What Makes Staff Stay Through Hard Seasons

By Scott Gagnon

The June Moment

The summer months bring heavy challenges for professionals in behavioral health. June marks the end of a long, uninterrupted service cycle. It includes an intense post-winter surge, end-of-fiscal-year pressures, and the emotional peaks that coincide with the close of the school year. Throughout this stretch, our behavioral health professionals have been navigating continuous exposure to trauma narratives and high empathy demands. And for those in management positions, a significant administrative burden on top of all of it.

With that accumulation of stress and pressure, our behavioral health professionals can enter the summer feeling the physical and emotional toll. Research on burnout has long shown that prolonged exposure to emotionally intensive work without adequate recovery leads to exhaustion and disengagement, particularly in helping professions (National Academy of Medicine). Naturally, this makes June a genuine tipping point. It is the moment when many behavioral health professionals contemplate, and sometimes make, the decision to leave their job or the field altogether. And yet, many continue on with their roles and their agencies despite these pressures. What is it that leaders and organizations do to help their teams weather that summer storm and remain intact?

What Actually Helps People Stay

I had the good fortune to lead a team responsible for behavioral health program administration and training and technical assistance in Maine. Our team experienced this very same pattern of intensity and pressure peaking in the summer months. Even so, our agency enjoyed little to no turnover. What made our people stay? There were multiple factors that helped build a culture of resiliency and retention.

A cornerstone of retention is for staff to feel seen and valued by the leadership of their organization. And we know that has to be more than an office pizza party. What it actually means is that each individual member of the team is recognized not only for what they do, but how they do it. Each team member brings unique skills, talents, and personality to their work. They also bring passion and care to the services they provide. When a professional knows that their leaders see them as a whole person, and that their individuality is indispensable to the agency, they will feel truly seen and valued.

When we truly see and value our staff, we will also recognize when they are experiencing strain and stress. But because we see our staff as individuals, we will see that stress manifest differently across the team. It is important as leaders that we acknowledge this period of stress without minimizing it. We can do this in many ways and at different levels. We can include language in agency-wide communications to let our team know we see them, and offer resources they can access during the turbulent time.

We can and must also individualize this communication. If you have regular one-on-one check-ins with staff, sprinkle in a question that goes beyond checking in on their progress and is genuinely checking in on how they are doing. Maybe you’ve noticed a new pattern in their work habits. Maybe they’ve been eating lunch at their desk for the past week instead of in the breakroom with everyone else. Use that as an opening for a conversation. If you identify points of stress, acknowledge them, and work together on steps to get them through this temporary storm. These small acts build a culture that communicates something powerful to your staff: that their leader sees them as an individual, and genuinely cares about them.

This flows into another key factor in building a culture of retention: hearing the concerns of your staff and acting on them. The culture we want to avoid is one where it feels like concerns disappear into an unattended suggestion box. Fielding concerns without follow-through feels performative. It signals that leadership is simply checking a box. Organizations can develop simple protocols describing how they receive concerns, how to develop and implement action steps to address them, and how to communicate progress to staff before, during, and after the plan is complete.

Action builds confidence, feelings of safety, and the knowledge that leadership is deeply invested in the wellbeing of their staff. A strong workplace culture is one where leadership and staff are going to bat for each other.

In the Field

I’ve seen the power of these elements throughout my career as a director and supervisor. The training nonprofit I led for nearly a decade had an enviable reputation for staff retention, and I’ve thought a lot about why.

One summer, as the intensity was peaking, I sat down individually with each member of my team. My focus was not on deliverables. I was there to ask one simple question: what do you need from me right now? The answers varied. One person needed extra capacity for an upcoming event. Another just needed to know their work was being noticed by someone above me in the organization. One needed permission to step back from a meeting that was draining them.

What struck me was how rarely those needs were large or complicated. We brought in extra support for events, putting a premium on accomplishing our deliverables as a team rather than as isolated individuals. We sought staff input on how we could improve operations, sometimes convening a short-term work group to make recommendations. And we made it a practice to include staff in presentations to our Board of Directors, putting their work in front of the people who most needed to see it.

Together, those practices sent a consistent message: leadership is invested in this team, each person is seen, and this is a place worth staying.

What Leaders Can Do During Closure Moments

There are two straightforward actions leaders can take to build that culture of safety and belonging. The first is developing a consistent strategy to acknowledge the effort and impact of your team. One approach I’ve used is including staff in meetings with the Board of Directors, giving them space to present their own work. It is a powerful way for staff to feel seen by the whole organization, from their immediate supervisor all the way to leadership. Agency-wide emails or features in internal newsletters that highlight accomplishments and call out individual contributions can carry that same weight.

The second is simpler still: thank your team for making it through. These intense periods happen every year. If you take time to authentically express gratitude for what everyone carried, and then go further by acknowledging what each person specifically contributed with their unique skills and dedication, it goes a long way toward building the kind of culture people do not want to leave.

Closing Reflection

June moments are hard. They are also an opportunity to strengthen the bonds that hold a team together when the work is at its most demanding. At the most basic level, what staff need is to know their leader is present and that they genuinely care. That requires intention, but it is within reach for any leader willing to show up.

The good news is you do not have to figure it out alone. Ask your team what they need. Work together to identify what will get everyone through. Hard seasons do not have to fracture teams. How you lead through this one shapes who returns for the next, and what kind of place they are coming back to.

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Scott M. Gagnon is a Senior Facilitator with Presidential Consultants and a nationally recognized trainer and consultant with over two decades of experience in substance misuse prevention, policy, and workforce development. His background spans federal leadership, coalition building, and the design of training programs that support sustainable organizational transformation in prevention and behavioral health.

As a former SAMHSA Regional Director for New England, Scott brings firsthand knowledge of how prevention systems are built, funded, and sustained at scale. He partners with organizations to strengthen workforce capacity and build leadership cultures where people are equipped to do hard work over the long term. He is a sought-after speaker and facilitator on cannabis policy, opioid prevention, and prevention science, and was honored as the 2024 IC&RC National Prevention Specialist of the Year.

Learn more about Scott’s work!