Rebuilding Cultures of Care After Organizational Rupture
An organizational rupture can take many forms…mass layoffs, leadership scandals, mission drift, or public crises that shake the very foundation of trust.
In humanitarian work, where our mission is tied to dignity, ethics, and care, these ruptures don’t stay at the organizational level. They land in people’s bodies. They affect their sense of safety. They change how they see the work, the leadership, and themselves.
The question then becomes:
How do we rebuild a culture of care when it has been broken?
The Nature of Rupture
A rupture isn’t simply a difficult season or a challenging project. It is a break in the social and ethical fabric of an organization, one that disrupts the unspoken agreements about trust, fairness, and how people should be treated.
Rupture often leads to:
Loss of trust in leadership and decision-making
Disconnection between teams and colleagues
Cynicism about stated values
Emotional withdrawal from the mission
And while it can be tempting to move on quickly, ignoring these fractures only deepens them.
This is not about naming or shaming anyone.
It’s about naming what is true, because unspoken wounds cannot heal.
When we shine light on the rupture, we create space for repair.
Care as a Cultural Foundation
A culture of care isn’t created through wellness perks, team-building days, or inspirational messaging.
It is built through:
The daily ways people treat one another
The systems that protect staff from harm
The structures that distribute power fairly
The consistency between what an organization says and what it does
After a rupture, rebuilding care means going deeper than surface solutions. It requires shifting the conditions that made the rupture possible.
Steps Toward Rebuilding
Acknowledge the rupture, openly and without defensiveness.
Silence erases trust. Truth-telling begins to restore it.Create space for processing, individually and collectively.
People need room to voice grief, anger, and disappointment without fear of consequence.Make visible changes.
Not just promises. Not task forces. Real, observable shifts that staff can feel.Embed care into systems and structures.
So care stops depending on individual goodwill and becomes part of how the organization operates.Sustain the effort.
Rebuilding culture is not a communications exercise. It’s long-term work that needs consistency, humility, and accountability.
Why Timing Matters
When leaders move too quickly to “get back to business,” the rupture does not disappear, it simply goes underground, becoming part of the organization’s DNA. Unhealed wounds resurface as mistrust, disengagement, turnover, and burnout.
But when leaders slow down to rebuild care first, everything that follows - strategies, restructures, ambitions, impact - has a stronger foundation.
The Payoff of Rebuilding
When done with honesty and intention, a repaired culture doesn’t just return to what it was - it becomes stronger:
Trust becomes more deliberate
Communication becomes more honest
Boundaries become clearer
Care becomes something lived daily, not just promised
Rupture is painful, but it can also be a turning point. Not by erasing the harm, but by acknowledging it, learning from it, and rebuilding something more human on the other side.
Holding space with care and solidarity…here’s to staying whole, together,
~ Kate
Thanks for reading The Olive Pages: Fieldnotes on care, clarity, and staying whole
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KRC provides coaching, psychosocial support, and organizational consulting to humanitarian professionals and mission-driven organizations worldwide. Based in lived experience and trauma-aware care, our work helps clients navigate burnout, moral injury, organizational change, and career transitions - while staying human in the process.