REVIEWS & OPINIONS Hibernation: the re-set needed to spring into action Staring back at me through the screen during a virtual town hall were faces that looked more tired than usual. Fewer smiles. Fewer videos turned on. I wrote on a sticky note: THEY ARE TIRED. They were tired. I was tired. We had worked through twenty-some months in a pandemic, an organization of helpers providing services to children in foster care and individuals with disabilities. 160 employees switched from in-person, office-based work to the isolation and blurred boundaries of home-based work within two weeks. People who thrive on intimate personal contact did their human-centered work through a screen. We had hoped it wouldn’t last. It did, and it had taken a toll, one that we could not sustain. If our people are not in good shape, our work can suffer – and when our work suffers, so can our clients. Additionally, on the other side of the winter would be meaningful future-building projects that would require energy, insight, and creativity, work that would fail if it did not get our best attention. We asked a question: How could we provide rest that would help our workers re-set and re-energize? Could we design an experience where we collectively honored a time of transformative retreat while client care was not interrupted? After a series of design meetings, where we moved from our current reality to a new one, we came up with what we called winter hibernation. For three weeks:
GUEST COMMENTARY By Amanda Noell Stanley, MS, President & CEO, DePaul Community Resources Executive Summary: The stakes of burnout are high for us. We are not a business of things. We are a business of care.
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1. All internal meetings – town halls, leadership teams, workgroups, and trainings – were paused. 2. Internal corporate communications were paused unless there was an urgent issue or crisis. 3. All employees were expected to respect their colleagues’ hibernation period by limiting emails, chats, and meeting requests. 4. All employees received an additional 2 hibernation PTO days. Staff crafted blends of focused days catching up on work and PTO days where they totally unplugged. They took turns in PTO so that we continued operating, ensuring staff were available for client needs. We provided an optional pre-hibernation prep session to help staff set intention and build strategies to get the most out of their rest and re-set time. At its conclusion, we measured impact through staff surveys, learning more about how their workloads, levels of stress, and sense of energy had shifted over time, and how those outcomes related to the choices they made about their hibernation. We learned a lot, including which parts of the experience were most meaningful to them.
t AUGUST 2022 / vbFRONT.com
