How to Care in a Cowboy Culture. Strengthening Humanitarian Operational Leaders‘ Capacities for Staff in Field Missions

Humanitarian action is a stressful field of work, that can have effects on the mental health and well-being of aid workers. This paper asks how humanitarian organizations can strengthen operational leadership provide better staff care. An organizations' duty of care towards their employees can translate into its staff care strategy. During field missions, operational humanitarian managers work directly with staff under high stress. This paper tries to give an insight into their understanding of staff care and how they implement it in the field, and it tries to understand the challenges they face. The understanding of their role in this included making sure staff are physically secure and feel psychologically safe. The main strategies were creating an open team culture, making staff feel appreciated and motivated, managing the workload and setting up a comfortable living and working environment. The main challenges were a lack of funding and practical training, having no one to talk to about difficult situations, and providing staff care to national staff. The ways in which they experienced support from their organizations varied. The general findings were that staff care needs to be prioritized at the organizational level. Organizations need to provide financial support, appropriate training for leaders and coaching to deal with challenges. This Is especially true when It comes to national staff: Although national staff contribute to the vast majority of the humanitarian workforce, organizationally, staff care for this group of employees remains largely underprioritized.

Weymann, C.M. (2020). How to Care in a Cowboy Culture. Strengthening Humanitarian Operational Leaders‘ Capacities for Staff in Field Missions. IFHV Working Paper, 10(2).