Trainings and consultancy
Metis and PWELT have created and proven a unique approach to organisational resilience in a crisis, blending battlefield military experience with rigorous academic psychological insights in stress management. We offer specialist crisis management skills to maintain operational effectiveness in high-stress environments, including retention of skilled staff. You need your wider teams to take positive actions to manage stress, strengthen endurance and prevent burnout. We provide training and support to enable you to deliver high performance without compromising the welfare of your people. This strengthens engagement, improves staff retention, and raises organisational performance. It also delivers wider security benefits in reducing the risks of errors and mitigating insider threat risks.
Metis Services has extensive experience assessing, training and tailoring organisations’ risk management structure and processes. PWELT stems from Swedish military operations with expertise and practical experience of active stress management and mental health while serving in multinational missions. PWELT is also the name of a tool to monitor the psychosocial work environment in an organization and provide a dashboard for informed decision-making as regards how strained the staff is and a units’ ability to comply and function.
During the corona pandemic, Metis Services and PWELT have provided continuous support to among others, the management at Södertälje Hospital's intensive care unit. In the toolbox for both management and staff, we have included stress awareness, methods and tools for stress-reducing leadership, models for endurance, recovery plans, assessment of "combat value" and follow-up of the staff's mental health.
Various sectors and businesses are exposed to risks associated with management and staff succumbing to acute stress and long-term cumulative stress. It may be due to either internal factors such as toxic and corruptive environments and relations or exposure to hatred, threats or violence from external actors. In many businesses, it is not possible to opt out of a task because it is associated with risks. Some tasks need to be performed despite, or perhaps precisely because, they are risky. In these situations, it is more important than ever that management and staff are given the tools and best possible conditions to perform. We have made it our mission to provide those.
Niclas Wisén
Leg. Psychologist and officer in the Armed Forces
Niclas is a doctoral student at Karolinska Institutet where he researches stress under extreme stress with a focus on performance and endurance.
Niclas has developed models for assessing the risk of mental illness, leadership tools for mental combat value and was part of the team creating the Swedish Armed Forces' follow-up system for veterans. He has also served as psychologist at military operations abroad with a focus on psychosocial work environment and organizational psychological support.
Magdalena R. Lind
Founder Metis Services, M.Litt. International Security Studies
Magdalena is a political scientist with a background from both the world of humanitarian aid and Swedish Armed Forces' international operations. She has many years of experience auditing and developing emergency management, protective security measures and security culture in vital sector including the media. She has experience of being head of security as well as head of protective security, with a special interest in information security and freedom of expression.
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Johan Robertsson L
Founder Metis Services, former police officer, Swedish Secrutity Services and Armed Forces.
Johan is a senior field safety advisor, with broad experience from both civil and military operations, conflict and post-conflict situations. In a secondment from the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) to the UNDP, he led the deployment of the Joint Crisis Coordination Center at the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq. One of Johan's special skills is decision-making processes in crisis and under stress. Johan is also trained in police crisis and hostage negotiation. He has served in a number of military and humanitarian operations in the Middle East and East Africa.
In the spring of 2020, Metis Services worked with journalists and aid workers to prepare them for and increase their ability to perform under severe stress such as disasters, conflict environments or threats, hatred and violence. Metis Services had also just published a handbook in field safety and worked as an advisor with training and reviews of organizations' safety cultures and preparedness. During the same time, military psychologist Niclas Wisén worked on his dissertation on stress in extreme situations and on developing a screening tool for measuring psychosocial health.
Independent of each other, we were equipped with separate sets of tools to prevent and provide support in a crisis. When the anesthesia clinic at Södertälje Hospital contacted Metis Services, we decided to combine the tools into a complex method.
Given the extreme pressure of Covid-19 on the health care systems, more crisis management would not give more hands and more of the same type of staff care that was available on a daily basis would not change the level of stress. It was not enough to just get better at leading and organizing for a crisis. It was also not enough to just screen, warn or take care of tired staff afterwards.
Instead, we set about the task to create sustainable leadership and a sustainable organization with tools that rest on a scientific basis and well-proven experience from both the field. We combined well-chosen and to some extent overlapping tactical tools for crisis management, stress-reducing leadership and active recovery; management support and staff support in collaboration. What is special is that we focused the efforts to hands-on strengthen the operational management as it was and 'on the floor'. There was no time to carry out a traditional training effort. The train had already left the platform, it was necessary to oil it while it was running at full speed.
The concept has been successfully used by the intensive care clinic at Södertälje Hospital during the corona pandemic in 2020 and in 2021 to maintain combat value and work with strategic recovery. How it was implemented there is described in several articles.
Crisis Response Journal
CRJ 17:1 Wellbeing: Successful interventions
CRJ 16:4 Staff endurance: A strategic resource
https://www.crisis-response.com/Articles/625154/Magdalena_Lind.aspx
Dagens Medicin -
https://www.dagensmedicin.se/arbetsliv/ledarskap/pandemin-har-forandrat-ledarskapet-i-sodertalje/
https://www.dagensmedicin.se/arbetsliv/ledarskap/rad-till-sjukvardens-ledare-under-pandemin/
Sunt Arbetsliv -
https://www.suntarbetsliv.se/forskning/sam/tva-satt-att-stotta-covidpersonal/
https://www.suntarbetsliv.se/artiklar/sam/de-screenar-personalen-med-forsvarets-metod/
Arbetsvärlden -
https://www.arbetsvarlden.se/sodertaljes-covid19-intensiv-anvander-militar-taktik/
https://www.arbetsvarlden.se/psykolog-varnar-for-att-driva-vardpersonalen-for-hart/
Sjukhusläkaren -
https://www.sjukhuslakaren.se/aterhamtningsfasen-maste-adresseras-fran-alla-nivaer/
SvT -
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/sodertalje/forsvarsmaktens-metoder-anvands-pa-covid-iva
Läkartidningen -
https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2021/07/svensk-sjukvard-inte-riggad-for-pandemier/
Folk och Försvar -
https://folkochforsvar.se/content/bibehall-stridsvardet-hos-vardpersonalen-i-kris/
This debate article addresses the challenges and lessons learned from the pandemic, and the views below are the authors' own. Also read the replies by
Stockholmsregionens finansregionråd Irene Svenonius (M) and Vänsterpartiet i Region Stockholm.
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