Hiring and Training Dedicated and Skilled Staff

• What staff are directly responsible for leading work to engage PWLE?
  • What are their roles/titles?
  • Is engaging PWLE a specific and significant part of their job description?
  • What team/department are they a part of and where do their positions fit within the organization’s overall staffing structure?
• In what ways do our current staff roles support our work engaging PWLE and in what ways do they limit it?

• Define clear roles and responsibilities for staff engaging PWLE. Specific staff members should have clearly defined duties and responsibilities focused on engaging PWLE, along with sufficient time and support to carry out their work.
  • Many organizations designate a Program Manager, Program Specialist, or Program Coordinator role as frontline staff dedicated to this work.
  • These roles are often positioned within Patient/Member/Community Relations, Patient Experience, Community/Population Health, or Community Engagement departments.
• Typical responsibilities for staff roles leading work with PWLE include:
  • Policy and process development: Lead or contribute to creating policies and processes for engaging PWLE, including compensation and feedback mechanisms.
  • Recruitment: Conduct outreach, develop recruitment materials, collaborate with community partners, and build connections to facilitate successful recruitment.
  • Preparation for participation: Provide context and materials for engagement efforts, reviewing documents with PWLE, establish communication processes, and identify support needs.
  • Logistical and technical support:  Assist with technology (e.g., Zoom), and remove barriers to participation such as., transportation and child care.
  • Compensation management: Administer payments for PWLE, explain payment options, and clarify potential impacts on income taxes or public benefits.
  • Meeting facilitation and feedback synthesis: Facilitate meetings, actively listen, document discussions, and synthesize feedback from multiple sources to inform internal discussions and reports.
  • Creating inclusive spaces: Foster safe and welcoming environments where PWLE feel comfortable expressing themselves, manage diverse opinions, and resolve conflicts as needed.
  • Relationship-building and accountability: Build trust and relationships through personalized engagement, proactive communication; and modeling inclusive behavior for others.
  • Training and skills development: Coordinate ongoing training, skill development, and mentorship to support meaningful participation from PWLE.
  • Championing the work: Promote inclusion of the voice of PWLE in internal discussions and decision-making and contribute to education that helps staff and external partners understand the importance of engaging PWLE.
  • Liaising across the organization: Facilitate connections to leaders and between teams and departments to integrate engagement with PWLE across the organization.
  • Managing the feedback loop: Document and summarize input from PWLE to share with organizational decision makers, communicate to PWLE how their input has been used, explain reasons why suggestions were not implemented, and manage expectations regarding organizational influence.
• Coordinate cross-departmental engagement efforts. When staff leading engagement with PWLE are distributed across multiple departments, structures should be in place to bring together cross-cutting work and to ensure integration of the work of engaging PWLE throughout the organization.
• Provide strong departmental leadership support. Department leaders play a key role in supporting staff working with PWLE by offering guidance, helping to integrate engagement efforts across the organization, and coordinating with executive leaders and other department teams.

CommonSpirit Health dedicates staff to lead work with PWLE.

“Really, truly dedicating a staff person to lead and support this work is important. I don’t think a 0.10 or a 0.25 FTE is enough. Allocating the resources is crucial because there is a lot of hard work and a lot of time and thoughtfulness that goes into creating this space, and honoring the dynamics of having to speak on things that are close to our hearts as people. This work is deeply personal. That sometimes comes out in a passionate way, which can be perceived in a positive and sometimes negative way between members and also between teams. Having someone that can confidently navigate those intricacies around interpersonal dynamics and facilitation is huge.”

• What steps does our organization take to ensure we hire, train, and support staff to have the necessary experience, competencies, and values to work with PWLE?
• Do we have a consistent understanding and expectation across our organization of what the right experiences, skills, and values are for this work?
• What could help our staff who lead work with PWLE to feel better prepared and supported?

Rebecca Esparza, a person with lived experience, discusses the skills that are most important for staff working with PWLE.

• When hiring staff to lead work with PWLE, it is important to consider both the core traits and values that people must bring to the role as well as the trainable skills the organization can help them develop to be most successful.
• Key traits and values for staff leading and supporting work with PWLE include:
  • Shared lived experience with the people and communities they will work with
  • Open-mindedness, acceptance of cultural differences, and commitment to  cultural humility
  • Honesty, reliability, and trustworthiness
  • A relationship-oriented approach, authenticity, and an approachable, supportive presence
• Trainable skills that strengthen individuals ability to lead and support engaging  PWLE include:
  • Familiarity with the organization’s focus areas
  • Ability to work effectively within and across teams
  • Project management, policy/advocacy, and/or research expertise, as relevant to the role
  • Strong communication and facilitation skills
  • Conflict resolution abilities
  • Logistics and coordination skills
• Supportive workplace practices benefit everyone – including staff leading work with PWLE. Although this work differs from frontline care delivery, it can carry emotional and relational demands. Staff may benefit from:
  • Trauma-informed workplace and supervision practices, particularly for  staff who share lived experience with the communities they engage
  • Reflective supervision and dedicated  space to process the emotional labor of the role – this supports  sustainability and well-being
  • Grace, flexibility, and encouragement to iterate, adapt, and learn from mistakes.

National Health Care for the Homeless Council’s staff prioritize relationship building and providing meaningful support to PWLE.

“It’s important for the work to be relationship-based. There are times that I’ve met someone [with lived experience] who I think might be a great subject matter expert, and I start by getting to know them as an individual and having more casual conversation about who they are as a person and what they’re interested in. It’s important for it to be strengths-based too, so focusing on and mirroring back to them all of the strengths and knowledge they have. I then offer a menu of items of ways that I can support them that they’re not obligated to access. Sometimes I’ll send an email that has a list of bullet points, and I’ll say, ‘here are all the ways that I could support you. Please let me know which of these you would like.’ [The list] includes: a practice presentation session before a webinar; or if we’re working on a publication, I can review your comments before we send it to our final reviewer; or I can have you meet with this other person on our team if you’d like more than one perspective. So, providing a menu of concrete support items, and then making sure it’s also strength- and relationship-based, too.”