Working in self-organising teams

“I love seeing how quickly Wellbeing Workers take ownership of roles within the team that would traditionally be regarded as the responsibility of a manager.”
Michelle, Team Coach

Wellbeing Teams are ‘self-organising’.

This is a way of working that has lots of benefits for both the people we support and for our team members. It gives people who work for us a balance of structure and the space they need to be creative, and in turn this enables the people we support to experience more flexibility in the care and support they receive.

 

How we support teams to self-organise well

 

There are a number of ways in which we support self-organising teams to make decisions and support people well, such as:


Wellbeing Leader – the team coach

The Wellbeing Leader acts as a coach to the team, to advise and support teams in solving problems, but not to solve them for them. They are responsible for ensuring and supporting safe, compassionate person-centred practice, and ongoing learning and development in relation to this. The Wellbeing Leader supports the team through induction and ensures that each person is competent in their role as Link Wellbeing Worker, and achieves the Wellbeing Care Certificate.

They also support self-management, team wellbeing and ongoing development in relation to this.

In some teams there are additional roles who support this, and may have a Practice Coach working alongside the Wellbeing Leader.


Buddies

Each team member has a long-term buddy within the team – another team member. The purpose of having a buddy is to be a peer coach. Buddies both support and challenge each other, and provide each other with feedback.


Roles
As the team organises itself, there are specific roles that managers would have done, that the team does themselves instead. Some of these are shared across the team with different people taking different roles, and there is one role that every team member does, being a Link Wellbeing Worker to people we support. The other roles include: meeting facilitator, scheduler (for rotas), storyteller (for social media), reporter/recorder and recruitment co-ordinator. Each team member is supported by the coaches to do their role successfully, and working in this way gives Wellbeing Workers greater variety in their day-to-day job.

Other ways that teams are included to self-organise include a range of Wellbeing Teams handbooks, Slack (an app to stay connected on-the-move), our unique approach to team meetings, development and learning, and person-centred team reviews.

Other ways that teams are included to self-organise include a range of Wellbeing Teams handbooks, chat apps to stay connected on-the-move, our unique approach to team meetings, development and learning budgets, and team reviews.

 

Does this sound good to you?

 

If you’re interested in a role where you can demonstrate your responsibility and work collaboratively, without the dynamic of working with a traditional manager, Wellbeing Teams might be a good fit for you. Take it further by exploring our current opportunities or registering your interest at our Careers hub..