Organizational development and compassion fatigue at RSPCA Queensland

Organisational Development

Current Situation

Organisational Development Plan

Implementation of the Development Plan

Stakeholder Engagement

Evaluation of the Development Plan

Organisational Development at RSPCA

Of all Queensland's societies and organisations dedicated to the prevention of animal cruelty and bettering the lives of animals, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Animals (RSPCA Qld) is the oldest. The organisation needs approximately $42 million in funding every year to help build and maintain the various programs and services it offers. Since RSPCA Qld is a community-based non-government charity, most of its funding comes from donations, sponsorships and bequests from the local community. Government funding accounts for less than 1% of the money it receives (RSPCA Queensland, 2016).

The organisation boasts a rich and interesting history that spans 130 years. It started with just a single supporter and has now grown into a sizeable organisation with 270 remunerated employees and 3,000 dedicated volunteers. All the people involved, even those involved indirectly, are committed to advancing the available opportunities and also bettering all animals' quality of life. The organisation is still very independent and continues to strive to educate and inform communities on the responsibilities they have in protecting and enhancing animal welfare (RSPCA Queensland, 2016).

Current Situation

Queensland's RSPCA remains an independent organisation dedicated to providing protection and care services to animals. Because of the limited support RSPCA gets from the government and the increasing numbers of abandoned and stray animals, the organisation's resources are now too little to meet the demands of the current circumstances. RSPCA refuses to reject any animal that needs their help. Nonetheless, a good number of the animals RSPCA receive do not fit the suitability for adoption and have to be put down. Eventually, it is the staff members who suffer. It takes immense emotional toil taking care of these animals and the staff might undergo compassion fatigue, which essentially denotes the exhaustion caused by the gradual loss of compassion. These people really want to help and their emotional commitment makes them vulnerable to compassion stress. The organisation's chief aim is providing the highest level of care possible and compassion fatigue may derail the staff's ability to make this happen (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2008).

Ellis (2007) noted that compassion fatigue's symptoms can include preoccupation with images and thoughts of suffering animals. The person becomes hyper vigilant and faces difficulty sleeping. Concentration ability suffers and the person becomes hyper aroused. The individual may also seek to avoid situations and environments which are likely to remind them of such trauma. Other symptoms include an unhealthy attitude towards other people, crying spells, irritability, physical fatigue and numbness.

Those who administer euthanasia at RSPCA may also be at risk of developing various emotional and psychological ailments. Normally, the responsibilities of carrying out euthanasia on the unwanted animals are born by employees. Administering euthanasia to animals is physical, technical and emotional at the same time, and the nature of the act puts the employees directly face to face with death. The situation with euthanasia is that it is not a sudden unexpected trauma as would be the case with physicians and police officers; it is regular and predictable and forms the daily routine of the professional and so the possibility of developing acute trauma is likely (Rogelberg et al., 2007).

Rogelberg et al. (2007) state that shelter workers performing euthanasia are usually exposed to a kind of stressor that varies from other kinds of stressors like role, task or physical-process stressors that have been studied in various literature regarding occupational stress. Euthanasia can be considered a moral stressor. For instance, one joins the organisation with the goal of helping save and care for animals, but they soon find out that killing unwanted but healthy animals is part of the whole process. They have to face this conflict and it can be traumatizing. The paradox is part of the job. Most of these people genuinely care about the wellbeing of these animals. They want to see them happy and healthy but the circumstances of the job demand that occasions arise where perfectly healthy animals have to be put down. If the care-givers fail to find shelters quickly, it is expected of them to euthanize the same nonhuman animals that they care for and protect.

The RSPCA put down nearly 3000 animals in the year 2013 on medical and behavioural grounds. The employees need additional training besides the standard counselling and the 'employee assistance program' the organisation currently offers to help deal with this situation (Hayward, 2014).

There have been some connections between emotional stress and euthanasia, argue Anderson, Brandt, Lord & Miles (2013). The staff may experience guilt on euthanizing animals that are by all standards healthy. They may also develop anger towards individuals and the society who no longer need the pets they previously committed to take care of. There might be a moral angle to the emotional stress as euthanizing healthy animals may go against the individuals' personal values and ethics and so challenge their reasons and motivations for working in the field. Combat veterans may experience perpetration-induced stress. This kind of stress results from being a participant in a traumatic experience.

Someone participating in euthanizing animals may undergo the same kind of stress. The situation may be made worse by the fact that euthanasia takes place regularly in such establishments. Actually, it is a daily occurrence in some establishments with a high traffic of unwanted or abandoned animals. This continual exposure can lead to the problems compounding with time. Besides having emotions like anger and guilt, individuals administering euthanasia have been known to report life dissatisfaction, depression, anxiety, grief and sadness. Somatic conditions like high blood pressure, sleeping problems and ulcers have also been associated with administering euthanasia. Such problems may result in the individual developing low job satisfaction. Employees may eventually leave their jobs.

It is absolutely necessary that RSPCA carries out euthanasia. Nonetheless, the exercise can burden the staff with stress. It is an exercise that affects all shelter staff in a big way. The experience can be traumatizing. Dealing with the trauma requires that the employees are provided with adequate emotional support. While support services and programs are available, they are not universal or widespread enough. The inadequacy of support is due to insufficient funding. The organisation receives less than 1% of its funding from the government. It heavily depends on gifts and donations from private citizens (Anderson, Brandt, Lord & Miles, 2013).

Hayward (2014) notes that while RSPCA is a very friendly and rewarding place to be employed and work, taking breaks is not easy as taking a break reduces the manpower and so the remaining staff get even more burdened with work because the organisation does not have enough employees. The organisation is grossly understaffed, which can lead to the employees being overworked.

Organisational Development Plan

Organisational development involves the process of an organisation developing its internal capabilities to be as effective and efficient as it can possibly be in its mission, and to sustain its operations for the long-term. Staff members have the responsibility of developing programs, but program development should actually involve all stakeholders of the organisation including those it serves. All stakeholders have an interest in what outcomes the organisation's programs achieve. Board members play a critical role in providing support and guidance. To build an organisation that is effective in all ends, strategic planning, program development and evaluation should be interconnected to aid continuous learning (Philbin & Mikush, 1999).

The main organisational problem at RSPCA has been established to be compassion fatigue. The activities that RSPCA staff dislike the most include euthanasia, witnessing animal cruelty, the fact that they are the last resort in 'cleaning up' the community, pet owners not fully understanding what they do, lack of progress or results and the limited resources the organisation has to operate with. Given these factors, the organisational development plan's objectives include: holding workshops on compassion fatigue, giving handouts detailing how to manage individual stress, establishing a peer support program, supervision, consultation, providing focused and comprehensive training, providing personal therapy services, encouraging work/life balance, establishing clear boundaries between clients and workers and doing surveys on fatigue and compassion satisfaction (Ellis, 2007).

For the above objectives to be successfully achieved, effective change management and communication will be important. Effective change management is basically concerned with ensuring the proposed change initiative successfully achieves the desired outcomes (Jones, 2013). In this case, the change process must be effectively managed to ensure reduced compassion fatigue and greater job satisfaction amongst RSPCA employees. The management of the organisation would have an important role in this regard. This role particularly relates to sensitising employees on the need for change and its impact on them and the organisation at large, mobilising and providing the necessary resources, as well as creating a team to oversee the change process (Anderson & Anderson, 2010). The role of the management may also involve engaging and empowering members of staff, addressing resistance to change, and institutionalising the change into the culture of the organisation (By & Macleod, 2009). When the management plays a frontline role in the change process, the likelihood of success of the change initiative is increased (Cameron & Green, 2012). Without adequate management support and commitment, it may be quite difficult for RSPCA to address the problem of compassion fatigue amongst its employees.

A particularly important element of effective change management relates to communication. Most change initiatives actually fail because of poor communication (Jones, 2014). Every important stakeholder must be kept well-informed during the change process. To communicate effectively, the organisation may rely on a number of strategies: communicating via multiple channels (such as staff meetings, emails, memos, focus groups, and so on); communicating as swiftly and regularly as possible; and providing opportunities for employees to air their views and articulate their concerns (Cameron & Green, 2012; Hayes, 2014). Ensuring greater availability of the management at the workplace to address employee concerns, providing opportunities for formal and informal networking and information sharing, organising interactive workshops for employees, as well as recognising and rewarding positive perspectives would also go a long way in enhancing communication in the change process (Anderson & Anderson, 2010). By communicating effectively, the organisation will be in a better position to garner the support required from staff members to successfully address the problem at hand.

Essentially, both the management and employees will have important roles to play during the change process. Whereas the role of the management would primarily be to provide the necessary support and build coalition, the role of role employees would be to participate actively in the implementation process (Hayes, 2014). In this case, for instance, it would be important for employees to attend meetings and workshops as well as participate in the peer support program. Other important roles would include those of the supervisors/middle managers and the project team. Supervisors would be involved in roles such as developing liaisons and coaching employees, while the project team would serve as the overall overseer of the change process. For the intended outcomes to be achieved, each entity must effectively execute its roles (Jones, 2013).

Implementation of the Development Plan

As mentioned earlier, it would be crucial to establish a team for supervising and coordinating the implementation of the organisational development plan. The change team is particularly involved in formulating the strategy for the change, developing a plan for implementation, and supporting other roles (Hayes, 2014). In this case, the change team may be involved in conducting staff surveys, analysing data, as well as designing training and stress management programmes for employees. An important consideration is to compose an effective team in terms of skills, ability, knowledge, and experience. Owing to the character of change management processes, the team should have individuals with exceptional interpersonal, leadership, communication, analytical, problem-solving, and conflict management skills (Anderson & Anderson, 2010). More importantly, the team should have members from all levels and departments of the organisation, including senior management, middle management, subordinates, as well as finance, human resource, communication, and animal welfare departments. Having such a team ensures concerns and perspectives from all levels of the organisation are taken into consideration during the planning and implementation process (Jones, 2013). The team can as well have outsiders, especially organisational development consultants, to help in the development process.

Like in any change process, the possibility of conflicts and problems cannot be ignored. Conflicts and problems often result, opposing views, thoughts, feelings, needs, and interests within an individual, or between two or more individuals (Hayes, 2014). The disagreements must be properly addressed if the objectives of the plan are to be successfully achieved. The collaborative approach would be useful in addressing possible conflicts. This approach essentially involves parties in the conflict working together to solve the issue at hand (Anderson & Anderson, 2010). It particularly involves considering each party's views, feelings, and concerns; and, most importantly, finding a solution that is favourable to each party.

The collaborative approach would also be valuable for solving any problems that may arise during the implementation process. Change processes are often complex, and problems may be inevitable (Hayes, 2014). In this case, there could be problems in designing training programs or adjusting work schedules. With the collaborative approach, everyone is viewed as an important source of knowledge and ideas. This essentially implies cultivating a climate of inclusive and participatory decision-making (Jones, 2013). In this case, for instance, employees should be actively involved in decision-making as they are directly affected by the issue at hand.

Evaluation of the Development Plan

The overarching objective of the organisational development plan is to minimise compassion fatigue amongst employees at RSPCA by initiating stress management and peer support programs, minimising employee workload, and promoting work-life balance. A change initiative can only be effective if it achieves the objectives for which it was intended (Jones, 2013). To determine the extent to which the objectives were achieved, it is imperative to carry out evaluations on a regular basis (Hayes, 2014). Regular evaluation enables the organisation to identify successes, failures, and areas for improvement.

Since the development plan is primarily aimed at minimising compassion fatigue amongst employees, an employee survey would be an appropriate tool for measuring the effectiveness of the plan. Following the implementation of the plan, surveys should be administered on a periodic basis, say semi-annually or annually. The surveys should measure several work-related aspects such as degree of job satisfaction, extent of contentment with workload, as well as level of psychological disturbance emanating from work. The surveys may as well measure elements such as employees' perceived usefulness of the stress management and training programs as well as management support in the entire process.

By carrying out regular evaluations, the organisation would be better placed to ascertain whether investing time, effort, and resources will be worth the effort. Most change initiatives tend to be time- and resource-consuming and (Hayes, 2014). Evaluations should, therefore, be conducted to avoid the wastage of time and resources that could be utilised elsewhere. For instance, if after the first evaluation it is determined that the set objectives were not achieved, the organisation can either terminate the initiative or adjust certain aspects in its implementation. The failure could, for example, be as a result of poor staff engagement and designing of stress management programs. With this knowledge, the organisation would focus on improving these areas. On the other hand, if the objectives are achieved, the management would focus on institutionalising the change and even allocating more time and resources to the development activities. Essentially, evaluation would be important for making necessary adjustments to the development program.

An important aspect of evaluation entails communicating the progress of the implementation to the relevant stakeholders (Hayes, 2014). For instance, if the objectives are achieved as planned, the management should communicate the outcomes to employees, sponsors, and other key stakeholders. Stakeholders should as well be informed about what the organization would do to build on its successes and improve on its failures.