Transforming the Human Service Workplace

This book guides human service organizations in their transformative efforts to create greater workforce inclusion and well-being through a range of forward-thinking practices: promoting employee mental health; providing personal and professional wellness coaching; engaging in multisolving strategies; identifying supports for individuals as they enhance organizational climate; building meaningful evaluative practices with a focus on social justice; elevating the financial well-being of lower-wage workers; employing a trauma-informed model of leadership; and preparing graduate students with online and in-person pedagogies for inclusive supervision and leadership. Each chapter provides a unique voice and view into current needs and practices that human service managers grapple with in addressing, improving, and even transforming workforce wellbeing, inclusion, and leadership development. These thoughtful perspectives and proposed actions will prove inspiring in the daunting, yet incredibly important work carried out every day by nonprofit and public human service managers and in the professional discourses of human service leaders, researchers, and educators.

This book contains eight chapters by diverse authors representing academic institutions and human service leaders and professionals. It will be essential to students and researchers in social work, human services, and related fields. It will also be beneficial for human service professionals, nonprofit and public sector managers, educators, and scholars.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Human Service Organizations.

Karen Hopkins is Professor and Co-Director of the Human-Centered Leadership in Health and Human Services Certificate at the School of Social Work, University of Maryland. Her research with nonprofit and public agencies is related to supervision, management, and leadership practices and outcomes, performance management, workforce development, and organizational learning and capacity building. She is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Human Services Organizations: Management, Leadership, and Governance.

Bowen McBeath is Professor in the School of Social Work and Hatfield School of Government, Portland State University. He examines how human service organizations and community-based practitioners learn and grow while attending to issues of risk and resilience, equity, and performance pressures. He is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership, and Governance journal.