Compassionate Cultures
Improving Retention Together
Why Leadership and Culture Matters
You have probably heard the phrase ‘organisational culture’ a lot in recent years, but what does it? Why does it matter? Organisational culture can be thought of as your organisations personality. Organisational culture refers to what defines the environment where you work. Based on this, having a positive culture that supports a sense of belonging, wellbeing, optimal experience and satisfaction amongst colleagues is key to creating working environments where colleagues want and choose to stay.
Achieving this requires effective and compassionate leadership that focuses upon relationships, careful listening, understanding, empathising and helping colleagues. Through taking such leadership approaches colleagues feel valued, respected, cared for and heard which are vital in developing and sustaining compassionate cultures and working environments, where colleagues feel well, engaged, satisfied and motivated and ultimately somewhere they want and choose to stay.
Whether a leader, manager or team member we all play a crucial part in developing and sustaining compassionate cultures and working environments, but it doesn't have to be difficult, often its the little things that make a huge difference:
- Invest in the leadership development for yourself and your colleagues
- Reflect, learn, improve and celebrate
- Be present with your team, make time for them
- Encourage and enable psychological safety
- Encourage feedback, innovation and continuous improvement
- Listen and understand the challenges, frustrations and obstacles that your team are facing, help them
- Demonstrate compassion, empathy and understanding
- Acknowledge you don’t have all the answers and accept your colleagues may have solutions
- Prioritise yours and colleagues health and wellbeing
- Practice Self Care
- Champion Flexible Working
- Lead by example, demonstrate compassionate behaviours
- Demonstrate compassion, kindness and empathy to yourself and colleagues
- Listen to your colleagues and understand their perspectives
- Support and help your colleagues
- Practice Self care
- Prioritise you and your colleagues wellbeing
- Seek and support flexible working opportunities
- Recognise your emotions and seek support when needed
- Play your part in building compassionate cultures
- Demonstrate and role model compassionate behaviours
- Be kind and understanding towards yourself, recognizing that everyone makes mistakes and experiences setbacks and use them to learn
- Engage in continuous improvement and innovation
- Invest in your own leadership journey
- Support open communication, provide feedback, suggestions, solutions
- Celebrate each others success
