“Of all the things that sustain a leader over time, love is the most lasting. The best-kept secret of successful leaders is love: staying in love with leading, with the people who do the work, with what their organizations produce, and with those who honor the organization by using its work.”

- James Kouzes and Barry Posner in The Leadership Challenge.
This week our team read this article from Jobs for the Future on ways businesses can ease their employees’ caregiving burdens during (and after) the COVID-19 crisis. A few compelling statistics jump out at us.

Seventy-four percent of employers say that supporting working parents is a top priority, and corporate leaders across the country are advancing employee-centered talent practices. However, only 39 percent said they feel their programs and policies are effective. To help employer partners, they identified seven promising new approaches to supporting working parents.

Below are some truths, tools, and triumphs for education and organization leaders to put people first. 
Truths
Do you host physical or virtual coffees with the principal? Have you considered asking students what key campus problems need to be solved? Hosting a hack-a-thon in person or digitally for their answers? How do you think about taking care of your staff? Can you hire a masseuse for a lunch hour? What could you do to set up a cover-a-teacher rotation? These are just some fundamental truths about how we put people first in our charge.

Check out 11 Themes of Servant Leadership for other truths you find inspirational.
Tools
OpenSmartEdu.org is a free resource developed as a collaborative project of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), and Tuscany Strategy Consulting (TSC). OpenSmartEdu understands the challenges of putting people first in COVID-19 reopening plans. This website helps institutions in their operating strategies for near- and long-term plans.

Triumphs
At Setser Group, we put people-first practices in place in the following ways -

Didn't get a chance to tune in live this week for our Barriers for Breakfast discussion on Facebook? Check out the full video, here!