Building Communities of Collective Care at Work
Image Description: Multiple groups of people sitting in different parts of the room working on an activity together.
“Should we write another statement?” a peer asked me as she debated whether or not her company needed to address the ongoing violence against people of color in this country. “I don’t know how many more commitments we can make. We barely started on the ones from last summer.” A few weeks before we had chatted, Asian women were the target of shootings in Atlanta. Since then, there have been mass shootings in Boulder and Indianapolis. In the month of April as the Derek Chauvin trials were underway, we continued to witness police officers killing Black and brown people. I have come to accept that to be aware in America is to constantly be in a state of grief and healing.
How many more statements can we write? I started wondering about the importance of these statements in general — these heartfelt paragraphs followed by the company’s commitments and a list of Google-curated resources, often spearheaded by the most junior and/or marginalized employees, to be then signed off by leadership. While I do believe that companies should acknowledge these events and make commitments, I think their efforts might be better directed at creating environments of collective care for their team. If a company had the proper communities built into their organization, staff members wouldn’t be demanding a statement from the leadership team to prove that they cared about these events. Instead of gathering grief-stricken people together to hover over a Google Doc to draft language that are “palatable” enough to make it past marketing and legal, organizations could have the proper policies and practices put into place to support their staff.
Now more than ever, I see how crucial it is for us to intentionally build spaces that center people and their well-being. We need to move beyond reactionary words and promises and begin building trust and relationship with one another. The easiest way to do that is to allocate time and resources towards it now, and not when there is another tragedy or public outcry.
There is a lot about the pandemic and social injustices that we cannot change immediately, but for now, we can create communities of collective care to support one another to at least get through them.
Identify Types of Care
Inspired by Gary Chapman’s work on the Five Love Languages, we came up with three types of care languages.
Words of support: Using any forms of language or communication to affirm, encourage, and celebrate. Connecting through communicating.
Time and attention: Giving the gift of time and/or space to listen, support, and host an event. Connecting through a shared presence.
Acts of support: Committing to actions that help reduce burden and/or stress, meet needs, and send some kindness. Connecting through direct action.
Identifying the types of care languages and understanding what we would like to receive and give helps us determine how we can feel more supported and how we can best support others. It also helps us identify the right type of care for the right situation. For example, if a co-worker experienced a loss in the family and needs to take some time off work, providing acts of support such as taking on their workload so they won’t come back to a slew of tasks or sending them a care package could be helpful. Below we’ll specifically go into specific examples of ways to build communities of care.
Provide space to talk about care as a team: The first step is to talk about what care could look like as a team. Normalize conversations on mental health and design regular opportunities where staff can connect and support one another.
Example: During team meetings, allow an opportunity for teammates to share what’s coming up for them.
Model care as a leader: Team wellness starts at the top with leadership. If you mentor more junior colleagues, they should see that advancing in their career does not need to come at the expense of their well-being.
Example: Refrain from sending emails and doing work after work hours.
Allocate time and funds: Find time and funds within the work day to care for your team. It is not about working more hours, but using time and resources to care for staff.
Example: Organize a fun event in place of your monthly meeting. There are so many great online opportunities now like cooking classes, online escape rooms, and food tastings that could keep morale up and allow people a break.
Showcase skills, talents, and interests: The pandemic increased the proximity of our personal lives to work. Create healthy and fun spaces to embrace it.
Example: At the beginning of each meeting, allow a team member to share about something they are passionate about beyond work.
Rethink policies and practices: Ensure company benefits support all aspects of wellness with access to mental health and trauma supports. Consider how you can add more flexibility in your policies and practices to help your team do their jobs better.
Example: Allow team members the flexibility to determine their work hours on a weekly basis if necessary to accommodate for things such as childcare, schooling, parental care, etc.
Respond to current events: We’ve all seen companies take public stances and make commitments in response to current events. To move from performative actions to real collective care, you can provide time and space with proper facilitation to discuss and process and support impacted communities.
Example: Give some time off to impacted communities to process and grieve.
As vaccine roll-outs happen across the United States and as things start to open again, I truly hope we don’t go “back to normal.” As author and activist Arundhati Roy states, “pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” Despite all that has happened within a span of a year, I am still hopeful that we can emerge from this with more care and love for one another. Now is the time we build those communities of collective care for one another. Let’s not wait until another global pandemic, natural disaster, or racial uprising to start doing so.