CARE IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL FIELD

Original article, published in Catalan on 07/18/2022.

 

A few years ago, I was taught that in public policies, "what is not on the political agenda does not exist." However, I would complement this statement in the following way: "what is not on the political agenda and does not have an allocated budget does not exist." We can talk about the agenda in public policies, just as we can talk about strategy in organizations.

The strategy in organizations is fueled by latent concerns that begin to emerge, signaling where we should focus our attention in the coming years. In my experience, when we start detecting these signals, they indicate the end of one stage to give way to a new, a different stage.

Lately, one of these latent concerns that I perceive is the need to pay attention to the care of the employees.

So, I've been thinking for days that it's increasingly necessary to discuss, debate, understand, and share what we mean by "care," specifically within the organizational context.

To advance this reflection, I'll start with a definition from the Barcelona City Council (https://www.barcelona.cat/ciutatcuidadora/ca/que-son-les-cures) to quickly align our mental frameworks with what we can understand as care: "When we talk about 'care,' we refer to the set of tasks that produce goods and services that serve to regenerate the physical and emotional well-being of individuals on a daily and generational basis, and that normally occur in circuits of intimacy and within the framework of households. We all need to receive care throughout our lives, of different types and intensities, depending on the stage of the life cycle we are in, and on the self-care and care for others that we have at each stage of life."

Organizations face the challenge of recognizing employees as individuals—with all their potentials, limitations, and needs—and moving away from conceiving them as "human resources." The physical, emotional well-being, and care of employees are and will become essential aspects of organizations and their essence in the coming years.

But what do we mean by "care of employees"? How can we be attentive to it? How can we promote it?

Based on the shared definition, we can understand that care in organizations is the set of individual or collective actions that lead employees to feel well and good in a broad sense: physically, emotionally, professionally, personally.

So, what are those actions that make us feel well? From whom should we expect them? Whom can we offer them to?...

If, from the organizational perspective, we want to take care of employees, my proposal would be to start by asking employees and teams what makes them feel well.

People will have different care needs over time, so we cannot standardize care for individuals, teams, organizations, or over time.

However, I would highlight some ideas that could form a foundation for the care of employees in organizations:

-     Wage: Wage is an essential part of feeling cared in an organization. It should enable employees to live and feel compensated for the value they contribute to the organization.

 -    Sharing: We feel good and grow personally and professionally when we are part of a team and share ideas, knowledge, experience, challenges, difficulties...

-     Space and time: To be able to share, we need appropriate and safe spaces (not just physically) and the necessary time. We cannot expect optimal conditions for sharing to be generated anywhere and in any form.

-     Trust and respect: We need to build trusting relationships with people in the organization as these forms the basis of care. However, trust cannot exist without respect. Respect should be supported by empathy, being aware of the subjectivity of individuals.

-     Empathy and intersubjectivity: To take care for people, we need empathy, putting ourselves in the shoes of others, but not based only on our experience, perspective, and interpretation of the world. We need to understand others from their reality and life experience. This way, we can understand each other better and recognize our life experience, acknowledging diversity.

-     Listening and action: It is essential to listen to each other to understand needs, desires, and concerns at any given moment. However, listening must be accompanied by action: What can I do, or what can I facilitate to make the other person feel cared for? We need to translate ideas, thoughts, and needs into actions to impact and transform reality.

Finally, I would highlight the importance of:

-     Formal and informal networks among employees: To be attentive to each other, to build trust, complicity, empathy, share ideas, knowledge, build and grow together. Formal networks are those designed and structured within the organization, while informal ones are generated spontaneously, impossible to intentionally model, structure, or replicate. Often, these are formed through chemical connections between people.

In my previous post, "Interrelationships and Organizational Culture" I wondered how can we promote mutual care among working individuals, large and small teams within organizations, fertilizing the underground, the interconnections, the culture, but from a feminist perspective and not a paternalistic one of organizations?

In this post, I have tried to point out some ideas about where to focus... but keeping in mind the first paragraph, I would say that just as some governments are creating ministries, departments, and councils with a feminist perspective and are moving forward the inclusion of care in the public policy agenda, I encourage organizations to start explicitly including the care of employees as part of their strategy, and thus with an associated budget. I encourage this to be part of the strategy, not driven by opportunism or corporate camouflage (as was the case with Corporate Social Responsibility in some instances), but with a genuine intention of societal transformation and recognition of individuals in different aspects of life, including the professional sphere.