Healthy Organizations in Pandemic Times
How we can get through this era with our people, our organizations and our sanity intact
As we entered the deep grind of being eight or so months into the pandemic this fall, with no end in sight, I noticed some patterns emerging among social justice organizations.
Most staff /leaders hadn’t seen each other in person since March, and the demands of parenting, caring for parents or other beloveds in our communities, dealing with social isolation, weathering sickness and its aftermath, dealing with ongoing and intense racism and white supremacy, and the stress and anxiety around the elections and its aftermath-while also trying to keep up with work — is taking its toll on workers. Meanwhile, many organizations are in existential crisis, facing financial dangers and increased demands.
I decided to offer a series of webinars for organizational leaders where we could talk about how these conditions are affecting staff morale and workflow, and what we could do to realistically plan for these circumstances to likely continue well into 2021. The sessions were organized around three themes: 1) the fraying bonds in workplaces due to the absence of in-person gatherings; 2) addressing workloads under intense internal and external stress; and 3) a session for board members navigating how to best support their organizations even as they are themselves negotiating all the same challenges. Representatives from groups attending ranged from organizations working on refugee rights to sustainable agriculture to Palestine solidarity and Jewish communal organizations. The majority were in the U.S., but people also attended from the UK and Greece.
A note: folks attending the webinars are in organizations already fairly attentive to the rights and needs of workers. If as an organization you don’t already offer paid sick and personal leave, paid health insurance, paid family medical leave, and paid bereavement leave in addition to good salaries, then that is the place to begin. And if you’re a majority white/white-led organization that has yet to commit serious resources to internal racial justice, that should be a priority. Even the most creative tweaks to the workplace can’t make up for those key pieces of infrastructure needed for workers and organizations to weather the vagaries of this or any year.
Below is a distillation of the wisdom and reflections that came out of these conversations:
Small Fixes/Radical Restructuring: There is a place for both! Be honest with yourself about what your organization is capable of right now, and transparent with your staff/leaders about how much you’re willing to try. Sometimes disruptions like this moment are an opportunity to do a deeper self-assessment than usual and try some radical restructuring. If you’re willing to be experimental, you can take advantage of the moment. That being said…
Your Internal Issues and Place in the Organizational Life Cycle Haven’t Changed: Keep in mind that whatever internal issues your organization was facing before the pandemic, they’re not going away and may even be exacerbated. Similarly, every organization is at a different point of its lifecycle — maybe you’re going through a leadership transition, or just setting up systems for the first time, or have been around for decades. Your ability to experiment, have trust in one another, and get support for your efforts are going to be somewhat dependent on what has gone before and where you are now. And, you’ll need to remember to continue to pay attention to those other dynamics as well.
Relationships are Everything: spend the time needed to nurture relationships among staff/leaders. The transactional rhythms of a Zoom meeting doesn’t leave much room for casual catching up or for deeper reflection. Without the social glue of non-meeting time together, the trust, resiliency, and patience we need to have with one another can flag.
— Don’t add extra meetings to make this happen, instead re-purpose staff meetings or other pre-scheduled times to prioritize deeper check-ins, whether one-on-one or in a group.
— Instead of a check in go round, pair people up and invite them to have a phone conversation with no agenda. Extra points if they walk around outside while they’re doing it! This can be as short as a ten minute agenda item at the top of a typical Zoom hour and still work.
— many organizations put off complicated or thorny conversations for in-person retreats, for good reasons. But too much time is passing now to put those conversations off until we’re back to being in person. Try mimicking the structure of a retreat by clearing everyone’s schedule for at least a half day, and organizing a series of well-facilitated conversations around one topic, with plenty of time for people who get less opportunities to be in contact regularly now to talk to one another
— factor in more time to dig into conversations. It takes longer to warm up and establish a conversational rhythm on screens than it does in person.
— some people have found it helpful to shorten amount of time in meetings overall. Just make sure you’re not skimping on communication among your team!
Be Ruthless about What is Essential: People simply don’t have the same capacity as they do in other years. Small fixes like offering more personal days off are not ultimately that helpful if overall workplans stay the same — it’s just less time in which to do the same amount of work. And if there’s one thing we learned in 2020, it was to expect curveballs. Making workplans that don’t take these factors into consideration will lead to frustration for everyone.
Instead, consider honing down. What are the really essential goals for your organization this year? What can wait til next year, or maybe is in some way peripheral to your mission? What sucks time and energy away from the essential work? Can you build in time that is not spoken for in advance so you have the ability to react to changing circumstances?
Board Members: Be Attentive to your EDs! Executive Directors are also workers who are struggling with their own personal circumstances, while trying to be attentive to staff needs and holding your organization together. Your role as their employer is more important than ever: in the same way that the ED is hopefully being responsive to the needs of their staff, it is your role to be responsive to theirs and think together to make their role sustainable under extremely difficult circumstances.
Give Changes Time: It might take a little while for any adjustments you make to feel good. Especially right now, with everything up in the air, introducing changes into how things are done can be stressful and people may resist them. Don’t give up too quickly, give changes time to work!
