Trevor Mapondera, CEO, Catalyst Care Group
Wellbeing is crucial in our care sector, where the people-centred, caring, and humanised work, has the potential to result in poor mental and physical health, increased conflict, compassion fatigue, burn out, and other kinds of depression amongst our workforce.
In 2021, the estimated workforce sector size was 1.5 million people; that’s a high number of people potentially exposed to the risk of poor wellbeing. To add to the strain of people currently practising within the sector, staff shortages are leaving services overstretched. There are already well over 100,000 job vacancies unfilled, as well as a decrease in the successful hire of candidates. This is an underfunded, and understaffed sector, increasing the pressures for all involved in care services. As humans we absorb our internal and external environment like the nature that surrounds us. We flourish when we achieve a harmonious relationship, within and outside of the environment in which we live, and an optimum quality of work.
When we care for ourselves and feel cared for, we provide a much more humanised level of care to the individuals we support. It is important that care workers feel genuinely cared for and valued, so they can support the needs of the people they want to help, as well as their own. Fully appreciated and loved healthcare workers can be productive, proactive team players, within their specialism. If an environment cannot fulfil them financially, appreciatively, or rewardingly, a care person may become disinterested, and dissatisfied in their role. Psychological studies show motivation levels can rise, or fall, due to unconscious bias based around these three factors. So long as a care worker is fully supported, they are likely to reciprocate by sharing that humanising element of sustained kinship, within their sector.
We are also starting to see a huge increase in cases of Compassion Fatigue. Tim Jarvis once expressed that the condition presents itself in the auspice of ‘physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatised people over an extended period. Unlike burnout, which is caused by everyday work stresses (dealing with insurance companies, making treatment choices), compassion fatigue results from taking on the emotional burden of a patient’s agony.’ This and other conditions are recoverable for carers when they, feel valued, heard, and as leaders we see the signs, providing them with support, mentorship and guidance – focusing on values-driven relationships.
If your goal is to create a Great Place to Work for Wellbeing, the starting point is a focus on culture, trust, compassion, and protecting the health, safety, and welfare of people working in care. Approaching this as a team will enable the community to feel more motivated to perform at their best, creating a deeper sense of camaraderie, leading to satisfaction for all. We must perform as leaders if we are to achieve the same performance from our health and social care family. Leave no stone unturned for each other, if you want a proud, happy, team, where the focus is on the whole group striving to reach goals for the future.
Image depicts Trevor Mapondera, CEO, Catalyst Care Group