Peer support programs’ impact on organizational development.
On reflection of the broad effects that ‘The Great Resignation’ and COVID-19 pandemic have had on organizational structures and culture, there is a growing understanding that the needs and priorities of the contemporary employee are evolving. The average person spends approximately a third of their life at work, an environment responsible for the longest portion of human contact in most people's days (Agarwal et al., 2020). Thus, the potential for the organization, and its employees, to influence the satisfaction of each individual’s varied personal and professional needs is significant. This dynamic provides organizations with a very unique opportunity to embed strong feelings of organizational engagement, community, and commitment, by developing an environment that nurtures the individual’s identity development and instills psycho-social support.
In seeking practical means of developing how staff think of and relate to their respective organization, successfully implemented peer support programs provide perhaps one of the most overarching solutions. Peer support programs offer a systemic medium for colleagues to help one another when experiencing similar personal and professional challenges. Peer support programs aim to increase social support, strengthen individual coping strategies, and develop resilience through empathetic listening, low-level psychological intervention, and identifying network and professional resources (Agarwal et al., 2020). This extends the conceptual application of HR-like services into the employee network, helping to provide staff with more options and support inside and outside their own teams. Peer support has also shown to decrease presenteeism and lower sick leave rates, and significantly reduce case management and crisis services (Agarwal et al., 2020), freeing up more of HR’s time. Of even greater interest is the perceived effects peer support has on the individual’s providing the support (i.e. peer support mentors). For example, trained mentors report an improved recognition and understanding of colleagues' problems, feeling more approachable, confident, and resilient, and being more often sought out for guidance (Agarwal et al., 2020).
These results mimic my own experience in peer support training and mentorship, whereby mentors receive training that deepens their own emotional and social self-awareness. Similarly, peer support training can instill greater curiosity and reflection in an individual’s psychological experience and development, promoting greater intention in how they respond to others, cope with personal anxieties and challenges, and ultimately direct their lives. These learned attributes can then be passed on to peer support recipients in times of need, which mentors perceive as adding increased credibility to their role within the organization (Agarwal et al., 2020). Furthermore, peer support’s focus on instilling greater compassion and awareness into the individual perceptions of others enables mentors to better communicate and motivate peers with more diverse cultural and psychological backgrounds and personality types.
Given the growing competition for talent in many industries, particularly in software and technology (Swider et al., 2015), investment and development of existing personnel through programs like peer support offer an attractive ‘piece to the puzzle’. Peer support programs provide employees with a unique medium to develop mentorship and leadership qualities that may not have otherwise been regularly accessible within an organization. As mentors support colleagues, their developing skills become widely validated, and their social attachment to the organization becomes further ingrained. This positively impacts organizational culture as a whole, while enabling employees to more freely and autonomously develop their career inside the organization, rather than elsewhere. Boundless career growth such as this is particularly important for emerging younger generations (Barhate & Dirani, 2022), and peer support training and experience helps provide them with the practical and psychological tools needed to successfully transition between varied organizational roles and interests. As mentors advance into supervisory and managerial positions, they become better equipped to support their personnel, often indicative of perceived overarching organizational support (Agarwal et al., 2020).
While peer support benefits are unrestricted, implementation may perhaps be most practically undertaken within younger generations, who more broadly maintain desire for psycho-social support in the workplace (Barhate & Dirani, 2022). In applying peer support programs, organizations can begin to shift their social culture, while becoming more creative and flexible in how they attract and invest in emerging talent. Organizations may also see peer support implementation as additive training and development for existing managerial and supervisory staff. Peer support training and experience at this level may ensure peers' needs and anxieties are more readily supported by their immediate supervisor, helping decrease perceived work overload and stress (Agarwal et al., 2020). That said, it is my recommendation that peer support is best implemented at an organizational-level, changing how staff think about power dynamics and hierarchy within an organization, and breaking down demographic, cultural, and mental health barriers.
Agarwal, B., Brooks, S. K., & Greenberg, N. (2020). The Role of Peer Support in Managing Occupational Stress: A Qualitative Study of the Sustaining Resilience at Work Intervention. Workplace Health & Safety, 68(2), 57–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/2165079919873934
Barhate, B. & Dirani, K.M. (2022), "Career aspirations of generation Z: a systematic literature review", European Journal of Training and Development, Vol. 46 No. 1/2, pp. 139-157. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-07-2020-0124
Swider, B., Zimmerman, R., & Barrick, M. (2015). Searching for the Right Fit: Development of Applicant Person-Organization Fit Perceptions During the Recruitment Process. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(3), 880-893.
