Devising work schedules for a collective: Favouring intergenerational collaboration among counsellors in a shelter for women victims of conjugal violence

摘要

The study presented here was devised in order to understand the work activity of counsellors in shelters for women victims of conjugal violence. The consortium of shelters that asked for the study requested it because of complaints of worker stress, difficulties in management and a high employee turnover. Therefore they were particularly interested in problems surrounding work organisation, governance, spatial organisation and training and recruitment of young counsellors. The study involved a team of specialists in ergonomics and social work from the research center CINBIOSE, brought together by the Community Outreach Service of Université du Québec à Montréal. We present here only the results of the part of the study dealing with training. We did 22 interviews and 80 hours of observation of work and of formal and informal training with counsellors from two shelters. The shelters were chosen so as to have different characteristics from the point of view of management practices and of geographical situation (one rural, the other urban). In both shelters, counsellors provided clients with all kinds of assistance (interface with the judicial system, empowerment training, help setting up child care, dispute settlement, organisation of meals and housework, etc.). Counselling was composed of both formal counselling (interviews with clients) and informal counselling (interactions during collective meal preparation, child supervision, and so forth). In both shelters, work had to extend over 24 h/day, 7 days per week in order to provide service to women in the shelters and those who might call with urgent problems. At the beginning, both shelters set up work schedules according to seniority considerations. Observations in both shelters revealed an intense collaborative activity involving communications by many means, verbal and written. But the interviews showed that young counsellors participated less in this activity and complained of having few opportunities to develop their skills in counselling because they were isolated on evening, night and weekend shifts. This resulted in two problems: first, the formal counselling and guiding activities that were at the heart of their jobs, and that constituted the reason for their choice of the profession of counsellor, took place primarily during the day on weekdays. Second, although there was ample opportunity for informal counselling during the younger counsellors' shifts, there was a dearth of more experienced personnel at those times, and thus there was little opportunity for transmission of skills and techniques. Given that even those counsellors who had been formally trained in schools of social work had had little or no training in the approaches favoured by the shelters, the younger workers felt the need for more mentoring and training than were available. In collaboration with the ergonomists, one shelter experimented with new ways of devising the work schedule so as to favour learning and training. In this shelter, the process was quite successful. The most experienced now share evening and day shifts and expertise with young counsellors.