In the “Fostering Equity and Inclusion by Promoting Employee Wellbeing” session, Ozy Aloziem, equity, diversity and inclusion manager at the Denver Public Library (DPL), detailed the culturally responsive model of employee care that she created and DPL is piloting. She addressed issues such as representation burnout, part of race-based stress and trauma, as well as the fatigue caused by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) employees needing to perpetually brace to face racial microaggressions—an exhaustion which occurs regardless of whether such triggers happen to materialize on a particular occasion. Aloziem also emphasized the physical as well as emotional impacts, including faster chromosomal aging than white peers.

A key quote that Aloziem cited is, “Eliminating things that harm us is not the same as creating things that heal us,” by Shawn A. Ginwright, author of The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. Said Aloziem, “We need to build while we tear down.” To that end, Denver has begun several levels of support for staff, especially BIPOC staff and those in public-facing roles, who “have different stressors and need different supports.”

Offering classes on things like yoga don’t work, said Aloziem, if staff don’t have time to take them. So DPL is piloting Wellness Hours, which are managed by a wellness and leave coordinator without having to provide private information to a manager, and which include part-timers. Staff can take wellness hours like PTO to engage in wellness practices, including speaking to an on-call mental health consultant who offers bilingual drop-in hours and connects staff to consistent therapy. The staff also has work-provided access to the Shine inclusive daily mental health support app, and DPL gets both to customize content for their needs and receive anonymized data that can help the library decide what supports to offer next, such as that the most accessed meditations are for better sleep.

DPL is also running trauma-informed training for managers, and monthly racial healing circles—one for all staff and one for BIPOC staff specifically. For smaller libraries, Aloziem suggested partnering with neighboring libraries or at the county level to offer such circles.

Aloziem and DPL are currently evaluating and modifying the pilot based on usage trends and experiential data, staff debrief forms, quarterly surveys, focus groups, class evaluations, retention data, and exit interviews. Aloziem hopes to see the wellness plan formally incorporated as a permanent fixture by the end of 2022.