Formal Peer Support Team (Part 2)

In Part 1, I spoke about how although organized peer support teams may be utilized in a crisis, they instead specialize in being attentive to the daily troubles of distressed coworkers.

I have noticed that when you formalize or structure something (move from informal to formal peer support for example), you can lose long-standing helpful traditions. It is hard to make things better and easy to make things worse. One nagging concern I have as roles and resources become formalized is that they will inadvertently replace, undermine, or damage the long-standing organic systems of watching out for each other. Additionally, we do not want non-peer support team coworkers to think they are no longer needed as support for coworkers. Peer support is an additive process, where peer support team members seek out opportunities to provide support, and the whole workgroup elevates its expectation of wellbeing, and distressed coworkers feel encouraged to reach out for help.

 Know that the fundamentals of peer support are not complex and are within reach of all workers. Demonstrating trustworthiness and willingness to help are unquestionably good human qualities that we can seek whether part of an organized peer team or not.

KEY POINTS

■ Workgroups can benefit from an organized and trained peer support team.

■ Meeting people where they are at in real time can be most helpful.

■ Peer support should remain intentionally outside the formal management

structure.