In September 2023 the WHGNE team perceived the benefit in reviewing and reflecting on the values and aspirations agreed upon collectively in 2022.

A key concept within creating a values-based organisation is that the agreed upon values constitute a living and ever-evolving collaborative process. It is crucial to provide all staff opportunities to evaluate the ways in which organisational values are enabled and upheld.

This evolution underlies the central motivation for thinking more deeply about ‘how we work’ as an ongoing process – that is, accepting and adapting to the inevitability of change while remaining true to our deeply held core values.

Change in funding, policy, legislation, government, staff, Board members, systems and community needs – all of these changes impact our work.  We therefore must ask ourselves as an organisation:

• What are the fundamental values that we must hold as we live with change?
• What are the key processes that we follow no matter how large or small or dynamic we are?
• What is the fundamental work that we must always hold to, given our agreements with our stakeholders (funders and the community)?

The whole discussion is underpinned by the question: where is the opportunity right now? This is a question we must revisit frequently, as ‘right now’ is by nature transitory and subject to change. We must reflect upon how we can adapt to the changes we’re experiencing to create a positive impact for our organisation, and by extension, our community while holding to our values.

As we workshop, discuss and reflect on these questions as a team, we have also created opportunities to further address strategies to embrace and create opportunities through change in our Gender Justice Theory of Change.

This document will strengthen and support our existing suite of strategies and frameworks, which have all been developed through a values-based lens and will be reviewed and updated to guide our work over the coming years.

In our work to foster gender equality WHGNE applies a feminist lens throughout the breadth of projects and activities – but what does this look like in practice?

We refer to the many theories of feminism and draw as much experience as we can from them to inform our organisational way of working.

From Liberal feminism we draw:

• A focus on gaining equal rights and opportunities for women through achieving equality and justice, through legal and social reform. Influence public opinion, eliminate sex-role stereotyping and present a more varied and positive image of women.

From Radical feminism we draw:

• The personal is political.
• ‘feminine’ characteristics have been devalued by dominant male culture – patriarchy.

From Intersectional feminism we draw:

• Women share a common oppression while not all women are equally oppressed
• This approach strives towards social equality and then beyond this to end all forms of oppression.

Internally, WHGNE practices feminist supervision – a strengths-based approach to supervision that supports and empowers staff.  We also engage in regular reflective practice sessions to improve our practice, sharing and learning through a feminist lens, concepts like applying our values and practicing compassionate decision making.

Reflective practice is not just something we do in a meeting once a quarter. It is an ongoing, living process that is underpinned by our values. Reflection is a skill to be learned and must be practiced consistently.

This development of the ‘how we work’ document outlines not only our practice but is an example of how this works in practice. It is a living document. We will refer to it as we work in 2024 and beyond, and we will refine our work, adjust our thinking and keep learning using these reflections as a basis.

As an example of the ways in which reflective practice has informed our work, WHGNE has adopted compassionate decision making to strengthen our ability to live our organisational values.

Principles to inform a compassionate decision making:

• Resources are finite.
• Compassion must cast a broad net considering all those impacted by our actions,
• When compassion is not considered broadly, it loses balance, and imbalance can cause suffering and harm.
• Taking time to reflect on the most compassionate response produces a more considered response that may save time,
• Providing a compassionate response requires deep listening and enquiry regarding the needs of yourself and others.
• To varying degrees, everyone in an organisation has some power over resource allocation and some limitations.
• There are many types of power within an organisation that enables a person or a group to make decisions. This includes hierarchal power, recognised expertise power, referent charismatic power and collective power.
• In daily, weekly or annual decisions, compassion can be centred.

Our values sit at the core of our work, throughout the whole of our organisation from the Board, to senior leadership and the health promotion team. Without these values, we can’t model the change we want to see in our communities. Our job is not to know best, it is to understand the context in which we’re working, the systems that influence us, and to support our communities to move toward gender equality, using the process of embedding equitable principles into their practice.

Our recent conversations have identified that our work is structured around three streams:

Each stream is led by a Senior Leadership Team member and supported by a Leadership Team member and staff.

Connecting to our operational annual plan, a further lens is put over each of these three areas to categorise our work according to the type of activities we’re undertaking that align with current context and capacity:

• LEAD (innovate/create/strategic)
• PARTNER (joint responsibilities)
• MAINTAIN (measured, contained)
• INTERNAL (quality, core approach)

This allows us to be more fluid and responsive to the demands placed on the organisation and individuals.

The discussion around delineating ‘how we work’ through our organisational values and processes, started with the understanding that as uncomfortable and unexpected as it can sometimes be, change can provide opportunities.

We identified that it’s important for us to be reflective and responsive – not reactive. The risk of being reactive to the changes we are experiencing in the short-term is that we could lose sight of our long-term goals. We need to hold to our core way of working within the organisation so that we can continue to deliver on our commitments to our funders and our community (2021-2025 WHGNE Strategic Plan).