I recently came across a project carried out by a US based company called The Energy Project looking at how to retain staff through busy periods. They worked with a team at Earnst and Young (a very different organisation to not-for-profits but I feel still worth exploring as a case study), who usually saw burn out and loss of staff after really busy times.
When working with the team, The Energy Project came up with the simplest of ideas: a co-created resilience plan. The team sat down and worked together to devise something that they could hold each other accountable to, and that they could shape to fit with their individual needs.
This particular team came up with the following (directly quoted from the Harvard Business Review):
1. Do your most important work when you first get to the office, for an uninterrupted stretch of 60 to 90 minutes, and then take a renewal break.
2. Get up from your desk at lunchtime for at least 30 minutes, and do some type of movement. (This prompted them to have lunch together and therefore connection).
3. After 90 minutes of work, take a break of at least five minutes. If that isn’t possible, do one minute of deep breathing to clear your bloodstream of stress hormones.
4. When you stop working for the day, do something that allows you to transition mentally and emotionally between work and home.
5. Set a pre-sleep routine and a bedtime that insures you get at least seven hours of sleep.
After the busy period, and having implemented the resilience plan, they found that the team reported feeling dramatically better than the previous year, the people who felt really exhausted the previous year recovered much more quickly, and staff retention was 97.5%.
It’s important to remember that simple approaches can create effective and lasting results around wellbeing and resilience. Creating a resilience plan with your team might just provide the framework that everyone needs in order to stay well.
We’d love to hear if and how you implement yours.
With love as always, Hannah and Team Bird
Ps. If you’re an educator and you’re interested in doing some group coaching, one of our amazing associates Naomi runs a wonderful programme. See below for more details.
Photo by Med Badr Chemmaoui on Unsplash