Gather At The Well: How to Create Human-Centered Systems + Policies - Lindsey Fuller and Marisol Pineda Conde

Policies aren’t just paperwork—they’re culture in action. 

In this episode of Gather at the Well, Lindsey Fuller and Marisol Pineda Conde invite us to rethink how policies are created—and more importantly, who they’re really for.

Together, they pull back the curtain on their own journey from outdated handbooks to building intentional, people-first policies rooted in trust, care, and collaboration. With warmth, wisdom, and a whole lot of heart, they break down a five-step process that transforms policy-making from a check-the-box task into a powerful tool for psychological safety and team well-being.

You’ll hear stories, real talk, and tangible steps to design policies that reflect your values, center lived experience, and actually support the humans behind the work. Whether you're growing a startup, leading a nonprofit, or shaping culture in your school, this convo will leave you equipped—and inspired—to build better, together.

You’ll walk away with:

• A five-step process for policy creation
• How to balance organizational needs with human needs
• Actionable strategies for policy implementation 

Episode Highlights: 

• Defining Human-Centered Policies (02:18)
• The Importance of Policies in Organizations (03:44)
• Identifying Policy Gaps and Needs (06:08)
• Feedback Mechanisms for Policy Development (10:06)
• Challenges in Implementing Policies (13:45)
• Opportunities for Policy Improvement (16:19)
• Accountability and Leadership in Policy (19:31)
• Roadmap to Human-Centered Policy Creation (25:51)

✨ Affirmations:

• I am an attuned listener and a responsive leader.
• When we know better, we do better.
• Even if I feel overwhelmed to tackle policy creation, I can take the first step by noticing what's needed and asking for help.
• I'm not alone. I don't have to do this on my own.
• I honor that feeling. I know it will pass.
• I honor my overwhelm. This moment can pass.
• I honor my self-doubt. This feeling will pass.

👉 Explore the Full Episode Shownotes 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Human-Centered Policies
• 4:30 Signs Your Policies Need Work
• 11:03 Soliciting Feedback and Starting Points
• 18:45 The Five-Step Policy Creation Process
• 29:11 Operational Considerations and Implementation
• 33:42 Critical Hope and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

I'm Lindsay, and it's time to gather at the well. We're on a mission to microdose wellness, create human-centered systems and retain our greatest asset our people. We believe it's time for podcasts that teach, moving beyond thought leadership and towards change leadership. Join us and our friends at we Are For good as we model the way with concrete examples from the field and gain tangible tools, because it's possible to build adult work cultures. We don't need to heal from. Let's get into it. You made it Episode four of Gather at the Well. So grateful that you're here and, as I mentioned in our last episode, we love to sprinkle in some guests. I can never get enough of Marisol. I definitely have a positive bias, but I wanted to bring her back in truth, because this session is one we have been scheming up for a long time. We are going to be dialing into the power of human-centered policies. We're going to lift the bale. We're going to get specific. We're going to give you examples. So lock in. We're here for the ride.

Speaker 1: 1:13

Policies likely aren't the thing that you regard as sexy, fun or joyful. You may think of them as a chore or you might not think of them at all, especially if you're a startup or a turnaround organization. That's all right. Everyone has to start somewhere, and that's what we're going to do today. Just in case you are in the latter group and you're already feeling some somatic resistance, a tight chest, you're starting to sweat, you're rolling your eyes or you're reaching to turn off this episode and avoid, maybe stay with us. An invitation to just take a moment to stretch, get back into your body. You might reach up to the sky, out to the sides, and then finally push down on your thighs. You're here with us. Stay in your body. Marisol, you're back in the building. Yes, excited to be back today. I wonder if you wouldn't mind just even lifting our definition of human-centered as it pertains to policies.

Speaker 2: 2:28

Yes, when we think about human-centered, it's almost exactly what the words say. It's really thinking about the humans first, and though that may seem so simple, it often runs contrary to how we approach policy creation. We often think about the legal risk or we think about the financial impact, and so what this is inviting us to do is really to be mindful to reflect on the impact that this may have on the humans first, and then layering on all those other lenses, the pragmatic, the job duties, the impact, the ripple. And it's not that we don't do both, it's just the order in which we do them.

Speaker 1: 3:09

Yeah, and I think of policies and I said this in our first episode of this season as kind of the skeletal system of the organizational body. It holds us down, it keeps us standing strong, it wraps around and protects our vital organs, which, again in this metaphor, are our teammates and in your day-to-day operations. Policies don't always feel visible, but they're at play, and so certainly if you don't have policies in your organization, you're experiencing gaps. It may look like ooh, play with me here, Marisol. What might it look like when you are in a policy void organization? It might look like redundant, recurring questions to supervisors, to organizational leadership, especially at inopportune times or when you're trying to center other work because folks aren't clear on what's expected or how they access a particular benefit. What else might it look like?

Speaker 2: 4:13

I think it also looks like absence of safety net. In moments of crisis and in particular, I'm thinking about, you know, in pandemic moments, there were certain safety nets that were necessary and that were experienced collectively as well as individually.

Speaker 1: 4:32

Yeah, I think about our wellness cabinets that we're running with districts across the country to really interrogate well-being programs, benefits and policies that will lessen attrition and encourage retention for educators, and one of the things that we're finding is a gross underutilization of benefits.

Speaker 1: 4:55

Many organizations and school districts nonprofits have the EAP system, and so if you are observing teammates regularly having mental health challenges, emotional outbursts or sobbing in meetings, experiencing challenging life seasons where they are in grief, they're experiencing loss, they have an ill partner, they're going through financial or legal challenges, we want them accessing the benefits we've already invested in as an organization, and that would be another yellow flag or red flag indicating that your policies, whether they exist or not, have not been clearly communicated or internalized by your staff.

Speaker 1: 5:41

So I wonder when you think about some of the policy systems, because the tea that we have here about our arrival at the teaching well is that there was not a robust set of policies and they certainly weren't human centered, they were stock, and that's because, as new leaders coming in, we had to force rank our priorities and while policies were definitely at the top of the list, we also were onboarding teammates, building job descriptions, codifying services and pricing, overhauling financial systems, getting to know our board right. Marisol and I came in a couple months apart and there were so many things to tackle. So if you in any way are experiencing overwhelm in this moment, it's okay to go at the pace that you are, but policies are a place that often are deprioritized. So for us, we needed a stopgap, we needed a bandaid, we purchased a stock set of policies and that didn't even really live. So what, do you recollect, happened?

Speaker 2: 6:46

Yeah, I remember coming in and we had a handbook and I was coming in from another organization where handbook was where you went to find information on all things and what I discovered was that, in practice, we had a Google Doc that had the policies that folks most often had questions about. That listed certain things like PTO, listed things like what FTE do you qualify for health coverage those things that folks cared about most. But nobody was actually looking at our handbook and actually our handbook policies did not match this document, and so we had a gap in both practice and policy.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Big eye emoji. If you know anything about Marisol and I, we hate everything about this. We literally hate it, but we're telling you all, because we don't ever want to position ourselves as holier than thou we have arrived, we've made it and we're perfect. That is so far from the truth and that sucks. I don't have a more eloquent way of saying it.

Speaker 1: 7:55

When your written policies don't even match across documents, then you know your verbal presentation and your implementation behind closed doors in one-to-one meetings is going to be scattered and that's where inequities arise and it's where preventable burnouts or attrition or complaints, even HR matters, could be interrupted, could be caught before it turns into something much bigger, right?

Speaker 1: 8:25

So I think it's really important to name kind of our history as an org with that, and I'd say that we have a big dreaming team. We call it dropping into a channel, teaching Well team, shout out, you know what's up, but we are happy to vision and manifest into really expansive ways of being living, working et cetera. So our team could tell you the many millions of dollars we should be spending on benefits and programs and policies and we love that. For us we're not there yet, but I just want to name that. A common pitfall is also that there aren't clear mechanisms for your staff to provide feedback on what's most needed. Right, and so how do you even begin to create human-centered policies or to shift your current policies that feel robotic and disconnected towards more human first lens? I wonder, if you think about that soul, what comes up?

Speaker 2: 9:32

Yeah, when I think about sort of where we were in that context and start to think about, like, what were some of those first steps, I do think that what was true of that system is that we knew what folks really wanted to know more about, and that came in the form of, like, often getting questions on things enough to put it in a separate document, and so to me, that was a source of feedback for us to understand where to begin.

Speaker 2: 10:04

These were the policies that folks most needed in that moment, and so we started in that place. What were the policies that were most needed? And I think often when we think about policies, many times we think about the bare minimums, like what are those safety, those guarantees? We think about the bare minimums like what are those safety, those guarantees? And one thing that was true is that even in that space, there was just a little opportunity to dream into what are those policies, that in an ideal world, when the millions come, when we have money, what might it look like to start shifting towards some of those policies? And so we were doing this toggle between what's the bare minimum, but also creating space with intention to think about what could be in the future, and so that may be a place to start.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Yeah, we had a launching place right. There was already an existing document that let us know what was top of mind for our teammates document that let us know what was top of mind for our teammates. But you may also think about using a structure like a two by two inside of supervision, where you're getting feedback as the supervisor and also asking for feedback on the org while giving feedback to your teammate. You might think of sustainable short surveys annually or each semester, asking about whether and to what extent folks are utilizing current benefits, which ones are most important to them, what feels like a gap in supports for them to truly thrive in the organization. There are a ton of different ways you can solicit that input. You could even do a close read for the teachers out there or for the school leaders. Do a little literacy exercise with your teachers. Have them do a close read of the teachers out there. Or for the school leaders do a little literacy exercise with your teachers. Have them do a close read of the handbook and kind of code, maybe even green, yellow, red, which is basic, but that's my business where you ask them to say, like what's showing up in our everyday work experience, which are ones that seem inconsistent or invisible or problematic, and which ones do we not see at all? Or do we want to stop? Aren't serving us right? So there's got to be some way for folks to lean towards.

Speaker 1: 12:13

So I am thinking back to a recent experience Marisol and I had, where we were in the room with leadership teams from about 40 nonprofits so the number one seat and the number two seat, if that existed. Some orgs only had one employee, so they maybe brought a board member or a fiscal sponsor, but there were these small teams in a giant room and all of us were thinking about a human centered policy. What happened somatically during that experience, though? Marisol and I were in two different rooms. We had a breakout session, so all the EDs and CEOs went in one room, all the deputy directors went into another. We were evidently having the same somatic experience in those two rooms. So do you remember a little bit of what you were experiencing?

Speaker 2: 13:04

Yes, experience in those two rooms. So do you remember a little bit of what you were experiencing? Yes, it was this moment of disbelief and also just like empathy for some of the folks that were in the space who shared about some of the challenges that they were anticipating as we implemented or planned for implementation of policy, and those challenges really varied from really complex entanglements, I would say, of finances or practices, all the way to just like an absence of systems and protocols that I think really contribute to a sense of safety and stability in an org that were evident in that space.

Speaker 1: 13:55

I think you said it beautifully both a place of compassion and also a place of I'm sweating and clutching my pearls. That makes me so incredibly anxious and concerned, and if you're in that, we see you, you can climb out of it. It's going to take some strategic planning, consistent, diligent work and discipline to come back to your policies, and a lot of feedback and teamwork and collaboration.

Speaker 2: 14:22

So when thinking about what we heard from folks. There were certainly opportunities for folks to tighten, for folks to codify or folks to design, and these policies really fell into three buckets. The first that comes to mind is the idea of like risk mitigation, whether that's employment law or whether that's other policies that might be supportive. There we were talking about the overlap when folks are doing the same thing and what that does, the impact that that can have across the team, whether it's confusion or just not effectively leveraging our resources of time and energy, and so this idea of segregation of duties also as a risk mitigation strategy, of like who's doing what and how. Do we make sure we have checks and balances in our org to ensure that we are creating conditions for folks to be able to operate safely?

Speaker 1: 15:30

And then at last yeah, sorry, I just want to add that in a school or in a nonprofit would be you receive the mail, there are checks in the mail. You sign those checks, you deposit the checks, you fill out the form that says you put the check where it was supposed to go right. There should be multiple different people holding elements of anything that's linked to risk. Can you speak to one more, marisol, that we saw?

Speaker 2: 16:02

Yeah, I think the last piece is almost that reflective element and sometimes it can come through a really formal process. I know within the org we started doing audits a couple of years in just because of where we were financially. The numbers required a third set of eyes that was external to the org. So that's a more formal process. But in the absence of that, there were also audits that we would run internally. So this idea that just because we've made it to the end of the fiscal year doesn't mean we're done, but that we have an opportunity to look back and say how did we do on this practice or this policy, or how do we do in relation to these goals that we set or the execution of certain policies, and so that was another place where there was opportunity for further codification, creation or design of policy.

Speaker 1: 16:58

Yeah, and I want to double click here because if you are having any somatic resistance, it may be to the unspoken truth that we're kind of dancing around, that we can say directly which is policies do hold you accountable as a leader. They should hold you accountable. They do hold you accountable. You can get caught up, period, and we believe that strong leaders provide and are willing to receive the mirror of high support and high accountability, that integrity and ethics and morals matter. They show up in your everyday speech, behavior and decisions, and so that can come up for folks Like oof everything y'all are talking about.

Speaker 1: 17:42

You're airing these other orgs. T it was in our org too. We have cleared it on out. We get big audits every year where all of our uh laundry is aired None of it dirty, fortunately, and that's only because I not on my watch. Not on my watch. Okay, look, you know it's a whole hot mess, but it can get better. You know it's a whole hot mess, but it can get better. Let's pause for a moment as we dabbled in that discussion of accountability and of storytelling. It may have brought up some feelings and we want to be with those feelings. We want to embrace them.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Hashtag adult SEL. Also, my team hates that I say hashtag, but that's my business, so I might invite you towards three breaths here.

Speaker 1: 18:45

to just take a moment for grounding, in through the nose, out through the mouth, two more like that. And as you resume a steady cadence for your breath, I want you to begin noticing where the first parts of our conversation may have activated some emotions or feelings you might have felt Overwhelm, doubt, insecurity, frustration with the policies inside of your organization Sourcing into the body. Is it ruminating in your mind? Are you experiencing a tight chest? Are your hands fidgeting or does it feel like your belly dropped? It might even feel like wobbly legs. Seeing if you can pinpoint a location in your body where that feeling is residing and when, and if you're able to isolate a space, you might take three fingers on your dominant hand and begin to tap in that location. You might say to yourself I honor that feeling.

Speaker 1: 20:22

I know it will pass. I honor my overwhelm. This moment can pass. I honor my self-doubt. This feeling will pass, taking in a deep breath, noisy out breath. We've got this, stay in it.

Speaker 1: 21:04

So we wanted to share a little bit a roadmap, if you will, to human-centered policy creation. Is this the only way to do it? No, if you Google it will, you find it Maybe in our blog. See what I did there. So we have a five-step process that Marisol and I co-created by accident, on purpose, I guess and so we'll kind of tag team sharing.

Speaker 1: 21:28

First step is we're actually trying to vision towards a policy. It could be an aspirational or liberatory pursuit. For example, we and the team wanted to have sabbaticals available to all teammates. We also, when we arrived at the teaching, well, there was no 401k policy. That felt basic, but also financially liberating for our staff. That felt basic, but also financially liberating for our staff. Sometimes, though, it's not just a big goal or a powerful, inspiring vision. It's a real-time pain point or direct request for support For us. That looked like for new parents or parents who had a new child finding some sustainability in their first year during that huge transition, or due to several losses in family systems of our staff. In our first year together we realized we wanted to add some kinship preferences to our bereavement policy, to include bereavement leave for godparents, for cousins, for aunts and uncles, right Just to honor the global majority family systems that we have on our team. So that's step one. Figure it out. What do you need? Pinpoint one area, marisol. What's next?

Speaker 2: 22:48

Yeah, and I'll layer that. Often that involves conversation, right, this is not happening in a silo, lindsay and I sitting in a room and being like what's needed, right? It really involves conversation with team gathers, their insight, and then we draft. We draft to the best of our ability what would the dream be, who would qualify, what would it look like, how might we implement it?

Speaker 2: 23:12

And as we're drafting, we're also holding a lens to operations, because sometimes we might draft something that is not sustainable for other teammates. And so, keeping that in mind as we're drafting not as a limiting factor but a consideration that we're layering on, we start with that place where we draft this policy. From there I think there's an immediate next step, because I often draft these beautiful things that I think are excellent, and then we run it by other folks, we vet it and they're like no see, no, it doesn't work this way. Or hey, actually this is not standard practice. And often what we're trying to do in our org is not standard practice, and we know it, and that's why we want to do in our org is not standard practice, and we know it, and that's why we want to do it. Okay, that's actually precisely why.

Speaker 1: 24:01

Because we're building organizations we don't have to heal from. So I love that you named that. You might have it vetted by other directors. You might have it vetted by your board. You might have it vetted, if you're a school leader or a district leader, by other district staff personnel or other principals. Right, like, get some folks eyes on this. But always, always, always.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Your key player here that you can never overlook is that an employment attorney should be taking a look at this. And that's where we get to step four, which is connected to our co-leadership values that we shared in episode three, but brokering the middle path. So, undoubtedly, bless our attorney. She is so patient with us. She's always like y'all are cute, I see what you were trying to do here Very compassionate, and here's all the problems. Okay, that's her job, it's her training, it's her expertise. We're grateful we didn't go to law school, okay.

Speaker 1: 25:01

So not only is she receiving annual updates on law that are relevant to nonprofits and I know schools and districts have that as well that's really helpful to understand and to integrate, but she often is also giving us varied feedback, and we like to think of it in two buckets. There's the feedback that is connected to legal risk. And then there's the feedback around standard practice and, to be very clear, when she gives us feedback and says this actually puts the organization at risk, we adhere to it. We're not arguing with her. There's no brokering, though, if I'm really telling on myself, I do try sometimes. I do, I do try, and Marisol is always like she shakes her head.

Speaker 1: 25:51

Yeah, I'm like, but what about? And then what if we said it like no? And then they just entertain me for a little bit. But typically we just go ahead and fold because she's right, period, and that's not where we want to spend a ton of our time. But where we do want to kind of dial in is the piece around. It's not standard practice or you're going to incur expenses on this that are avoidable, which is her job. That's her job to tell us, and our job as human centered, liberatory leaders is to push past comfort and find another way to paradigm shift and to allocate resources in accordance with our values. Right, and so we have to decide and we usually take some calculated risks. We hear you, it's going to be expensive and now we need to figure out how we would make it possible. So some of that right, as Marisol said, was thinking about the feasibility for sustaining this in our budget, because we never want to cut a benefit that we award type of giving and taking can really disrupt the nervous system and the psychological safety and the trust and effort and morale of your staff. But I also think about our ops team Sol, and I wonder if you just could shed any light.

Speaker 1: 27:05

Marisol leads our ops team. They're phenomenal Shout out to Emily. And there are certain policies or practices that are just a heavier lift for ops. So if you are in here and you're in an ops role, we see you. You make the world go round. If you're a business manager or an office manager at a school, we know you really run things. Thank you for your service. But so what comes to mind when you think about some of the ops considerations when we're designing a new policy?

Speaker 2: 27:33

Yeah, I can think of one example that comes to mind, which was a policy that we created pretty early on when we noticed that there were discrepancies in the experience for teammates depending on where folks lived, and so we create. At that time we didn't have any policies around mileage, and so we created this policy around mileage and the policy was pretty straightforward If, after a certain range of distance, there was some sort of reimbursement for that, and so that was quite clear. But there was an added layer of on the operations team of processing those, and there were two things that sort of emerged in that process. Number one for folks that are traveling, often that's a lot of individual transactions that have to be verified, so we need systems and procedures to do that and that also then need to be processed. So folks actually need to get this reimbursement as well as accounted for right.

Speaker 2: 28:34

There's the accounting side of it, but then there's the additional layer of the auditing. How are we then creating structures and systems that create verification processes that then our audit team, when they come and have no context for why there's this reimbursement, can also verify the validity of that? So this is where it becomes really critical to have that lens towards operation. Everybody was in agreement that this policy was needed. Everybody was in agreement to how we approached it and we were calibrated. But we had not necessarily consider the lift that it would require on the operations team at scale right, and this scale then grows depending on the size of your team. So that's a really important thing to consider when implementing policy how it might impact the load that your operations team carries on the backend the part that nobody sees.

Speaker 1: 29:30

Yeah, and I do think that there's always opportunity to pause and renegotiate with your staff, not whether the policy will exist, but how we gather the information, and a conversation we've been having is like to balance self and collective responsibility. Should the teammate be inputting in a form? Does ops need to go check their calendar? Can they upload an image or screenshot Like who's actually holding the work and how do we share the load? Right? So that's step four. Step five well, it's our favorite. We always talk about change management and communication cascade, right, but you're then socializing the policy with your team to get their feedback. Of course, we're all hoping as leaders that they're like yeah, you nailed it, you heard us, You're responsive. And also sometimes they're like ooh, that's not how we envisioned it, or like but practically, what does it look like? How often would we be able to right? So there's going to be discussion Again. On the back end, you may make revisions. We also really emphasize training for your supervisory team, because often org leaders establish policies but aren't the ones navigating them. Real time with your staff. It's your supervisory team, it's your people managers. So how do we train them? And then, across the next year, after we introduce a policy. We typically calibrate in a system we call SoupSync, which is a monthly meeting with all supervisors in our org to ensure fidelity, consistency and equity in implementation so that the teammate experience is aligning with our vision for the policy right. Aligning with our vision for the policy right.

Speaker 1: 31:21

So one pro tip Maricel and I had recommended was keep a later list. You are not going to want to or be able to work on policies all year round from our vantage point. Maybe you have a sustainable way in your organ. It's working for you and we love that. But for us we need to have a couple of times during the year that we deep dive. But we have inspiration, ideas and recommendations that occur across the year and so we keep what's called a later list where we just jot down some thoughts and when we come to policy work bursts we're able to return to that list. So anything you would add around how folks might think about the time of year if they're trying to do that a couple of times folks are onboarded to the new systems already being ready for implementation, even if you haven't launched, but that they're ready to go.

Speaker 2: 32:19

That the policy has been codified so that you can have this sustainable cadence. That the team also aligns to the rhythm of the team's operating year.

Speaker 1: 32:29

Yeah, exactly, Beautiful, beautiful, and you're also going to want to bundle them because shout out to the attorneys but they're expensive. So another way to manage your finances and steward them responsibly is to bundle and have kind of an annual expense line connected to policy review and feedback. Shout out to the lawyers, May we all be paid, just like them. If you've been with us since episode one of this season two, you would know that the homework I assigned was an invitation to identify or isolate a policy that you would like to create or that currently exists and isn't working for your team it may even be working against you all exists and isn't working for your team. It may even be working against you all. This is the time to cross-check that policy with the five-step process that Marisol and I just outlined. We'll be highlighting it in our blog and we really encourage you to map across the steps and think about either creating or revamping that policy pain point as a couple of affirmations or duality declarations. I just want to speak some love towards all of you, because this is hard. This is hard work and it's our responsibility, but I've had to find a way to fall in love with policy creation because I know that it's a way for my team to experience our values every day. So here we go. I am an attuned listener and a responsive leader. When we know better, we do better. Even if I feel overwhelmed to tackle policy creation, I can take the first step by noticing what's needed and asking for help. I'm not alone. I don't have to do this on my own. So to close with our critical hope and this may be a little bit of a controversial reality sidebar we should probably come and do a whole episode on this.

Speaker 1: 34:45

But HR has a dual mission of protecting the organization and the people. As a leader, your human-centered policies are the scale that keeps that dual protection in balance. We can create policies that outlive us inside of our organizations. You won't be here forever. You'll transition at some point. So set your team and the future generations of staff inside of your school or philanthropic foundation or nonprofit up for success. These policies will make our time inside the org more expansive, more joyful, more sustainable and more healthy.

Speaker 1: 35:29

Heal out loud, but also codify your values. Marisol, it's been such a gift to lead and learn and love every day with you and also to spotlight you in these two season episodes. So thank you so much for coming through. This was fun. Thanks for having me, Wishing you all well, that you have a beautiful day and that you come back for the next episode. Talk to you soon, All right, y'all. Thanks for coming to play at Gather at the Well, the podcast that teaches. If you like this conversation, come visit us online at teachingwellorg and hit us up on our socials. Remember to visit the podcast page to download a couple of useful tools to get your life and heal up your org.