Staff storytelling


as secondary. It is clear that employees are asking for an investment in the more human aspects of work – a humanised and compassionate workplace. Employees are tired and fatigued with being caring. They want a renewed and revised sense of purpose in their work, with inspirational and authentic leadership. A Forbes article on leadership in a digital age has identified softer skills of leadership emerging as essential, with empathy topping the desirable leadership skills board, plus the need for slower, reflective thinking.4 Furthermore, a significant proportion


of the younger workforce coming through want greater social and interpersonal connections with their colleagues and managers. They want to feel a sense of shared identity and to feel valued by their organisation. They want interactions, not just transactions. These interactions need not be face-to-face, but they do need to be of good quality. A recent Guardian article5


quoted a


Generation Z employee: ‘the paradigm is shifting from a potential employee having to sell themselves to an employer, to the employer needing to sell their organisation as place where the candidate would want to work’. This is a wake-up call to employers and organisations across all sectors. The ‘S’ or ‘Social’ component of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) covers how an organisation’s activities affect people, including its own workforce. Naturally, this also covers their health and wellbeing, as well as diversity and inclusion. This is why I am advocating storytelling in


the workplace for the care home environment workforce. Qualitative research on workers who have taken part in storytelling in different work sectors has been consistent: staff describe the sharing of their stories in safe, boundaried, and reflective spaces as ‘healing’. This theme of healing makes me think of a wound. In all organisations and teams, our work inadvertently ‘wounds’ us in different ways. It is inevitable. But how can you mitigate against this?


Healing the wounds In the case of care home workers, there are multiple workplace traumas that can cause emotional wounds. I am convinced that there is an unrecognised burden of emotional wounds among care home workers caused by the moral distress of dealing with their residents. Moral distress can occur when caring is restricted by organisational processes, resources, or


February 2023 www.thecarehomeenvironment.com Staff stories


Nurse ‘Janet’ shared a story about receiving a new resident who came from being ‘cared’ for by her own family. The resident was in poor physical and emotional health on arrival – she was malnourished, with matted hair and bed sores. Janet’s story focused on the anger she felt towards the resident’s family for the abuse and neglect they had clearly inflicted on the resident. Porter ‘Ken’ shared a story about


transporting the bodies of deceased residents. His story focused on the psychological transference and sadness he experienced when one particular resident was a similar age and physical appearance


when care is provided in the face of medical futility. These factors certainly apply to end- of-life care in nursing homes. A survey of south London care home


workers, stakeholders, and supporting agencies and organisations about the level of emotional support at work was conducted in summer 2020.6


to his own recently deceased father. Housekeeper ‘Sarah’ expressed


exasperation and indignance when relatives started stealing supplies such as hand sanitiser in the run-up to lockdown. She described the guilt she felt charging the care home to purchase extra supplies and how helpless she felt to stop this behaviour by residents’ families. Music therapist ‘Raquel’ became


devastated when a family member made a complaint about her for playing a sad- sounding piece of music in front of her mother after the family, unknowingly to Raquel, were informed of a deterioration in her relative’s health condition.


n difficulties of managing the behaviour of residents;


n expectation of managers and colleagues to ‘just get on with it’;


n feeling ‘on-call’ and available even during periods of leave;


Neither care


managers nor frontline staff felt there was adequate support to help them cope with the highly emotive pressures they were frequently subjected to, both day-to-day and during the pandemic. The majority of people surveyed felt that the sector’s culture does not generally invite staff to discuss the emotional impact of their work and reflect on how they are coping. This suggests to me a need for reflective spaces at work. Stressors faced by front-line care home


workers included: n chronic excessive workload; n working well above contracted hours; n low pay; n not having enough time for self-care or ‘re-boot/re-charge’;


n ‘being in a war’ without being hugged; n fears of becoming infected with COVID-19 themselves;


n and imposing restrictions on confused elderly residents.


Examples of stressors faced by care managers included: n the pressure of always being prepared for upcoming checks;


n feeling in the line of fire and being the first to be blamed;


n logistical pressures e.g. PPE for staff; n poor communication with externals e.g. getting hold of GPs;


n COVID-19 positive residents being discharged from hospital; and


n reassuring anxious staff while role- modelling calmness/confidence.


The power of storytelling So how does workplace-based storytelling work? Storytelling sessions take place either online or face-to-face. Each session lasts no longer than one hour. Sessions are chaired by a trained storytelling facilitator who will set ground rules at the start. This is followed by the live oral delivery of two or three five-minute stories by different staff storytellers. Storytelling sessions are themed, often advertised through association with a song title e.g. ‘Just be good to me’, ‘Alone’, or ‘Unforgettable’.


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