What does it mean to be a caring workplace?
As we enter a new year, Co-Director Jess Bunyan, reflects on what it means to be a caring workplace, how we support others to do the same and the launch of our new training offer for organisations.
Rising has always been run a little differently. First, out of necessity when we were founded by Kamina Walton and funds were tight and the team was minimal.
But then, as we’ve evolved over the last seven years and done innovative projects like WhoseCulture?, BE IT and Resourcing Racial Justice, practices of care have become second-nature for not just how we interact with our community and partners but internally as a workplace too.
Some of this came accidentally from the fact that all of the Rising team throughout the years were also young freelancers. So working flexibly around the other demands of our life – and other work commitments – came naturally. So did working a maximum of four days a week, although most of the team has wanted to work less so they can also have time for their creative practice.
The flipside of this though was consistent overworking and people not taking their full holiday allowances each year. Whilst this is totally understandable for a new business, by 2019 the team was big enough that this didn’t need to be a pattern anymore and so we agreed collectively to introduce timesheets – to really get a grip on how much and how frequently people were working over their hours. At the end of that year we paid people for the additional time and from 2020 people have consistently taken TOIL (time off in lieu) instead of overworking.
THESE SMALL PRACTICES ADD UP…
These are small cultural practices but they all add up to a workplace where people have ownership over their time and workload which reflects our key value of collective responsibility.
We trust the team to work the hours they need to when they need to but we also have a means of monitoring when that’s becoming unhealthy so we can have an honest conversation about capacity. We also do this with freelancers so they can make sure when they work with Rising that they’re not doing more hours that we’re paying them for. And if they need to, they can make a case for that and be heard.
MODELLING REFLECTION AS A PRACTICE
One of the bigger cultural practices of care that we’ve embedded throughout our work is reflection. This was led by Kamina and piloted through the BE IT programme by Prince Taylor and Roseanna Dias before being folded into our every day work. In practical terms this means after every major event or project we have a debrief meeting with those involved where we can think about the roses, thorns and buds of what happened. It also means that for every day of work each week every team member has an hour in their calendar for reflection (eg I work four days a week so on Thursday afternoons I have a 4 hour block dedicated to reflection).
This has evolved to include quarterly team Action Learning Sets that sit alongside our regular check ins and annual reviews and in August an entire month off for rest and reflection. It can be hard in a fast-paced business to make time for this work and I’d be lying if I said I genuinely spend 4 hours every single week dedicated to reflection now there’s four members of the team and we’re expanding our work into new areas. But with developing work cultures the point is that it’s there and as one of the ‘bosses’ at Rising it’s up to me to show that that time is sacred to the rest of the team and our community.
SUPPORTING THE SECTOR
Having been around a block a bit in the cultural sector now it feels more radical than ever to work somewhere that genuinely lives it’s values from top (external) to bottom (internal). A lot of people who have emailed me to get an out of office in August saying we’re resting, or see the access rider in my signature are surprised that we’re actually doing the work for ourselves and others but this is just the tip of the ice berg for how it really feels to work here.
The team talk a lot about how this has ruined us to ever be able to work anywhere else but why can’t everywhere be like Rising? Yes we have a small team and we don’t have a building but is that really what’s holding everyone back? From the work our young people do with Boards and the partnerships we have we see workplaces that are crying out for more caring practices every single day. We’ve also been working with them over the years to embed more of these practices which have made a difference to the everyday lives of their teams.
🌟 the rising approach to: caring work cultures training
And that’s why we’re launching our very first open training programme in Caring Work Cultures launching in April 2024, so you can learn first hand the practical tools for embedded these cultures in meaningful ways no matter the size or mission of your business.
Thank you for reading this. If you want to support us to embed accessibility across the sector and beyond, please consider joining the Rising Alliance or increasing your regular donation.
