ReHumanizing the Public Sector

A concern on our minds, many of us working in the public sector, is the move away from the social-service attitudes of the public sector to the hard-driven, results oriented governance.

This was historically a result of New Public Management as a theory, one which was created in the U.S. and deployed across the world. Many governments are breaking away from this approach, recognizing its deficiency and its inability to create and sustain healthy outcomes for the public sector. There's a major call to come back to the origins of public service, which is centered on humane values of looking after constituents as the basis and way of working for the public sector.

What does that entail? The following points describe what can be used as a framework to rehumanize the public sector:

• Empathy as a core value: Re-institutionalizing empathy as the most important value for public sector cadres. People should be encouraged to truly embody it as altruistic value, one of which public servants cannot be without.
• Belonging as a route for true inclusion:In a competitive environment, there is a notion of us vs. them, whereby people are being 'othered'. A humane public service ensures that a sense of cohesion is built in within its ranks and groups.
• Safety and job security as a human right:Public servants who lack the sense of security in their jobs will be operating from that stress response (fight, flight, freeze, fawn). This undermines the ability to maximize performance, think creatively, or be kind and collaborative, as the sheer focus is on survival.

Here are a few reminders on the biology of stress responses:

The fight or flight response is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival.

It prepares your body to either confront or flee from the threat by triggering changes like increased heart rate, quickened breathing, and heightened alertness

After you perceive the danger is gone, it can take between 20 to 60 minutes before your body is in a normal state once again. But when stressors are always present and you always feel under attack, that fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on.

The long-term activation of the stress response system and too much exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can disrupt almost all of the body's processes. This puts you at higher risk of many health problems, including: anxiety, depression, digestive problems, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, and a plethora of other diseases.

When the public sector strives to ensure that its people feel secure, that they belong, and that they are treated with kindness, they ensure the physical and mental safety of their people. When that happens, public servants will in turn be able to not only genuinely serve others; they will also be able to help create communities that thrive and prosper on empathy.

References:

Kirby, Stephanie. “Fight Flight Freeze: How to Recognize It and What to Do …” Edited by Aaron Horn, Betterhelp, https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/trauma/fight-flight-freeze-how-to-recognize-it-and-what-to-do-when-it-happens/.

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc. "Fight, Flight, Freeze, Or Fawn: How We Respond To Threats". November 9, 2023.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/fight-flight-freeze-fawn.html