DOMAIN 1: RESILIENCE-BUILDING, STAFF HEALTH, AND WELLNESS
Item 5
Strategies:
- Enhance compassion satisfaction among staff by routinely recognizing the impact they are making and successes in their work. For example, you can put up a bulletin board or create a virtual space on which supervisors and staff can post success or impact stories and/or praise for one another.
- Ask staff to reflect and write about how they make meaning of their work. Prompts may include:
- What does your work mean to you?
- What impact does your work have on others?
- Why did you choose to do this work?
- What inspires you about your work?
- What keeps you going when things get hard?
- This reflection and writing activity can be done in an individual or group meeting. Staff should be given the option of keeping their responses to themselves or sharing what they choose to share.
- In regard to meaning making, be respectful of staff’s cultural values and individual differences in regard to spiritual or religious beliefs and practices. For example, while belief in a higher power and prayer may help many professionals cope with trauma exposure, it is important to recognize and respect that staff may have very diverse spiritual beliefs and practices.
Implementation Resources:
Activities
- From the “What About You?” workbook, use the following activities to enhance compassion satisfaction:
- Dwelling on the Days That Make You Want to Come Back (p. 44), a writing activity that can be done during a staff meeting or retreat. It asks staff to write down what they love about their job, people whose lives they have touched, why they took their current job, and compliments they have received. Leaders and supervisors can also regularly ask staff these kinds of questions to help them focus on the rewards of their work and the difference they are making.
- Personal Mission Statement (p. 45), an activity that asks workers to think and write about why they do this work and why they got into this work and then to develop a personal mission statement. This can be done in a staff meeting or retreat or in individual supervision.
Podcasts & Videos
- Well@Work podcast series, from the University of Kentucky Center on Trauma & Children. Episode 21: “Meaning Making” (6 minutes). This podcast features a discussion on the concept of meaning making and how to apply it in difficult circumstances.
Select Action Plan to begin to organize and implement next steps.