‘It’s Not Really a Part of Standard Practice’: Institutional Silencing of Sexuality Within Australian Mental Health Settings

Research seeking to understand and improve sexuality-related practice in mental health settings has paid little attention to the institutional context in which clinicians’ practice is embedded. Through a social constructionist lens, we used thematic analysis to examine how 22 Australian mental health clinicians implicated the wider institutional context when discussing and making sense of sexuality-related silence within their work. Interviews were part of a study exploring participants’ perceptions of sexuality and sexual health in their work more generally. Broader silences that shaped and reinforced participants’ perceptions and practice choices were situated in professional education; workplace cultures; and the tools, procedures and policies that directed clinical practice. We argue that sexuality-related silence in mental health settings is located in the institutional context in which clinicians learn and work, and discuss how orienting to this broader context will benefit research and interventions to improve sexuality-related practice across health settings.

Radical re-imagination: centering a BIPOC library workforce in an asset-based autoethnography

PurposeAcademic BIPOC librarians oftentime struggle to envision themselves and navigate in White-dominant spaces due to deficit thinking. To better understand how DEIA efforts can bolster structural change in academic libraries, the two BIPOC authors opted to lean on an asset-based exercise–imagining a positive work environment made possible through a library staffed entirely by BIPOC individuals.Design/methodology/approachThrough collaborative autoethnography, the two authors interviewed one another and centered their unstructured conversations around one question: “What does an academic library composed entirely of a BIPOC workforce look like?” Three emergent themes were agreed upon and finalized by the two authors.FindingsThe authors' imagined library is able to foster a supportive community and also function efficiently thanks to its shared purpose grounded in DEIA. Despite relying on an asset-based framework, the authors found themselves having to reckon with trials and tribulations currently faced by BIPOC librarians. Effectively envisioning the “ideal” library environment is not possible without also engaging with librarianship's legacy of racial injustices.Originality/valueRecognizing that confronting systems of oppression naturally invokes trauma, this paper encourages librarians to challenge deficit thinking and instead rely on asset-based models to candidly imagine an anti-racist academic library. The authors acknowledge that BIPOC voices and experiences add tremendous value to the library workplace. At the heart of this paper is the belief that reparations for past racial injustices should not only fix past wrongdoings, but also contribute to positive workplace cultures.

Book Review: International Practice Development in Health and Social Care (2nd Edition)

I was asked to review this book in my role as a clinical educator and novice practice developer. My introduction to practice development and person-centred practice came through the 2019 Inspire Improvement Fellowship, run by the Foundation of Nursing Studies, and through my work as a practice teacher for student specialist practitioner district nurses at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. My initial thoughts were how relatable this book is to me in practice. It is up to date, with references to Covid-19 and the WHO’s Year of the Nurse and Midwife 2020. The first part explores the theory of practice development and this follows through to later chapters where readers will find the application of theoretical ideas in practice. Practice development is explored at micro, meso and macro levels, supported by the book’s progression from smaller, ward-based projects to large system-based interventions. The evolution of practice development is also evident, moving from its origins within nursing to multidisciplinary and interagency approaches and contexts. I found it useful that chapters flowed through themes, with the final chapters focusing on leadership, workplace cultures and wellbeing, which are currently hot topics in the ever-changing landscape of health and social care. A wide range of references is helpfully used throughout to encourage more in-depth analysis and further reading.

Engaging Europe’s employees: a complex problem with a simple solution

Purpose This paper aims to establish the state of employee engagement levels in Europe and offer insights into the reasons behind the current state of affairs. It proposes that management matters most out of all the factors influencing employee engagement, and that European organisations should therefore invest in equipping their leadership teams to provide employees with a positive experience of the workplace. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses data from the Gallup World Poll, which Gallup has used to conduct surveys of the world’s adult population, using randomly selected samples, since 2005. Covering more than 160 countries since its inception, the survey was conducted via computer-assisted telephone interviews in 2020 to account for COVID-compliant safety measures. Findings This paper provides insights into the engagement levels of European employees, which remained dismally low in 2020 as it has for the last decade. By far, the biggest influence on the state of employee engagement is leadership, which will require improvement if European organisations are to improve their employee engagement levels. Originality/value This paper fulfils the need for organisations to gain a better understanding of how to improve their employee engagement levels in the wake of a significant global crisis. Inspiring workplace cultures that maximise the well-being of every employee can help to reverse the decline of economic dynamism across the globe.

WHAT IS BEHIND THE (GLASS)DOOR? EXAMINING TOXIC WORKPLACE CULTURES VIA AN EMPLOYMENT REVIEW SITE

Launched in 2008 as a site to collect the anonymous perspectives of current and former employees as well as their self-reported salaries, Glassdoor.com has grown to be a top destination for American job seekers wanting to learn more about the work environment of particular companies. Using reviewed posted by current and former Riot Games employees (the developer behind League of Legends) as a case study, I argue that Glassdoor is an easily accessible yet underutilized public yet anonymous resource for scholars interested in a peek ‘behind the curtain’ of industries reliant on non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements, such as the games industry. In this paper I report on my ongoing analysis of 740 current and former employee reviews of Riot posted to Glassdoor between October 2009 and March 2021. Riot is a particularly fruitful case study as it is a company that has been criticized for creating a toxic work environment, with sexual harassment and a lack of promotions for women being frequently discussed in the games media. As a result of this analysis, I argue it provides ample evidence to indicate that Glassdoor can be a fruitful venue for media industry scholars interested in better understanding employee perspectives about 'notorious' companies while mitigating potential harm to informants who might otherwise be reluctant to speak ‘on the record’ about an industry that remains resistant to change.

The Dark Side of School Culture

The extant literature evidences the link between incivility and workplace culture. Both have a symbiotic relationship whereby a change in one influences the other. When workplace cultures develop dysfunctional values and beliefs, negative traditions, and caustic ways of interacting, they have become “toxic cultures.” This study examined Irish post-primary school teachers’ experiences of incivility and toxic culture in the workplace through in-depth interviews with forty-two participants. Results show that toxic work culture had a negative impact on both the personal and professional lives of the participants. We conclude that antecedents in toxic school culture are linked to epistemological assumptions, group dynamics, and deficiencies in leadership, and we suggest that they act as causes and/or facilitators of workplace bullying.

SEED Program: The development of a program that has enabled the learning and growth of staff in the response to a community crisis.

This paper aims to share a program that took a whole-hospital approach in considering the wellbeing of staff at a time of recovery following the 2019–2020 bushfires. The SEED Program enlisted a person-centred participatory methodology that was embedded within a transformational learning approach. This methodology included collaboration, authentic participation, critical reflection, critical dialogue and listening where the staff voice was the driving factor in the development of strategies for recovery. The SEED Program resulted in the development of five initiatives that included four strategies and a celebration event where staff celebrated their New Year’s Eve in February 2020. The four strategies included the establishment of a quiet room, coffee buddies, Wellness Warriors and 24/7 Wellness. The outcomes from the SEED Program resulted in the development of a more person-centred culture and transformation of staff perspectives in how they understood their role in their learning and learning of others in recovery and support at a time of crisis. The key learnings were the effect of authentic collaboration, the benefit from enabling authentic leadership at all levels within a hospital, and the power of a staff connection to the ‘CORE’ values of the hospital and Local Health District. In conclusion, the staff involved hold the hope that others may benefit from their experience of transformational learning in creating more person-centred workplace cultures while supporting each other to move forward during a crisis. The limitation of the SEED Program was that it was a bespoke practice innovation designed in the moment, responding to an identified need for the staff following a crisis in the local community rather than a formal research approach to meeting the needs of this group of staff.

Diversity and inclusion in radiology: a necessity for improving the field

Women and minorities are systematically under-represented in medicine, and this effect is pronounced in the field of radiology, across education, workforce and leadership. The proportion of women and minorities represented in radiology diminishes as their rank or job title elevates. Much of this are likely due to implicit biases, generational attitudes, and workplace cultures that can be discriminatory towards women and minorities. Steps that can be taken include closing the gender pay-gap, providing more opportunities for mentorship, addressing biases, and supporting the upward career mobility of women and minorities. Ultimately, increasing diversity will benefit all stakeholders in medicine, as collaboration among diverse individuals fosters innovation, greater financial efficiency, and better patient outcomes.

Creating Diverse and Religiously Inclusive Workplace Cultures in Hyper-Connected, Technical, and Cyber-Driven Organizations

Many organizations are driven by technology. If you consider the nature of workforce shortages and recruiting challenges in areas like artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, it is important to understand how organizations need to recruit diverse technology-savvy talent including those from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and religions. There have been several incidents in the United States that point to significant problems with religious incivility in the workplace. In 2016, when the company Chargrill fired 150 non-Christian workers over prayer breaks, the incident points to a growing challenge in the American workplace about what companies can do to accommodate their employees' faiths. This article explores the literature on religious conflict and incivility since there needs to be more exploration on how religious conflict and incivility manifests itself through everyday interactions in the hyper-connected and cyber-driven workplace.

We are creative – are you?

When thinking about this editorial, we knew we wanted to say something about creativity. Working creatively is a valuable means of accessing embodied knowledge and new insights about ourselves, our practice and our workplace cultures that can be used to inform development and transformation. However, being new to writing editorials, we first decided to have a look back through the journal’s editorial archives and seek the wisdom of previous authors. In doing so, it was interesting to see that our first Academic Editor, Professor Jan Dewing, had written an editorial about being creative back in May 2012; we encourage you to have a look. Jan began: ‘Yet again I recently heard someone saying they weren’t a creative person... ’and this is something we both experience when working with others. Is this because the word creativity is perceived to refer to the arts – for example, crafting, painting, movement and music – rather than a broader understanding, as suggested by the dictionary definition below: ‘The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination ’(dictionary.com). Taking this more expansive perspective opens up the possibility for us all to perceive ourselves as inherently creative. It could be argued that this creativity has come to the fore as we have adapted to new ways of living and working during the Covid-19 pandemic. While this crisis has brought huge uncertainty and challenge right across the complex mix of health and social care services, what has been remarkable is the ability people have shown to change their ways of working, to seek solutions – and to do so at pace. We believe this reflects the creative nature of human beings/persons. Oliver (2009) argues that creativity is everywhere, as humans and the world are constantly engaged in a process of making. He contends that we should view creativity as ‘openness’, which is person-oriented (Massey and Munt, 2009). In this way, we create the possibility for participatory exploration of the social, cultural and embodied context, and for improvisation and transformation, by engaging in people’s ‘interests, curiosities and passions ’(Massey and Munt, 2009, p 305).