What Is a Bystander?
An active bystander is a person who witnesses an opportunity to intervene and steps in to take positive action. Although many would argue that intervening is easy, decades of social psychology research tells us there are very real human inhibitors to intervening. Our program builds upon the social psychology and brain science of bystandership to teach explicit skills and tactics to:
Recognize when an intervention may be needed
Provide specific strategies for how to best intervene
Increase willingness to accept an intervention
What Is The Heroes Program?
Heroes is a culture shift program that includes excellent training. Becoming a Heroes agency is a commitment. It is the best way to equip your personnel with the knowledge and practical skills to fulfill their legal and ethical duty to intervene. It is an expression of integrity, courage, and loyalty, and works to create a healthy agency culture.
Heroes is an accelerator for cultural change. We act like a tailwind that moves the existing agency beyond a duty to intervene and to a culture of active bystandership. This goes beyond reducing misconduct with a duty to intervene; rather, it elevates the waters for all to prevent harm, including mistakes and employee health. We are greater than the sum of our parts. For example: you could have a cadre of individually trained officers (trained in duty to intervene) and still miss the mark of reducing harm. Heroes leverages shared accountability in organizations, teams, and agencies for real, sustainable change. We know that skills alone do not change behavior; Heroes uses the existing strengths of the organization to facilitate awareness, shared accountability, and positive cultural change. We attend to the heart-set and mindset needed to put skills into action.
Become A Hero
How Do We Become a Heroes Organization?
Heroes organizations are authentic in their commitment to a healthy organizational culture that expects, accepts, and supports intervention. Organizations express this commitment in 8 ways (click on the items below for more information):
Meaningful Staff and Officer Wellness Program
Part of the Heroes program is to connect your employees to the important role health and wellness plays within a culture of active bystandership. Organizations must offer meaningful health and wellness resources to their staff, and our goal is to make it more likely that your people will use the resources available to them.
Dedicated Coordination of Heroes Implementation
To be most effective, Heroes requires a dedicated coordinator to ensure the program is implemented well and to maintain visibility on the practice of bystandership throughout the organization.
Meaningful Training
Heroes provides the meaningful training. Your instructors will complete a robust train-the-trainer program to become a certified Heroes trainer ready to effectively deliver the content as designed with the best possible learning outcomes across all classes taught. If you are a smaller organization, we can do the training for you.
Measuring Efficacy
Heroes provides a pre- and post-implementation survey to measure perceptions, which is an early indicator of change. We’re happy to customize the survey based on specific needs of your organization.
Program Awareness Throughout The Organization
When you become a Heroes organization, the first thing you receive is a communications kit to help ensure you have consistent and accurate information throughout the organization prior to the training.
Accountability
Accountability shows up in many ways – – from leadership expressing their support for active bystandership and attending training, to the organization creating a culture that expects and accepts acts of active bystandership. The Heroes program is designed to help you put these accountability measures into practice.
Policies That Protect Those Who Intervene
A culture that supports the practice of active bystandership must formally protect those who intervene. Heroes provides model policies in the online sustainability kit that every Heroes organization receives.
Follow Through
As with any skill, if active bystandership is not practiced, it’s less likely to be used when it’s needed. The Heroes training contains multiple practice opportunities, but we recommend that Heroes organizations incorporate active bystandership into other training classes, as appropriate, to continue to hone the skill. In addition, Heroes organizations receive an annual, two-hour refresher module to deliver as in-service training.
Our Heroes
Implementation Process
To change an organizational culture, you need knowledge, skills and an environment that expects and supports intervention. We approach this holistically through three phases: organizational readiness, quality implementation & sustainability.
To get off to a strong start, the engagement and commitment of all levels of leadership are required prior to training the skills of active bystandership. Without the support of leadership, receptiveness to the training can be variable and employees may lack confidence that their new behaviors will be supported or accepted.
The Heroes program helps you prepare your organization for maximum impact of training. We provide a comprehensive, customizable communication kit to help you ensure your leadership, the organization, and key stakeholders are aware, engaged and committed at the outset of the Heroes implementation.
Heroes 8-hour active bystandership training is at the heart of the Heroes program. This is where your organization will develop the actionable skills of active bystandership specific to your industry and occupational culture needs.
About the Training:
The training program engages the participants with a highly interactive approach. By participating in discussions, reflections, video analysis, and role-plays, participants not only build the concrete skills needed to be effective interveners, they also understand the social science behind bystandership, which helps them to recognize the need for intervention, and how the practice of intervention directly impacts the health and wellness of everyone.
Quality implementation requires:
Dedicated program coordinator—
Selecting instructors-Selecting your instructors is one of the most important ways you can ensure the program’s success, and the best instructors for Heroes may not have training experience. We will provide you with instructor criteria and work with you to select the best people in your organization to deliver this training.
Train-the-Trainer Process-Our robust train-the-trainer program is a 3-day in-person or virtual training that includes experiencing the Heroes class as a student, learning how to deliver the training, and participating in small group teachbacks with guidance and feedback from a National Heroes Instructor.
Quality Delivery and Fidelity to the Program—
Our process includes periodic observations of your Heroes instructors. This can happen virtually or in-person, and the purpose is to provide ongoing feedback to continue the instructor development process and to ensure the program is being delivered as designed.
Heroes is more than training. While training is at the heart of the program, the work of culture change begins from the moment leadership commits to active bystandership with Heroes. It also extends well beyond the training itself. We provide all Heroes organizations with access to an online sustainability kit, which includes model policies, visuals, ongoing internal and external communications, and leadership support resources.
Heroes also supports sustained culture shifts with virtual learning opportunities, virtual or in-person coaching sessions, peer learning sessions with like-organizations, and an annual two-hour refresher course.
Ready for a change?
