations, and figuring out how to support them is going to be an important piece in this. I hope you join me in this for the long term.

Stay safe, and I look forward to seeing the alternate world we build together.