Small Changes, Real Impact - Building Everyday Resilience in Individual Placement and Support Teams (IPS) | Our Blog

Author: Michael Hudson

When I first heard the word “resilience”, I mainly associated it with “coping better” or “being tougher”. Over the duration of the Estia Centre’s ‘Developing Your Team’s Resilience’ training programme, that view has changed -  I now understand resilience as something more practical and relational: a set of habits, structures and conversations that help us stay well while doing demanding work.

In this blog I reflect on how I have started to implement three specific elements in my role as an IPS Team Leader:

1. Personal work health and well-being plans
2. Reflective supervision
3. A more structured approach to difficult conversations

Individually these are small shifts, but together they are already influencing how I work and how I support my team.

Personal Work Health and Well-Being Plans

One of the most helpful ideas from the reading was the concept of a personal work health and well-being plan (Perkins, 2009). Rather than being a form for HR, it is a simple, living document that captures:

• What helps me stay well at work
• The early warning signs that I am struggling
• What I can do when things feel too much
• How others (especially my manager or colleagues) can support me

I decided that if I wanted the team to take this seriously, I needed to start with myself.

My own plan includes:

• What keeps me well: Scheduling at least one protected block of time each week for focused work (no meetings, no emails), and taking a short walk or “reset break” after particularly intense meetings.
• Early warning signs: Feeling constantly rushed, becoming more reactive than reflective, and finding myself avoiding certain emails or conversations because I feel overloaded.
• What helps when things are tough: Naming my capacity honestly in supervision, and asking a trusted colleague to sense-check my priorities.
• How others can support me: Being clear about deadlines and expectations, and offering space to think issues through rather than only focusing on outcomes.

After completing my own plan, I introduced the idea to the team. I framed it as something to bring into supervision and 1:1s, not as a compliance exercise. This has already had some impact:

• Team members are starting to recognise and name their early warning signs before they reach crisis point.
• Conversations about workload and capacity feel more normal and less like a personal failing.
• I have more concrete ways to support individuals, rather than guessing what might help.

For me, this is resilience in action: planning together how we stay well in the role, rather than waiting until things have broken down.

Embedding Reflective Supervision

A second key learning has been the importance of reflective supervision. In IPS, supervision can easily become dominated by numbers: caseloads, employer engagement targets, referrals and KPIs. While those are important, they do not address the emotional and ethical complexity of the work.

The Reflective Supervision Resource Pack (Earle et al., 2017) emphasises supervision as a space to think, make sense of complexity and process the emotional impact of practice. Using this as a guide, I have made 3 changes:

Protecting reflective time in each supervision

I now explicitly set aside part of each supervision session to explore questions such as:

• “Which situation has stayed with you most this month?”
• “What has felt most emotionally demanding recently?”
• “What did you find yourself thinking about after you went home?”

Normalising discussion of feelings

When staff share that they feel anxious, frustrated or stuck, I try to respond with curiosity rather than jumping straight to solutions. For example: “It makes sense you feel that way. What do you think that feeling is telling you about the work or about the system?” This keeps the focus on understanding, not judgement.

Linking reflection to small, concrete actions

At the end of the reflective section, we agree one small next step. This might be clarifying a boundary with a service user, seeking support from the wider MDT, or changing how they prepare for a particular type of meeting.

Since doing this, I have noticed that staff tend to leave supervision calmer and clearer, rather than just holding a longer to-do list. Difficult cases feel more “shared” within the team, and people appear more willing to talk about the emotional side of the work, which I now see as central to resilience (CIPD, 2021; Earle et al., 2017).

This approach does not turn supervision into therapy, but it does acknowledge that our work is relational and emotionally charged. Creating a structured space to think and feel seems to support staff to keep going thoughtfully, rather than simply “powering through”.

Handling Difficult Conversations More Deliberately

The third area where I have tried to apply the learning is handling difficult conversations. These might be about performance, boundaries, sickness absence or behaviour. Previously, my default was often to delay these conversations, hoping that issues would resolve themselves. In reality, this usually allowed problems to grow and made the eventual conversation even harder.

Drawing on the guidance around difficult conversations, I now use a simple structure:

• Clarify the purpose and outcome
• Before the meeting, I ask myself:
• “What is the core concern I need to raise?”
• “What outcome am I realistically hoping for from this conversation?”

Prepare factual examples and impact

I gather a small number of specific examples (dates, behaviours, patterns) and think about how they affect the staff member, the team and the people who use our service.

Balance honesty and care in the discussion

In the meeting, I aim to be clear and direct about what I have observed, while also connecting it to my intention to support the person rather than blame them. I then give space for their perspective, including any context I may not be aware of.

Agree next steps jointly

Instead of ending on a list of instructions, I now ask questions like: “What do you think would help here?” and “What support do you need from me or the service to make this realistic?” We then agree a plan together and set a time to review it.

This structured approach has not made difficult conversations “easy”, but it has made them fairer, calmer and more constructive. Importantly, I have noticed that when people experience a difficult conversation that still feels respectful and collaborative, trust can actually increase. This links back to the idea that resilience is not just individual, but also relational and cultural (CIPD, 2021).

What I Am Taking Forward

Across these three areas, my main shift has been moving from thinking about resilience as “an individual trait” to seeing it as something built into the way we work together.

• Personal well-being plans help make resilience more planned and less reactive (Perkins, 2009).
• Reflective supervision creates space for staff to think, feel and learn, not just report (Earle et al., 2017).
• A more deliberate approach to difficult conversations supports honesty, clarity and trust, rather than avoidance (CIPD, 2021)

Going forward, I want to:

1. Embed work health and well-being plans as a standard part of induction and ongoing supervision in the team.
2. Continue building my skills in reflective questioning and listening, so that supervision remains a genuine thinking space rather than just an update.
3. Share this learning with colleagues, so that resilience is treated as a shared responsibility across the service, not something that sits solely with individuals.

I am still learning and experimenting, but these changes have already had a noticeable impact on how I lead and how the team responds to the pressures of IPS work. For me, that is the real outcome of the programme: not just new knowledge, but new habits that make it more possible to do this work well and sustainably.

About the author

Michael Hudson is an IPS Team Leader at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, working in Croydon. He is particularly interested in staff wellbeing, reflective practice and improving employment outcomes for people with severe mental illness.

References

CIPD (2021) Employee resilience: an evidence review. Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Earle, F., Fox, J., Webb, C. and Bowyer, S. (2017) Reflective supervision: resource pack. Research in Practice.

Perkins, R. (2009) Surviving and thriving at work: a work health and well-being toolkit.