Sustainability Practices in Working Contexts: Supervision, Collective Narrative, Generative Humour, and Professional Respect

Abstract

Research literature and field experience reveal that jobs in social education—just like other jobs with a high interpersonal involvement—feature a high risk of job burnout. By necessity, work organizations in social education have developed a definite set of practices to support their workers and provide occasions for mutual support. Here we analyze four of these practices—supervision, collective narrative, generative humour, and professional respect—and suggest ways in which organizations in other sectors may consider importing them to increase their own organizational sustainability. We also present an analysis of workers’ second-level skills (such as narrative skills, reflexive skills, team working skills) that are related to sustainability practices: on the one hand they allow the individual worker to effectively take part and contribute, on the other hand their development is stimulated by such participation. Organizational sustainability is in fact to be considered a positive collaboration between individuals and organization, rather than a one-way, top-down condition. Increases in sustainability may result from cascading effects triggered by management decisions as well as by workers’ individual and collective actions.