I’ve always felt a link between Park People’s commitment to employee well-being and the fact that we’re all about parks. Parks are where we go to escape the pressures of daily life, relax, and regenerate. It made sense that Park People’s corporate culture centred work/life balance. To do otherwise, it seemed, would be hypocritical.

Pre-pandemic, Park People’s leadership expressed these values most visibly by discouraging staff from doing things like working late, answering emails during vacations or the middle of the night. Unlike many other places I’ve worked, Park People never rewarded, praised or promoted people who brag about being overworked. The opposite is true. When I’ve been overwhelmed with work, I’ve received a clear message from leadership that working to the point of burnout is unsustainable. Instead of looking the other way, my colleagues intervened with questions like: What can I remove from your plate? What can we de-prioritize from your work plan?

Stepping out of the long shadow of the pandemic, I’ve realized that the origin story I’d concocted in my five years at Park People was naive. It missed the evidence that corporate culture doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of a series of deliberate and concerted actions that were particularly necessary in a pandemic.

Since I’ve joined Park People’s leadership team, I have a different view of what it takes to create a corporate culture that centres employee well-being. I’m proud to share Park People’s steps over the past year and a half when we’ve doubled down on our commitment to balance and preserve the health and well-being of staff.

The double COVID whammy

A world turned upside down by COVID served Park People a double whammy. Like everyone else, we had to “pivot” (ugh, that word) staff interactions from in-person to virtual. Squares on a screen were nothing like the faces of my beloved colleagues, (honestly) the kindest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Like the rest of the office-working world, I missed working with real-life colleagues.

The second whammy was that gathering in parks, the raison d’être of Park People’s work, abruptly came to an end. Programs like TD Park People Grants and InTO the Ravines that help communities build connections to nature and each other in parks were no longer possible. How could our work feel meaningful if people couldn’t connect face to face? How could we be there for communities that were struggling if people were unable to connect in person?

These questions plagued us on both a personal and organizational level. This double whammy opened the door, and that’s when burnout came barging in.

The burn of burnout

This double whammy, coupled with the personal pressures of caring for children and other family members, started a tsunami of burnout that charted a path of destruction across the organization.

One day Maria (names changed to protect the innocent) privately told me to keep the pressure off Omar because Omar was “not doing well.” The next day Omar said the very same thing about Maria. Suddenly behind every Zoom square on my screen was the face of a colleague who was quite possibly crumbling under the stress of COVID.

Because Park People had always been deliberate about maintaining a balanced culture, it was initially difficult for me to comprehend what was happening. The term “burnout” seemed to infer that people were exhausted from being overworked. How could people be burnt out when we’d worked so hard to maintain a culture of balance?

I challenged the term “burnout” in leadership meetings because I couldn’t comprehend why people talked about being overwhelmed when the workload seemed manageable.

And then burnout came for me. 

Like so many, I experienced profound mental fatigue and feelings of hopelessness coupled with cynicism about the purpose of my work. I wandered around in a fog and hit the CBD vape more than occasionally to release the pressure valve on life.

Meeting the challenge head-on

Gradually, the fog started to lift. While I’d like to take credit for my resilience, I did not  do this alone. As part of the leadership team, I’ve seen how Park People worked hard behind the scenes to take care of my colleagues and me.

In December, Park People hired a new staff member with a dedicated focus on supporting staff well-being.

Not long after Sheleena joined the team, a confidential staff survey was circulated. It asked tough questions about how people were doing and how Park People could help. The results were revealing.

Across the organization, staff reported feeling burned out and deeply disconnected from each other and the purpose of their work. Staff also reported having difficulty unplugging from work, balancing work with family responsibilities, and, in light of this, were struggling to manage workloads.

In short, we were all feeling the burn of burnout.

Leadership openly shared the aggregate learnings from the survey in our weekly all-staff meetings.

When burnout came for me, knowing my coworkers also struggled made it easier to recognize and address it. Without the transparency, I would’ve felt alone and, frankly, concerned about my mental health. I remember walking around my neighbourhood in a stupor, feeling scared that I was losing it. I stopped in my tracks when it came to me: “This is what everyone’s been talking about. This isn’t just me. It’s burnout.”

The brave organizational decision to survey staff and share the results helped me tremendously.

Armed with a shared realization that the organization was grappling with burnout, Park People instituted initiatives to meet the challenge head-on.

Like many organizations, Park People’s leadership team told employees they cared. But they distinguished themselves by “putting their money where their mouth is” and instituting concrete policies and programs to make a difference.

Here’s just some of what Park People did to address widespread burnout in the early stages of the pandemic:

• Added additional sick days to the employee benefit plan to ease concerns about what might happen if staff or their family members contracted COVID.
• Burnout was acknowledged as a widespread issue and discussed in weekly staff meetings and shared via articles on Basecamp. Managers were encouraged to raise and address burnout with their staff.
• The Director of HR set up one-on-one sessions with every staff member to understand their particular experiences and needs. Then, they developed personalized, practical interventions to relieve burnout.
• For non-permanent staff without benefits we set aside a budget for a wellness fund to ensure staff could anonymously access funds if needed.
• Increased our Employee Assistance Plan to provide unlimited counseling to staff in both languages.
• Park People purchased a company-wide subscription to a meditation app. They encouraged staff to make time in their schedules to participate in a regular meditation practice.
• Based on the success of a walking club that was part of Park People’s Community Resilience Program, we established a staff walking competition. Signing on to count steps would automatically enter you for a chance to win a prize. Winners were announced and celebrated at weekly all-staff meetings. The initiative encouraged people to step away from their desks, move their bodies and get outside where everything’s a bit brighter.
• Park People’s Social Committee ramped up efforts to keep people connected. There was a holiday and spring gift exchange where staff sent small gifts to their colleagues. Staff received prepaid mailing envelopes and small budgets to purchase the gifts. Budgets were also set aside for each staff member to buy food and drinks from their favourite local restaurant for the online gift exchange celebrations. Full disclosure: My Chanukah costume won me a gift certificate for a manicure in my neighbourhood. I’m now particularly excited to see salons in Ontario reopening.

Summer slow down

As a parks organization, Park People holds a special place for summer. In the five years I’ve worked at Park People, it’s public knowledge that our Executive Director, Dave Harvey, will:

1. Wear shorts to work
2. Be off-grid for two weeks or more at a time,  enjoying wilderness canoe trips.
3. Remind us that summer is fleeting. When June rolls around you can count on him telling us: “Summer is short. It’s just eight weeks. One day you wake up, and it’s over.”

At Park People, we follow Dave’s lead by making the most of summer.

This summer-loving spirit, coupled with the leadership team’s commitment to battling burnout, resulted in an organization-wide “Summer Slow-Down” program.

The Park People Summer Slow Down consists of the following:

• To lighten everyone’s workloads, leadership asked staff to review their work plans and remove any work that did not need to happen during the warm summer months. The message was clear: We expect you to do less.
• For two weeks in July and two weeks in August, the organization cancelled all standing meetings. Every regular check-in, all-staff meeting, department and management meeting was erased from calendars. This game-changer freed up time to achieve greater balance during the warm and delightful summer months.
• Staff were given five paid “Wellness Days”– an extra five days off connected to summer long weekends to relax, recharge and maybe even hang out in the park.
• Throughout summer Wednesdays and Fridays, Park People have instituted “Focus Time.” These two strictly enforced 3-4 hour meeting-free blocks per week helped keep Zoom fatigue in check and ensured staff weren’t constantly in meetings.
• We hired an unprecedented 9 summer staff who will help distribute workloads.

As I write this list (and believe me, there’s more I could share!) I’m both gobsmacked and overwhelmingly proud.

Like so many, I’ve come through the pandemic a bit bruised and battered, but with my well-being intact. That is largely the result of the deliberate efforts made by my employer, Park People. Park People has made staff wellbeing a core organizational pillar. It is not an “nice to do” or “perk.” It is who we are as Park People.

The journey isn’t over yet. The leadership team is already knee-deep in figuring out the complexities of a return to the office. Thankfully, maintaining our cherished work culture will be a priority.

While there is still much uncertainty in the world, one thing has never been clearer – I’m proud to call myself a Park Person. The deliberate steps taken to buoy me during the pandemic have deepened my loyalty to the organization. What we did to support people throughout the pandemic is not the norm. But it ought to be.

Jodi Lastman is the Director, Marketing and Sponsorship at Park People, an organization helping awesome things happen in city parks across Canada.