Oge Chukwudozie is a safeguarding/protection professional, with 20 years experience in the aid sector. She has worked with different organisations, and in various thematic areas such as safeguarding, child protection, education, HIV/AIDS and emergency response. She is currently the National Representative for the RSH Nigeria Hub.
Having a safe organisational culture is key for safeguarding. Without that, organisations may negatively impact staff wellbeing and, subsequently, the target community that receives support or aid from the organisation.
Furthermore, staff may not feel they can freely report a safeguarding breach when they do not trust the system or when they assume the report will not be addressed because their voices do not count. Therefore, RSH has designed the second phase of our successful mentor project to support Nigerian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to promote a positive organisational culture for safeguarding.
After reviewing applications, we selected 10 civil society organisations, (CSOs) that participated in the initial RSH mentorship project and have the basic safeguarding systems/policies in place, to participate in this follow-up support programme.
Even though the participating organisations already have safeguarding policies in place – a fundamental criteria for participation – having policies doesn’t automatically mean that an organisation is safe or that the policies will be properly implemented. RSH have developed this mentor programme around the RSH Culture framework (adapted from Gender@work), focusing our efforts, particularly regarding the norms or practices which support or hinder creating safeguarding culture.
Thus, it’s vital to have sessions involving in-depth critical reflection of organisational values and behaviour of leaders and wider staff, to develop a shared understanding of their importance among staff and other representatives.
The peer workshops, where leaders from different organisations come together to share and reflect on their organisations, challenges and actions taken, are an integral part of the organisational culture project. They have revealed the journey the respective organisational leaders are making towards ensuring their organisations are safe.
During the second peer workshop in August, the participants learnt about creating a safe space for staff understanding that we all differ and can have different views of things. A safe space is a platform where people feel free to share their views, a space free of discrimination, marginalisation or harm of any kind and where confidentiality is promoted. This can be a specified physical structure dedicated for the purpose, where different marginalised groups gather and discuss in the form of a support group.
Safe spaces can also be virtual, where an online group embodies the values of a safe space.
”I now have a better understanding of safe space; my initial experience of safe space was for women and girls in the Internally Displaced Persons’ camps never knew it could apply to virtual space or a system,” said a participant about the session. "We also held a session on conscious and unconscious bias which emphasised how we hold biases towards people who are different from us but through cultivating greater awareness of these biases we can work to reduce them."
As one of the participants shared later, at times “problems we are having at workplaces are as a result of conscious and unconscious biases and information (mis)management,” which they viewed as an important realisation.
We also had a session on leadership skills and building high-performing teams. Following the session, a participant said that they “learnt more about leadership skills and how to use power positively.” It is clear from some of the participant feedback that these deep reflection sessions have given them a lot of food for thought and opened them up to different ways of seeing some everyday challenges.
One of the participants, an Executive Director shared that since being involved in the mentoring programme he has been piloting different ways of keeping staff motivated and building their capacity by bringing them together to work more as a team, for example when writing proposals.
Although he used to write them all himself in the past, he has now started to involve a wider team to do this together. This, he reported, makes the staff feel part of the organisation and that their opinions count, which also reduced organisational turnover.
On the other hand, when an Executive Director’s presence is more like an authoritarian figure, staff will shy away and always talk behind their backs because such a leader has not created a space that allow staff to thrive. Experiences were shared where staff cannot leave the office when their manager or the Executive Director is still at work because it may seem as being rude or disrespectful or lacking good work ethic.
The issue of having policies or values that promote transparency, accountability, the “do no harm” principle and freedom of speech cannot be achieved when leaders don’t walk the talk. Leaders need to also provide a safe space to motivate and energise staff to do their best, which ultimately would contribute to the organisation achieving its aims and objectives.
To read more about how to create a safe organisational culture, go to this link. You will find a measuring tool and a how-to note on supporting organisational culture change, and a supplementary workshop agenda.