Boundaries in the Workplace

Professional and personal boundaries are key to keeping service users, staff, and organisations, safe, effective and professional. They help us to utilise our skills in the most appropriate way within our professional roles, and to ensure consistency of service and management of the expectation of service users. But what are boundaries, and what can make it difficult to maintain them?

Our workshop explores the various aspects of boundaries in the workplace, using open discussion of our own boundaries, case studies of situations that can arise, and how we can manage the maintenance of boundaries through internal and external policies and personal accountability.

Aims

This workshop is designed to support staff and organisations in voluntary, community, and social enterprises (VCSEs) to consider, plan, and implement personal and professional boundaries in the workplace.

Objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will:

• Understand their personal and professional boundaries
• Be confident in how to manage boundary issues
• Have explored situations that can occur and how they can be managed
• Consider implementing boundaries policies, and how they can support staff and service users

Our workshop includes:

• What boundaries are and why we have them
• What can make it difficult to maintain boundaries
• Case studies that explore situations that can occur and how we might apply effective boundary management
• Developing policies that support effective boundary management in your organisation

Who is it for?

This workshop is for staff and volunteers of organisations that provide supportive services across the UK, especially those in public-facing roles. Participants will not require any prior knowledge of boundaries to participate. There will be a maximum of 15 participants per workshop to allow for meaningful engagement.

Some feedback from our participants:

The training was excellent – the perfect mix of relaxed and informal, accessible and personable with the confidence of experience, skills and knowledge. Our team really responded to the trainer’s style and everyone learnt a lot and thought about things differently as a result. It was also tailored to our specific circumstances and experiences which made it relatable and relevant and helped me translate that into new policies and procedures for our organisation.

Excellent training. Some of the best I’ve been on for a long time.

Really good training, the trainer has such a great understanding of how demanding the job is that it made him very relatable and also easier to speak to/open up to about struggles.

Loved the discussions. I’ve got more understanding on how different team members feel about dealing with different visitors, and how to put boundaries in place.

I wasn’t looking forward to the training, but it was really engaging and I got a lot more from it than I expected. This is important training for anyone working directly with members of the public.

I have more confidence in setting boundaries in a way that still aligns with my personal strengths and values. There were lots of useful tools including reflective practice, guidelines, and better language to express my boundaries.