Promover un ambiente positivo en el lugar de trabajo

(En inglés)

Promoting a Positive Workplace Environment

Krischa Esquivel: Hey, I'm Krischa Esquivel, and I'm the early learning manager at CCRC.

Betty Zamorano-Pedregon: My name is Betty Zamorano-Pedregon, and I am the early care and leaning division director here at CCRC.

Krischa: CCRC, we’ve done a number of different things to really support the workforce to empower them, to help them feel more confident and competent overall. We took a lot of time in planning what we were going to do, the intentionality behind really looking at what has happened in the workforce? What has happened in the world and in the classrooms, to our family in regards to the pandemic? That's been our focus in terms of how do we bring people back to a new world essentially.

One of the big things that we've been looking at, even prior to the pandemic, is trauma-informed care. We know the needs of our family. We know the needs of our community. And in looking at the pandemic, we also took into account the needs of our staff. We all went through trauma with the pandemic. What does that look like? And how do you build empathy for – how do they build empathy for themselves, build empathy for their coworkers, and transfer that to what the children and families are going through, and what does it look like in the classroom? How do the behaviors play out, and how are they going to respond to those?

We've really taken a deep dive, if you will, into focusing on trauma-informed care in terms of the professional development provided. Along with that is our coaching model. We do coach to the specific needs of individual staff as well as offering coaching opportunities and professional development opportunities for the whole. One of the ways in which staff are able to participate on a larger scale are what's called read and reflects. Our coaching team, they will choose a book or an article, and staff will read it. And they can come together with their peers and really talk about what it means for them, what it means for their practice in the classroom, what it means for the children and families that we serve.

That's been really popular as well as … Another dotted line to that is the work we do around diversity, equity, and inclusion. We really jumped into that, again, over the last maybe 2 or 3 years. We have recently also hired the agency director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. That has been something that has really brought awareness and education to all levels. And it has allowed staff to be seen as individuals because we do it a lot in the classroom already. We make sure that we are very representative of the children and families in the classroom.

And now the staff are able to feel more comfortable sharing that side of them as well because it's something that we embrace as an agency. Along with what we do as an agency is overall staff wellness. CCRC has really taken a look at – taken the pulse of staff. There were a number of different surveys sent out throughout the pandemic on how staff are feeling overall in their work conditions, in their personal life, like what do they need? And a lot of different resources have been afforded to staff around that. Betty, do you want to add anything to what I've said?

Betty: As we've come back to in-person services, we recognize that staff, like our families, were impacted. And I think that by leveraging both virtual and in-person services as we come back, that has really been helpful. I think that there is a new focus on the work-life balance, and I feel like all of the services that have been offered have really contributed to helping staff lower stress as much as possible as we make that transition back to in-person services.

Krischa: And thinking about the impacts that we see directly at the center level and in relation to what Betty was speaking about with the different supplies and really getting to know the families and the time of the families, the building of the partnerships, and how much the staff know the family has really led to them really asking for more specific and intentional supports at the center. Staff now are very much aware of what particular children need, particular family needs. We're no longer getting blanket requests for things. It's a lot more individualized for families.

Along with that and thinking about what we've done, the work we've done around trauma-informed care, we wanted to track the impacts in those ways. There's a survey that goes along with trauma-informed care. It's called the ARTIC Scale, which is really ... ARTIC stands for attitudes related to trauma-informed care. It allows us to see where staff started in terms of their knowledge of trauma-informed care and their confidence in being able to work with children and families.

And something that we've seen at the center level are the intentionality around the supplies that are being requested and that staff were ordering from the classroom. It's directly linked to the training they're getting in trauma-informed care in terms of asking for more of the adaptive materials and equipment for the children. But also in looking at what we've done around DEI, the types of books and toys that are more representative of the children in the classroom as well. It's really great to see the level of empowerment and knowledge being directly transferred into the classroom and to the experiences that children are having.