"Nothing can replace human connection."
A former (NSW) Young Australian of the Year, Sarah Morse draws on 20 years as a nurse and humanitarian to bring a uniquely global and deeply human perspective to the way humans think, work and behave. Specializing in cancer services and palliative care, and having worked with some of the world’s poorest people, Sarah is known for her deep commitment to nursing the human spirit.
Through her personal experience of burnout, Sarah believes that empowering people to thrive in the workplace is pivotal to a healthy workforce.
Most recently, Sarah worked as a Health Advisor in a safe house in Spain for survivors of human trafficking. In her current role as Director of Unchained Solutions, Sarah inspires Australians to be leaders in making an impact on modern slavery. As a professional speaker, Sarah also speaks on Cultivating a Culture of Courage so that people can revive, survive and thrive in a post-COVID workplace. Known as the Courageous People Reviver, Sarah breathes new life into tired teams.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for agreeing to this interview! Our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got started in your career?
Sarah Morse: I am the Founder and Director of social enterprise Unchained Solutions. My career path to being a company director has been a wonderful adventure. I am a Registered Nurse, and for the past twenty years, I have been alternating between working as a nurse in Australia, and humanitarian work overseas. My husband Stephen and I spent 5 years living in Spain, working in the area of Human Trafficking Intervention. While Stephen researched and wrote his doctorate on human trafficking, I worked as a health advisor in a safe house for survivors of human trafficking. When we returned to Australia, we wanted to put our research and experience to good use, and so we created Unchained Solutions. This was in 2018 when the Modern Slavery Act was just being introduced to Australia. We saw the need for Australian companies to engage with the Modern Slavery Act, and also hear from people with lived experience.
For two years, it was just the two of us. Then in 2020, right as the pandemic hit, we were fortunate to have an extraordinary team join us. This team was from all over Australia. From cairns to Melbourne and everywhere in between. We had no option but to launch a virtual team.
We now have a team of 10 with one team member in Brazil. Another one is a Malaysian PhD student who we’ve been working with remotely for a year until she moved with her family to Sydney. I helped them find somewhere to live and through the kindness of strangers, even furnished their apartment before they arrived. People kept asking me “why are you doing this for someone you have never met?” But to me, she is a valued part of our team, and helping her family get established in Sydney was something which was natural to me.
Can you share a quote that is important to you and how it has been relevant in your life?
Sarah Morse: A quote that has stuck with me since I was a teenager is “No one person can change the world, but you can change the world for one person.” I have carried this with me throughout my career, always remembering to keep the individual person in front of me. Whether that’s in nursing, humanitarian work, or now helping companies address modern slavery, and leading our team of highly skilled professionals, I always seek to remember they are individual people.
Since you began your career, what has been the most interesting thing that has happened to you?
Sarah Morse: Since I trained as a nurse, I never imagined that I would be making a global impact through a start up in Sydney. I imagined I would one day run an orphanage, or be the director of a remote hospital, but never dreamed that I would be a social impact entrepreneur, so that is an interesting surprise.
Of course, there have been a plethora of interesting things that have happened along the way – assisting in a Caesarean section in the middle of a blackout in India, nearly getting trafficked at the Romanian boarder, working in a Romanian orphanage, visiting people living on a rubbish dump in Ecuador, working with survivors of human trafficking, just to name a few.
We all need some help along the way to success. It’s important not only to be grateful for that which you have achieved but also to acknowledge those who made it possible and contributed their own part in this journey of life! Is there someone who helped YOU succeed?
Sarah Morse: I am incredibly grateful for the upbringing I received by kind and loving parents who helped me believe that I could do or be anything I wanted. The youngest of three girls, I never considered gender an issue or a limitation, until I began to meet girls around the world for whom an education was a privilege and who could never dream of the things I took for granted.
From an early age, my parents and family backed my dreams and crazy plans, and supported me along the way. I’m also incredibly grateful to my husband Stephen who has inspired me for the past fifteen years. We have an incredible synergy, and believe in each other to achieve the impossible.
Remote work has been on the rise for years now and it’s becoming more common than ever. With so many teams choosing to operate this way, we thought our readers might want some insight into what advantages there are in physically working alongside your colleagues every day – especially if you’re new or haven’t experienced them yet?
Sarah Morse: Nothing can replace human connection. As humans, we are wired for connection. I am an extrovert, and love being around people, but even introverts need people. Being together in the same space allows for trust to be built, and a deeper connection to take place. We start to learn more about each person, and to understand how they think, work and behave. Then there are the incidental conversations in the staff kitchen or over lunch where we learn more about each other – what our kids are up to, what people are struggling with, what they are looking forward to on the weekend.
These things all weave together into the fabric of who we are as human beings, and take us from being just a face on a zoom screen to a complex human with a range of experiences and emotions. Being in the same space also allows for mentoring and training to take place – both informal and formal. For example, a young intern overhears her boss talking on the phone to a client, and learns what positive communication sounds like, and is able to assimilate that into her own practice.
What challenges come up when team members aren’t in the same room?
Sarah Morse: When team members aren’t in the same room, there is a risk that we are reduced to faces on a zoom screen – only being communicated with when there is a task or need which needs to be discussed. The beautiful rich complexity and diversity which makes us wonderfully complicated humans is reduced to a two dimensional screen.
There is a risk that trust will be broken as we are not as easily able to read emotions and body language through the screen, and therefore it is easier to offend or get offended, and for trust to be broken. There is also a challenge for younger staff members who are working from home, and have little interaction during the day, and less guidance on the role they are still learning. It is possible for team members to be lonely while working from home and they miss the camaraderie an office environment offers. Maintaining positive communication is a challenge faced by most teams, and communication breakdowns are a risk.
A challenge is also maintaining team culture. When all the employees are in the office, it’s easy to see who is getting on with whom, and how people are responding to each other. It is much more difficult to establish this remotely.
Let’s talk about how to overcome each of the challenges you’ve faced. What are five key things that will help communicate with your team, even if it is not in person?
Sarah Morse: We have built our dynamic team remotely and we don’t know anything different. My top 5 tips for having a remote team are:
- Being proactive about building team culture
- Commitment to regular team meetings as well as project teams via zoom.
- Spending 5-10 mins at the beginning of every short meeting asking about the person and how they’re going. At our longer team meetings, we dedicate half an hour to personal sharing.
- Celebrating special events – we had the best virtual baby shower ever, including individual baby shower kits posted to each team member.
- Being kind, authentic, and empathetic to each other.
Have you ever had problems communicating with your coworkers because they work from home? And is it easier for them to transition into an internet-only workplace since that’s what most companies do nowadays?
Sarah Morse: Because of the positive culture we have established, and the trust we have built with our team, we have rarely had problems communicating. If we sense a team member may be stressed, worried or offended, we put in a personal call to touch base. Our team also know they are able to call us any time they need to.
We have set up mentoring relationships with younger team members and interns so that everyone has someone on the team they can talk to. Senior team members report directly to my husband, and they know that is a safe space to discuss issues concerning them. Although it works for us, transitioning to an online only workplace should only be considered by companies who are willing to make a proactive organisational investment in their team culture, whether online or in person.
What do you think is the most important thing a business can offer its customers in this day and age? As technology evolves, so too does how we communicate with our clients. Have you noticed any changes in the way you communicate with your clients?
Sarah Morse: Using various platforms to manage data and projects is helpful for both teams and clients. Having all the information stored in a central place where team members can access and edit is essential in maintaining good systems and workflow. The biggest change in communicating with our clients, is that it is nearly always on zoom. Prior to the pandemic, we would catch a bus to the city each day, and meet clients face to face, usually over a meal or a coffee. Now, meeting over zoom saves time, and is an accepted way of connecting with clients so that their needs are met, but is also convenient for them. The few times we have booked in-person meetings, inevitably, the client usually cancels or reverts to a zoom meeting anyway.
Imagine if you could design a tool to help your business run more smoothly and communicate better with customers or prospects. What would it be like?
Sarah Morse: There are already plenty of tools out there which do this. I don’t think we need any more!
As humans, we naturally crave belonging and the feeling of being part a group. This is especially true when it comes to our relationships with each other as well as those who lead us: parents, teachers etc… What can you do on your own time that will help foster this sense or team cohesion?
Sarah Morse: At Unchained Solutions, we have a commitment to celebrating special occasions such as birthdays, baby showers and Christmas. We have had some brilliant online parties. The most spectacular one was the virtual baby shower we ran for our wonderful Social Impact Consultant. The week prior to the event, we sent out individual baby shower packs to each team member.
These included games, balloons, snacks and lollies so that each person could participate from their own desk, wherever they were. On the day of the baby shower those of us who were in Sydney set up the room with streamers and balloons and created an excellent party atmosphere. We then played cheesy baby shower games together via Zoom, did quizzes and laughed ourselves silly. The whole team pitched in for a beautiful baby hamper which we had delivered to her house and the mummy-to-be unwrapped it in front of us so we could see what was in it. For one new team member, this was her first team meeting, and she commented that she had never seen anything like the team which was in front of her on the screen.
If you could start a movement that would help a lot of people, what would that be?
Sarah Morse: We are already doing it! Unchained Solutions inspires Australian companies to make and impact on modern slavery. Through helping companies address modern slavery, we are impacting the lives of people at the other end of the supply chain. A portion of our profits also goes to providing jobs and training for survivors of modern slavery around the world. As a professional speaker, I am impacting a lot of people through my “Cultivating a Culture of COURAGE” talk which helps bring new life to tired teams. It’s like CPR for the workforce.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Sarah Morse for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Sarah Morse or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
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