Introduction
Poor management is often at the heart of mental health problems among humanitarian workers. If in doubt, listen to this on-the-spot podcast by Imogen Wall.
This being said – how are front-line field offices affected? Factors such as salaries and staff rights do not often depend entirely on field managers. Is there anything they can do? Below is the experience we had at the UNHCR Suboffice in the Bekaa valley, in Lebanon, back in 2018.
The importance of management in humanitarian field offices
Humanitarian front-lines pose particular risks for the mental health and welfare of humanitarian workers. Workload and pressure piles up. Security is, at best, spotty. Families may be far away, and meaningful social life can be poor or non-existent. Staff witness or listen to countless horrors. They can also be victims themselves, in particular national staff. Front-line staff have to take responsibility, in front of affected populations, of poor decisions or simply the difficulty of having any meaningful impact.
Particular ills often plague the management of small field offices in humanitarian front-lines. It is not uncommon that young, unprepared expatriates are put at the helm of field offices or teams in extremely difficult situations. A number of important distortions can then arise. Oftentimes, professional insecurity leads to abuse of authority. This can be amplified by the relative isolation and lack of awareness of staff rights and redress mechanisms by field staff, in particular national ones.
Conversely, lack of communication or tensions may also arise when national staff are more prepared to take decisions than expatriate managers. All this can be compounded by the relative neglect, in some humanitarian circles, of hard, specific managerial skills. These include internal management skills, such as planning, budgeting, delegation and team design. They include analytical ones, in particular as regards the political and social environment. Crucially, they encompass also functional skills such as advocacy and humanitarian negotiation.
Finally, in some cases field managers may themselves be victims of poor management up the hierarchical line. Bad management and abuse of authority has an uncanny similarity to child abuse: abusers have often been victims themselves. At the end of the day, one of the most difficult things to do is to draw the right lessons from the wrong experiences.
What can humanitarian managers do at the front-lines? Below is the experience we had in the UNHCR Bekaa Sub-Office back in 2018 where we decided to prepare a local staff welfare plan.
How did it all start?
Managers need to dedicate time to their staff on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to find the necessary time in the Bekaa. Massive rains would flood refugee camps. Militants would stage suicide attacks in high-tension areas. Armed conflict involving the Army, Hezbollah and Daesh would necessitate contingency planning for mass displacement.
During one of the lulls between crises, we decided to organize small, informal meetings between all units and management to talk about anything and all. This included managerial practices. Conversations were not always easy. However, in one of them, magic just happened without warning. One of the staff, who had been staring at me silently during the meeting, all of a sudden asked me: listen, what is it you do? Well, I’m the Head of Sub-office. Yeah, I know that. But what is it you do on a day-to-day basis?
I remember that quick reflexes from my side saved the situation at the time. However, my answer, a series of platitudes which I have mercifully forgotten, wasn’t very intelligent or accurate. The question, precise as a scalpel, had penetrated my defenses and opened a series of questions in my mind to which I did not have the right answers. Among them:
- What are the actual responsibilities of a field humanitarian manager? How are the different angles (diplomatic, operational, managerial) to be articulated among themselves?
- How best to articulate management and staff responsibilities, in such a way so as to maximize mutual support and convergence?
- How can a manager improve communication about her role and activities? Can transparency and communication about managerial roles be of help in improving staff welfare and mental health?
After that fateful meeting, the reflection narrowed its focus to staff welfare, and then of course widened again to try to encompass all important aspects of staff welfare under the direct responsibility of a field office, besides of communication. A consultative process opened, including an anonymous staff review, consultations with national staff welfare officer and management, and extensive consultations with the local staff association. By May 2018, the Staff Welfare Plan had been approved by the staff association and all staff.
A dilemma had been at the basis of the process: where shall initiative and accountability lie? A management-led process may not be consultative enough. Conversely, a staff-led process may not gain sufficient management buy-in. After some thought and consultation I decided to lead the process, so as to enhance management accountability and buy-in, while making all possible efforts towards a consultative process.
The 2018 Bekaa Suboffice staff welfare plan
We decided to work on six priority aspects:
- Staff welfare services and counselling,
- Staff development,
- Stress management,
- Staffing, staff rights and accountability,
- Infrastructure and services,
- Communication, consultation and transparency.
Some of the measures taken were:
- Clear rules on communications. Staff would make reasonable efforts to be reachable during emergencies. Conversely, management would never contact staff (including through email) outside of working hours unless during an emergency.
- Establish our own budget for external training, prioritizing national staff. The staff would pay the training fee and the office would cover travel and other expenses.
- Training sessions on career management.
- Efforts not to reduce staff, and transparent and timely communications on staffing planning and decisions.
- Staff Association members would have at least one hour per week, out of office work, to dedicate to the Staff Association.
- Staff Association participates in all regular important meetings, including weekly meeting. Head of Sub-office communicates his own quarterly action plan, as well as progress against it, to all staff.
The entire plan can be consulted here. It’s a relatively simple two page document.
A few conclusions
Did it work? I guess partially, as most things. Some measures weren’t implemented, others took hold as a habit. Staff Association gained confidence in raising grievances to me, for which I’ll always be grateful. We were quite disciplined in communicating workplans (including from management) to all staff, on Staff Association participation, on budgeting for training and on infrastructure. On the contrary, cross-fertilization across units proved difficult, due to workload. Beirut management was supportive, and as a part of organization-wide staff welfare policies we had a Beirut-based Staff Welfare Office visiting every region on a monthly basis and being available to all staff, which was very useful.
Later on, and on a slightly different issue, we raised the issue of salaries of office security staff during the Lebanon financial crises. National management intervened with a good measure of success. By the way, this is an oft-neglected issue also in need of answers: what about the welfare of national personnel working in subcontracted companies for humanitarian organizations, for instance on cleaning or security? That counts, too.
At my level, upon leaving the Suboffice I undertook a 360-Degree-Review, which was one of the toughest but most revealing experiences of my professional life. Since then, I keep an updated personal development plan (for which UNHCR has an excellent tool, by the way) which always includes management training.
I still remember, of course, the moment that staff fixed his piercing green eyes on me and asked: what is it you do? It took guts to do that, and it proved eventful that he did. I guess one final lesson is: lead your team in a way that everyone, guts or no guts, feels she or he can raise difficult questions.