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Author: Jim Hajny

Supporting the Supporter

Keeping your CBHPSS supported in their recovery is vital for retaining your employee long term. By the very definition, “Behavioral health peer support” means the use of a peer support specialist’s personal experience with a behavioral health disorder to provide support, mentoring, guidance, and advocacy and to offer hope to individuals with behavioral health disorders.” Your employee is a person who is in recovery. This means they are actively working on themselves, which may include peer support groups, medication, counseling, meditation, a regiment of diet and exercise, journaling and the list goes on and on. As their employer you may be thinking, “Where do I fit in?”

Hiring Peer Support Staff

Candidates often put on their best self, can embellish their credentials, and say what we want to hear. This provides us with false knowledge about a candidate and ultimately a decision which will cost the organization time, energy and dollars. Hiring the wrong person can lead to hours of retraining, coaching, and documenting an employee who will eventually be let go only to restart the process again. Then there is the shrinking workforce nationally. There simply are not as many people to fill healthcare related jobs. Getting it right the first time is important for any organization.