Staff Views on Resilience
The word ‘resilience’ for staff usually meant personal capability – how an individual dealt with changes or upsets:
“Resilience comes from within”
[Staff 3]
In the academic literature, resilience can be attributed to people and teams at all levels: individuals, groups, communities and organisations can each be resilient. For the staff, resilience in their job meant being able to deal with anything, staying calm, and maintaining a positive, solution-focused attitude. The staff we spoke to described how a supportive relationship between managers and staff extended to mutual support between colleagues. Staff felt that they shared common values and aims and a sense of belonging with colleagues. An example of support of special relevance to resilience was the mention of the value of colleagues to listen to a rant or a joke at the end of a difficult day, helping to share the burden of challenges.
The staff tended to see the residents as resilient: “People are resilient in the fact that they’re here” [Staff 5]. They also noted that the residents may not realise how resilient they are. The staff recognised the varied and often difficult life experiences that had brought their residents to almshouse accommodation. Residents had seen and dealt with a lot in their lives but were still “just getting on with it, doing whatever they need to do and making the most of what they have” [Staff 8].
In terms of community resilience, staff generally felt that their communities were working towards greater resilience through the staff’s support of residents, particularly the focus on residents’ independence, as well as continuing progress towards improvement as an organisation. In terms of the charity itself, most staff referred to the history, continuity and identity of the charity as evidence of its resilience:
“[The organisation is resilient] because we’re standing 125 years later. We haven’t been swallowed up by any much larger places”
[Staff 8]
That identity over time appeared particularly valuable to the staff members’ confidence that the charity itself was resilient. Financial stability and future plans for growth or new projects were also instrumental in staff members’ perception of the organisations’ resilience.
When asked what contributed to resilience in their view, staff members referenced health. We can draw more broadly from the data to show that their support for residents, their focus on fostering independence, their work on building community among almshouse residents and between residents and communities beyond the almshouse can be seen as significant contributory factors for community resilience.
With respect to future challenges, staff interviewees mentioned relatively few and these included improving housing stock, better IT systems and making progress in becoming more representative of the local community. The relatively few challenges are understandable from their focus on day-to-day operational matters and their concern for supporting current residents. This suggests that it falls to the charity to conduct ‘horizon scanning’ and strategic planning, to consider what changes can be predicted that will impact the community. Involving operational staff and residents in such strategic thinking brings a broader perspective and provides additional insights.
