Sector needs to be ‘psychologically safe’
Workforce retention in aged care is crucial but there also needs to be practical solutions for people working in governance and executive positions to avoid burnout now that the reforms have been delayed.
Much sector attention and strategising rightfully focuses on ways to attract and retain aged care workers, particularly for providers operating in regional and remote areas. But burn out can impact everyone, Fire Up Solutions co-founder James Langanke reminded the day 3 audience at Ageing Australia’s Victoria conference on Thursday.
Mr Langanke said he and his business partner Angela Frith saw an overload of people dealing with complexity and on the brink of burnout when working on a project together – something he himself has experienced – which got them thinking about what could be done before it got to the point where leaders became extremely overloaded and “fall over.”
“And surprisingly, there’s a lot of stuff out there on mental health but there’s very [few] white papers and research out there on things like overwhelm and overload,” he said.
“You must take care of yourself and acknowledge and recognise when you’re starting to become overwhelmed and do something about it because you really will be not in a great position to help your team if you are a leader whether that’s a middle manager or a senior executive – to deal with this,” he added.
He listed self-awareness, action, strategic change, resilience, and the ability to adapt as key things sector leaders should reflect on to prevent burnout for themselves – because ultimately that has a flow-on effect to the rest of the team.
Dr Melanie Tan also highlighted the importance of creating safe workplace environments to avoid burnout– pointing to psychologist James Reason’s subcultures of safety culture, which are also described in the Safer Care Victoria guide.
The subcultures of safety culture include:
- informed culture; where relevant information is collected, analysed and disseminated to enable people to make informed decisions
- reporting culture, where individuals have the confidence and comfort to report safety issues without fear of blame or retribution and feel psychologically safe
- a just culture, where there is shared accountability and systems to understand and respond to adverse events
- learning culture, where adverse events are seen as opportunities for learning and changes are made as a result
- flexible culture, where people have the ability to adapt and change and respond to evolving demands.
All of this goes beyond compliance, Dr Tan explained, and is about fostering an environment where everyone can flourish and where everyone’s priority is to deliver safe and good-quality care.
“Of course we need to keep our workforce safe, but safety culture is not just about work health and safety. Of course we need to respond effectively to incidents, but it’s not just about incidents. Safety culture is a mindset, and it’s foundational to clinical governance,” Dr Tan said.
Another subculture of safety culture is generative culture, which Dr Tan described as an environment where safety is so integrated that it doesn’t get noticed and was the most mature safety culture.
Ultimately, she said “executive accountability in clinical safety and risk transcends compliance.”
Both speakers emphasised the importance of collaboration, self-awareness of burnout risk, and innovation in fostering safe work environments that encourage people to stay in the sector.
“Safety culture is a mindset that goes beyond the minimum,” said Dr Tan. “To me, safety culture describes an authentic, deeply embedded organisational commitment to safety and quality as the number one priority in care delivery that translates into how we do what we do every day, whether we’re [on] the board, whether we’re executive, management or at the front line.
“As an operational line leader – where your prime focus is to make sure the lights stay on otherwise it has significant consequences to the people that you care for – those roles are absolutely fundamental and critical in the smooth operation of your sector,” said Mr Langanke.
“But throughout that period, if you are constantly working in a state of firefighting, there is a risk that you’re actually filling your bucket too quickly.”
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