November 4, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode of the HR Mixtape, host Shari Simpson welcomes Anita Roach, founder of the Safe and Sound Workplace Alliance, to discuss the critical concept of trauma-informed workplaces. This timely conversation delves into how organizations can foster psychologically safe and equitable cultures, especially in light of increasing employee trauma due to societal pressures and crises. Anita shares unique insights on trauma awareness, the impact of workplace dynamics on employee experience, and the importance of inclusive leadership in mitigating trauma responses.
Listener Takeaways:
-
Learn how to identify and address trauma weaponizing in the workplace.
-
Discover why fostering a trauma-informed culture can enhance employee retention and productivity.
-
Explore strategies for implementing clear behavioral guidelines to create a safe work environment.
Hit “Play” to gain valuable insights that can transform your organization’s approach to employee well-being!
Guest(s): Anita Roach, Founder, Safe and Sound Workplace Alliance
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel,
well, like work. Now, your host,
Joining me today is Anita Roach, founder of the Safe and Sound Workplace
Alliance. Anita is a strategist focused on psychologically safe,
(00:26):
equitable cultures. She is a certified coach, culture talk
partner, and strength practitioner. Anita,
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. So this
is such an important topic. What we're talking about today
is really around trauma informed workplaces. And
(00:49):
I guess I'll start with this question for
those in our audience who maybe have not heard this term before. I've
only talked about it a couple of times on the podcast over the years
here. What is a trauma-informed workplace? What
should it be? Where do we kind of begin at the concept level
For me, it really starts with trauma awareness, like
(01:10):
remembering that it is human beings that power our
organizations and our human systems that
have not evolved in that
show up with us every day. From that, we can move
from trauma affected, you know, trauma
unaware into more trauma responsiveness, more
(01:34):
trauma sensitivity, starting to do things
that can be trauma reducing by mitigating those
involuntary physiological trauma responses that all
humans have. And it also means staying away from
things that we are doing inadvertently or
some people are even doing purposefully, trauma
(01:56):
negating, you know, trauma apathy. I have
a whole continuum on this that's expanded on
some of the trauma-informed organs work to be more for the
corporate workplace or larger workplaces. and
trauma weaponizing, because trauma weaponizing is
a thing that is happening. We're seeing it in many
(02:18):
areas. And so how do we bring awareness
to the fact that by doing that, you're
harming your people, which should be our frontline concern,
but it's also very damaging to your profits
And so can we dig into a couple of those terms
(02:38):
only because I want to make sure our audience, you know, has a good sense of
of those things. Let's start with trauma weaponizing. What
Not to bring in politics, but because this particular
quote was all over the news if you watched it, and
as somebody who has a partner who was a federal employee
(02:58):
until recently, the head of
OPM is on record saying, we
want to traumatize the bureaucrats so
that it's so uncomfortable for them to come to work that
they just leave. That was part of the strategy. We
see that, I think, a lot in tech companies. So
(03:21):
that's the real trauma weaponizing. It's
not the trauma, lack of trauma awareness. It's
actually understanding it so much that
you're putting it to nefarious use because
you think it's going to get you the bottom line results that
Yeah, it's, it falls underneath that same concept, which
(03:44):
we have talked about before is, especially during the pandemic is
this concept around, you don't want to fire somebody
cause you don't want to be on the hook necessarily for things
like unemployment or lawsuits. And so you
Yes, there's a term for it. And of course, it's escaping
(04:05):
me right now. I've sadly been subjected to
it. So it's cognitive dismissal, I think is what
When I think about this space for HR, there's
so many complexities to it. But
also there are some just some baseline things that we have to get right. So,
you know, how to start with trauma awareness. idea, we
(04:28):
start to educate ourselves as an entire community and our organization is
to like idea is the base level that we need to understand here
because there are mentalities that are damaging. You
know, there there's that idea of, you know,
you leave your personal life at home and you don't bring it to work that let's
(04:50):
No, I talk about that a lot. We do not check our
humanity at the door. We bring these inherent human
systems, which is what they are, into the organizational systems,
whether the individual wants to or the organization
wants them to. We're not living in
severance. Despite, I think,
(05:14):
the hope that that's what we
can get. We do not get to check our humanity at
the door. And so with that comes a
lot of things. big T trauma and
crisis, little T trauma, and the
kind of simple, almost seemingly innocuous ways
(05:37):
that trauma shows up, trauma response shows up in
our organizations. And so the
baseline awareness is really that. What does it
look like? Not the big crises, you
know, we have, you
know, an employee talking about suicidal
(05:58):
ideation, or we have an employee whose home
just burned down in a fire. I mean, we're seeing such an increase in
so many things, from climate trauma to childhood
trauma to cultural and community trauma. Our
crisis traumas are increasing. But
it's really about the trauma responses that show
(06:21):
up as either things we punish as
performance issues or even reward as performance issues.
So it's the person in flight
who seems to take multiple coffee
breaks. or is chronically absent. It's
(06:42):
the person in freeze who just does not seem to participate in
meetings or is having trouble meeting a
deadline because procrastination is an
example of the freeze response. It's the person
in fight who is either incredibly
aggressive or constantly complaining. because
(07:06):
that is a different type of fight response, especially
that comes out sometimes in women
because we're not afforded that
assertiveness oftentimes in the workplace. And
it comes out in the people who take
the blame and pick up the slack, work 24-7, are constantly
(07:30):
available, don't complain. They're often
named Anita. They suffer
from burnout. My research all started as
I was going through a second major burnout and
I was trying to figure out why did
this happen to me? When I went to work, for
(07:53):
an organization as opposed to consulting because I've been consulting for
almost 30 years now on and off. Every once in
a while somebody draws me in and I go in to fix a problem and
inevitably burnout would happen or I would get incredibly sick
or I started having chronic health issues. and
a little over a decade ago during one
(08:14):
of these. And I was still working, I was still performing, we
were still winning work, but I was definitely
having struggles. And it's when I was diagnosed with
complex PTSD. from a very difficult
childhood that included the loss of my mom
when I was eight and a lot of neglect and
(08:37):
abuse and various things, blame for a
lot of things. And so my trauma response is fawning. And I
think a lot of people in, I mean, one thing for HR people to keep
in mind is fawning is often gonna show up because it
is a rare person who has the luxury to permanently
flee their job We, you know,
(09:00):
the norm is not to fight that aggressively,
you know, so remembering that is a
really important thing because people will fawn and
fall into the workaholic behaviors and the always on
culture and responding to emails at midnight or
writing them at midnight because that need
(09:21):
to appease and please because of that perceived
threat. Because our internal involuntary
physiological systems have not changed since we were walking
out of the caves to hunt for food and the T-Rex was standing there.
And we had four choices. And those four choices
(09:42):
to response to threat are the same ones we have today. We
have, that's just the case. And that's why the systemic institutional
piece is so important. I love this quote from Edward
O. Wilson. He says, the problem with humanity is we have
paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and
godlike technology. and it's more than paleolithic emotions.
(10:05):
It's our whole systems as humans are barely paleolithic and
technology is not going to slow down. So it is in those medieval
institutions, those systems that haven't changed since
there was predominantly one type of person who worked in the office,
and they had humans at home that took care of the humanity, either
(10:27):
in spouses or servants. And so, we have
an opportunity to really change those systems to support
the human systems, which are not upgrading anytime soon,
I mean, it'd be nice if we could upgrade our emotional resilience.
You know, I mean, I think we could spend, you know, tons of
(10:48):
time talking about policy, but but I'd like to to
anchor us a little bit, you know, how I think in
starting with organizing, how do we how do we just begin
to to change? How do we start to see organizations
that are ready or not ready for this kind of change? And how do we
start to think what that looks like. I guess I kind of
(11:09):
put this in the bucket of, you know, start to
act for the role you want, not the role you have. How do we
Yes. And I think it sounds really scary, right? It
sounds like we have to shred every employee manual and
every policy and start from scratch. I
don't believe that. I believe there's seven basic, what
(11:33):
I call the safe and sound agreements that we can
start to adopt today, a couple that make huge
impact right away. So that's be cognizant,
and anybody can do this. And it really is something we need to require
everybody in our organization to do because one
(11:53):
non-cognizant person can cause the
same damage that a hundred non-cognizant people
can do. And be cognizant is really setting
behavioral guidelines and Teaching people
to be aware of their body positioning, their
tone, their language, their
(12:16):
hand gestures. I joke a lot in my talks. I
am Italian. I tend to talk with my hands and
I've become really aware. Because for
somebody who has had an abusive childhood
or is a victim of domestic violence, that
(12:37):
quick hand gesture can feel like, you
know, the amygdala is saying, oh, this person is
about to hit me. and your whole logic center shuts
down. So being
cognizant and having those clear behavioral, not
(12:57):
the big behavioral things that most manuals
have, but really distinct, clear behavioral,
don't tower over somebody sitting at
their desk. I tell a story, I had six
very large division managers one time tower over
my desk. And for the
(13:20):
many of us, the half of women and one third of men who have experienced
sexual violence, that's intimidating to
begin with. But then when they don't respect boundaries of,
no, I can't work another 30 hours this week, I've
already worked 90. It's just another example of no
not meaning no again. And so, that's a be cognizant
(13:43):
piece. The other is having clear accountability
around that, that is for
everybody. You know, Joe
or Sally, who happens to be your highest performer, doesn't
get a free PAMAS. And oftentimes, that's
what we see. is that lack
(14:06):
of accountability across the board, because it's
scary to put consequences in place. And certain
people don't get held accountable the
same way others do. And so those to me are
two easy things that you can start to implement. And
even as an HR person or anybody listening, you
(14:26):
can start to do that yourself and start to
Such good examples, especially around those
employees who are difficult. but
who are meeting their KPIs. You know, when I was, when
I was earlier in my career, I was in a, an
organization, we had cubicles and, and so, uh, open
(14:50):
air cubicles. And so the, the kind of the cubicle section across the way
from me, there was a leader there, um, who
was a yeller. I mean, a yeller. And
that particular department, it was a, a
male leader, all female staff. Um,
and they, they met their metrics every, every
(15:11):
month, every quarter. Um, but the
environment that those employees was working in
was terrible. And I remember bringing it up cause obviously I
was in HR. Um, I was in a training development role, so
a little bit different than, you know, maybe a business partner role, but. I remember
bringing it up and saying, like, hey, what what's what are we doing with this
(15:32):
person? Like, this is this is bad. Like the stuff that
I'm overhearing, you know, everybody else
on the floor can hear, too. You know, are they being coached? Are
they on a performance improvement plan? You know, and it's like. Well,
no, they meet their metrics. They're kind of a difficult manager. And
granted, this was, you know, probably 15 years ago now. And I
(15:53):
think that some of that kind of, you know, mentality
has changed for sure. But there's other complexities. You know, maybe you're
working in an organization that's family owned, right?
And so you have family dynamics that you have to deal with on
top of that thing. You know, I loved your example of being somebody who
talks with your hands, right? Something that's very natural to you and
(16:14):
how you use your own body and communicate can be
intimidating to somebody else. Those are all really, really
great places to start to think about how we show up,
how we take up space, how we leave space for people, how we
engage people. You know, I'm, I'm an extrovert
to the nth degree. Um, and so one of the tactics that
(16:36):
I learned throughout my career in team meetings is making sure to
ask people individually, what do you think? You know, so I'm giving
space for the introverts. But as I've kind of evolved in
my own knowledge of things, even that practice, although
well-intentioned, can be intimidating for
someone. So really great examples there.
(16:57):
Yeah, it's one, I will say one of the first
things people moving into new offices or redesigning their
offices can do is open concept offices
are not trauma-informed. for the very
reasons you mentioned. There's no
safe space. People are not having private
(17:20):
conversations, corrective conversations. The
big danger, one thing anybody can do is
let's not do the fly-by hallway, hey,
I need to talk to you, come to my office in five minutes. Fear
that that induces, especially for people who were
(17:42):
punished a lot, is
very damaging. So that's a simple trauma-informed, trauma-sensitive
thing you can do. Not having
open air offices because of the various reasons. For
meetings, making sure that there's clear agendas that
(18:02):
are produced beforehand, especially
if they're a meeting where there's some natural
anxiety around it, a project is falling behind or whatever. Um,
those are really simple, just practical, good
business kind things to do that start
to mitigate those small trauma responses.
(18:26):
They're big trauma responses for the person, but they seem
just kind of irritating or Again, we put them on
a performance improvement plan because of various
things, or we reward the fact that they're working 22 hours
a day, which I've actually done, and
(18:47):
being thoughtful around that. And realizing that
because we're all humans, your experience is not
my experience. I call it the whole human approach.
So it's who we're genetically designed to be that could
be our genetic
ancestry related to race, it could be our gender, a
(19:10):
whole host of things, what we're good at. There's our
neural processing, and sometimes that's impacted genetically
or in utero, and sometimes it's acquired. For
example, PTSD is an acquired neurodivergence.
and our lived experiences, which it
(19:31):
would be nice to think everybody in the corporate world, because I
think this is one of the misnomers, right,
is that people with significant trauma, complex
PTSD, PTSD, are not in
our corporate workspaces. And it's just a lie, because
(19:51):
70% of adults have some level of trauma, 37% have
significant childhood trauma. Gen Z, the number is
57%. because they are the generation that grew up in the pandemic with
active shooter drills starting when they were five years old in the United States.
(20:12):
All of that, their parents and the food insecurity and
housing security that the pandemic caused. So they're
not lazy, they're in trauma response. And
it's just a different trauma response than what Gen
X did, for example. because
there's more opportunities to gig work and do things. So, they
(20:34):
don't have to stay so much. So, it's understanding
the generational differences in trauma. It's just being
aware. Oh, you know, and then acknowledging
your role. You know, awareness is we have a
40% higher turnover rate, which is the stat for
(20:54):
non-trauma-informed, psychologically safe,
psychosocially sound businesses. 40% higher turnover
rate, which we know the costs of that are extensive. If
you have a 40% turnover rate higher all of
a sudden, that's not an
individual's resilience problem. That's not a
(21:17):
generation's laziness problem. That's an
internal systemic issue. moving from
that awareness into acknowledgement of the root cause and
being honest with ourselves as leaders and decision makers and
organizations, that is when you're
ready. If we move from awareness into immediate
(21:40):
action, one, that's not trauma-informed because
it causes chaos. And those feelings of chaos
are very much associated with trauma-impacted people. But
it also doesn't get the buy-in we need. It doesn't allow
for stakeholder engagement. It doesn't allow for clear agreements from
(22:01):
top to bottom. So really moving from awareness to
acknowledgement, then building
advocacy around the change you want to make, and then
clear agreements. You know, I call them
declarations of commitment in the book. The CEO has
to sign one that they're committing to the resources
(22:23):
and the accountability and the leadership. I
just saw an article from the CEO of Duolingo that
just came out this morning. 42 new hires,
new graduates, so all Gen Z. And he told them, we're
allergic to toxic behaviors here. As a
culture, we identify it and reject it immediately. He
(22:46):
talked about taking
initiative, kind of universal leadership type concepts. He
talked about being nice. He talked about not
about work-life balance and what it means for success. He's
on record saying that. Now, I love a written commitment because
(23:06):
you can bring the paper in, but because
of the size of the company and who he is,
the whole world now knows that he is committed to
that. So now, if you're not seeing that
in his organization, people can say something because
we know many companies who post their values and
(23:29):
then don't actually apply those.
We've seen that recently with Wells Fargo and the
woman who sadly passed away at her desk and was
not discovered for multiple days. We see that in the suicides
at EY. Your values talk about psychological
safety and all of this, but
(23:54):
This has been a very interesting conversation, and
I think there's probably hours and hours of content that we
could go through. But as we wrap our conversation, I'd love
you to think about that HR professional who's trying
to learn about this, trying to inform themselves so
that they can help really get their organizations ready and move forward.
(24:22):
One of the reasons I did this research and started writing
the book and all of that is because there wasn't a lot out there. We're
seeing some change there. So you can look into Stephanie
Lemick's work at the Wounded Workforce, Dawn Amarek's work,
hopefully my work. So the book, Safe and
(24:42):
Sound, Cultivating a Whole Human Trauma-Informed Approach
for Employee and Employer Well-Being, because both need to happen. and
both are being negatively impacted. It has a lot of resources. It
even has an advocacy workbook in there to help you
start to develop a plan. And it
has tools for different levels of
(25:03):
stakeholder engagement. It has those sample declarations. You
can visit safeandsound.work, which
is a new community. It's been there a while, but
now it's actually ready to launch, and there's courses there.
My building trauma awareness course, which is approved for
three HRCI recertification credits.
(25:28):
And I'm going to be offering some discounts.
So check out the show notes there for your listeners to
be able to join at a special rate. You
can download a done for you presentation on
the business case that talks about all
the statistics. and all the positive statistics when
(25:51):
we do these things. And it's pre-done for you, so you can take that
into your leaders and prove your case. So
you can download that on my website. And
yeah, just learn as much as you can, really. And
remember, you're human, we're all human, and those
systems aren't changing. So let's change the systems that we
(26:13):
can change. Thank you for all the resources and
for taking some time of your day to chat with me. It was so great. I
appreciate everything you do. I love listening to the podcast, so
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find show notes
and links at thehrmixtape.com. Come back
You're listening to the HR Mixtape. Your podcast with
the perfect mix of practical advice, thought-provoking interviews, and
stories that just hit different so that work doesn't have to feel,
well, like work. Now, your host,
Joining me today is Anita Roach, founder of the Safe and Sound Workplace
Alliance. Anita is a strategist focused on psychologically safe,
(00:26):
equitable cultures. She is a certified coach, culture talk
partner, and strength practitioner. Anita,
Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. So this
is such an important topic. What we're talking about today
is really around trauma informed workplaces. And
(00:49):
I guess I'll start with this question for
those in our audience who maybe have not heard this term before. I've
only talked about it a couple of times on the podcast over the years
here. What is a trauma-informed workplace? What
should it be? Where do we kind of begin at the concept level
For me, it really starts with trauma awareness, like
(01:10):
remembering that it is human beings that power our
organizations and our human systems that
have not evolved in that
show up with us every day. From that, we can move
from trauma affected, you know, trauma
unaware into more trauma responsiveness, more
(01:34):
trauma sensitivity, starting to do things
that can be trauma reducing by mitigating those
involuntary physiological trauma responses that all
humans have. And it also means staying away from
things that we are doing inadvertently or
some people are even doing purposefully, trauma
(01:56):
negating, you know, trauma apathy. I have
a whole continuum on this that's expanded on
some of the trauma-informed organs work to be more for the
corporate workplace or larger workplaces. and
trauma weaponizing, because trauma weaponizing is
a thing that is happening. We're seeing it in many
(02:18):
areas. And so how do we bring awareness
to the fact that by doing that, you're
harming your people, which should be our frontline concern,
but it's also very damaging to your profits
And so can we dig into a couple of those terms
(02:38):
only because I want to make sure our audience, you know, has a good sense of
of those things. Let's start with trauma weaponizing. What
Not to bring in politics, but because this particular
quote was all over the news if you watched it, and
as somebody who has a partner who was a federal employee
(02:58):
until recently, the head of
OPM is on record saying, we
want to traumatize the bureaucrats so
that it's so uncomfortable for them to come to work that
they just leave. That was part of the strategy. We
see that, I think, a lot in tech companies. So
(03:21):
that's the real trauma weaponizing. It's
not the trauma, lack of trauma awareness. It's
actually understanding it so much that
you're putting it to nefarious use because
you think it's going to get you the bottom line results that
Yeah, it's, it falls underneath that same concept, which
(03:44):
we have talked about before is, especially during the pandemic is
this concept around, you don't want to fire somebody
cause you don't want to be on the hook necessarily for things
like unemployment or lawsuits. And so you
Yes, there's a term for it. And of course, it's escaping
(04:05):
me right now. I've sadly been subjected to
it. So it's cognitive dismissal, I think is what
When I think about this space for HR, there's
so many complexities to it. But
also there are some just some baseline things that we have to get right. So,
you know, how to start with trauma awareness. idea, we
(04:28):
start to educate ourselves as an entire community and our organization is
to like idea is the base level that we need to understand here
because there are mentalities that are damaging. You
know, there there's that idea of, you know,
you leave your personal life at home and you don't bring it to work that let's
(04:50):
No, I talk about that a lot. We do not check our
humanity at the door. We bring these inherent human
systems, which is what they are, into the organizational systems,
whether the individual wants to or the organization
wants them to. We're not living in
severance. Despite, I think,
(05:14):
the hope that that's what we
can get. We do not get to check our humanity at
the door. And so with that comes a
lot of things. big T trauma and
crisis, little T trauma, and the
kind of simple, almost seemingly innocuous ways
(05:37):
that trauma shows up, trauma response shows up in
our organizations. And so the
baseline awareness is really that. What does it
look like? Not the big crises, you
know, we have, you
know, an employee talking about suicidal
(05:58):
ideation, or we have an employee whose home
just burned down in a fire. I mean, we're seeing such an increase in
so many things, from climate trauma to childhood
trauma to cultural and community trauma. Our
crisis traumas are increasing. But
it's really about the trauma responses that show
(06:21):
up as either things we punish as
performance issues or even reward as performance issues.
So it's the person in flight
who seems to take multiple coffee
breaks. or is chronically absent. It's
(06:42):
the person in freeze who just does not seem to participate in
meetings or is having trouble meeting a
deadline because procrastination is an
example of the freeze response. It's the person
in fight who is either incredibly
aggressive or constantly complaining. because
(07:06):
that is a different type of fight response, especially
that comes out sometimes in women
because we're not afforded that
assertiveness oftentimes in the workplace. And
it comes out in the people who take
the blame and pick up the slack, work 24-7, are constantly
(07:30):
available, don't complain. They're often
named Anita. They suffer
from burnout. My research all started as
I was going through a second major burnout and
I was trying to figure out why did
this happen to me? When I went to work, for
(07:53):
an organization as opposed to consulting because I've been consulting for
almost 30 years now on and off. Every once in
a while somebody draws me in and I go in to fix a problem and
inevitably burnout would happen or I would get incredibly sick
or I started having chronic health issues. and
a little over a decade ago during one
(08:14):
of these. And I was still working, I was still performing, we
were still winning work, but I was definitely
having struggles. And it's when I was diagnosed with
complex PTSD. from a very difficult
childhood that included the loss of my mom
when I was eight and a lot of neglect and
(08:37):
abuse and various things, blame for a
lot of things. And so my trauma response is fawning. And I
think a lot of people in, I mean, one thing for HR people to keep
in mind is fawning is often gonna show up because it
is a rare person who has the luxury to permanently
flee their job We, you know,
(09:00):
the norm is not to fight that aggressively,
you know, so remembering that is a
really important thing because people will fawn and
fall into the workaholic behaviors and the always on
culture and responding to emails at midnight or
writing them at midnight because that need
(09:21):
to appease and please because of that perceived
threat. Because our internal involuntary
physiological systems have not changed since we were walking
out of the caves to hunt for food and the T-Rex was standing there.
And we had four choices. And those four choices
(09:42):
to response to threat are the same ones we have today. We
have, that's just the case. And that's why the systemic institutional
piece is so important. I love this quote from Edward
O. Wilson. He says, the problem with humanity is we have
paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and
godlike technology. and it's more than paleolithic emotions.
(10:05):
It's our whole systems as humans are barely paleolithic and
technology is not going to slow down. So it is in those medieval
institutions, those systems that haven't changed since
there was predominantly one type of person who worked in the office,
and they had humans at home that took care of the humanity, either
(10:27):
in spouses or servants. And so, we have
an opportunity to really change those systems to support
the human systems, which are not upgrading anytime soon,
I mean, it'd be nice if we could upgrade our emotional resilience.
You know, I mean, I think we could spend, you know, tons of
(10:48):
time talking about policy, but but I'd like to to
anchor us a little bit, you know, how I think in
starting with organizing, how do we how do we just begin
to to change? How do we start to see organizations
that are ready or not ready for this kind of change? And how do we
start to think what that looks like. I guess I kind of
(11:09):
put this in the bucket of, you know, start to
act for the role you want, not the role you have. How do we
Yes. And I think it sounds really scary, right? It
sounds like we have to shred every employee manual and
every policy and start from scratch. I
don't believe that. I believe there's seven basic, what
(11:33):
I call the safe and sound agreements that we can
start to adopt today, a couple that make huge
impact right away. So that's be cognizant,
and anybody can do this. And it really is something we need to require
everybody in our organization to do because one
(11:53):
non-cognizant person can cause the
same damage that a hundred non-cognizant people
can do. And be cognizant is really setting
behavioral guidelines and Teaching people
to be aware of their body positioning, their
tone, their language, their
(12:16):
hand gestures. I joke a lot in my talks. I
am Italian. I tend to talk with my hands and
I've become really aware. Because for
somebody who has had an abusive childhood
or is a victim of domestic violence, that
(12:37):
quick hand gesture can feel like, you
know, the amygdala is saying, oh, this person is
about to hit me. and your whole logic center shuts
down. So being
cognizant and having those clear behavioral, not
(12:57):
the big behavioral things that most manuals
have, but really distinct, clear behavioral,
don't tower over somebody sitting at
their desk. I tell a story, I had six
very large division managers one time tower over
my desk. And for the
(13:20):
many of us, the half of women and one third of men who have experienced
sexual violence, that's intimidating to
begin with. But then when they don't respect boundaries of,
no, I can't work another 30 hours this week, I've
already worked 90. It's just another example of no
not meaning no again. And so, that's a be cognizant
(13:43):
piece. The other is having clear accountability
around that, that is for
everybody. You know, Joe
or Sally, who happens to be your highest performer, doesn't
get a free PAMAS. And oftentimes, that's
what we see. is that lack
(14:06):
of accountability across the board, because it's
scary to put consequences in place. And certain
people don't get held accountable the
same way others do. And so those to me are
two easy things that you can start to implement. And
even as an HR person or anybody listening, you
(14:26):
can start to do that yourself and start to
Such good examples, especially around those
employees who are difficult. but
who are meeting their KPIs. You know, when I was, when
I was earlier in my career, I was in a, an
organization, we had cubicles and, and so, uh, open
(14:50):
air cubicles. And so the, the kind of the cubicle section across the way
from me, there was a leader there, um, who
was a yeller. I mean, a yeller. And
that particular department, it was a, a
male leader, all female staff. Um,
and they, they met their metrics every, every
(15:11):
month, every quarter. Um, but the
environment that those employees was working in
was terrible. And I remember bringing it up cause obviously I
was in HR. Um, I was in a training development role, so
a little bit different than, you know, maybe a business partner role, but. I remember
bringing it up and saying, like, hey, what what's what are we doing with this
(15:32):
person? Like, this is this is bad. Like the stuff that
I'm overhearing, you know, everybody else
on the floor can hear, too. You know, are they being coached? Are
they on a performance improvement plan? You know, and it's like. Well,
no, they meet their metrics. They're kind of a difficult manager. And
granted, this was, you know, probably 15 years ago now. And I
(15:53):
think that some of that kind of, you know, mentality
has changed for sure. But there's other complexities. You know, maybe you're
working in an organization that's family owned, right?
And so you have family dynamics that you have to deal with on
top of that thing. You know, I loved your example of being somebody who
talks with your hands, right? Something that's very natural to you and
(16:14):
how you use your own body and communicate can be
intimidating to somebody else. Those are all really, really
great places to start to think about how we show up,
how we take up space, how we leave space for people, how we
engage people. You know, I'm, I'm an extrovert
to the nth degree. Um, and so one of the tactics that
(16:36):
I learned throughout my career in team meetings is making sure to
ask people individually, what do you think? You know, so I'm giving
space for the introverts. But as I've kind of evolved in
my own knowledge of things, even that practice, although
well-intentioned, can be intimidating for
someone. So really great examples there.
(16:57):
Yeah, it's one, I will say one of the first
things people moving into new offices or redesigning their
offices can do is open concept offices
are not trauma-informed. for the very
reasons you mentioned. There's no
safe space. People are not having private
(17:20):
conversations, corrective conversations. The
big danger, one thing anybody can do is
let's not do the fly-by hallway, hey,
I need to talk to you, come to my office in five minutes. Fear
that that induces, especially for people who were
(17:42):
punished a lot, is
very damaging. So that's a simple trauma-informed, trauma-sensitive
thing you can do. Not having
open air offices because of the various reasons. For
meetings, making sure that there's clear agendas that
(18:02):
are produced beforehand, especially
if they're a meeting where there's some natural
anxiety around it, a project is falling behind or whatever. Um,
those are really simple, just practical, good
business kind things to do that start
to mitigate those small trauma responses.
(18:26):
They're big trauma responses for the person, but they seem
just kind of irritating or Again, we put them on
a performance improvement plan because of various
things, or we reward the fact that they're working 22 hours
a day, which I've actually done, and
(18:47):
being thoughtful around that. And realizing that
because we're all humans, your experience is not
my experience. I call it the whole human approach.
So it's who we're genetically designed to be that could
be our genetic
ancestry related to race, it could be our gender, a
(19:10):
whole host of things, what we're good at. There's our
neural processing, and sometimes that's impacted genetically
or in utero, and sometimes it's acquired. For
example, PTSD is an acquired neurodivergence.
and our lived experiences, which it
(19:31):
would be nice to think everybody in the corporate world, because I
think this is one of the misnomers, right,
is that people with significant trauma, complex
PTSD, PTSD, are not in
our corporate workspaces. And it's just a lie, because
(19:51):
70% of adults have some level of trauma, 37% have
significant childhood trauma. Gen Z, the number is
57%. because they are the generation that grew up in the pandemic with
active shooter drills starting when they were five years old in the United States.
(20:12):
All of that, their parents and the food insecurity and
housing security that the pandemic caused. So they're
not lazy, they're in trauma response. And
it's just a different trauma response than what Gen
X did, for example. because
there's more opportunities to gig work and do things. So, they
(20:34):
don't have to stay so much. So, it's understanding
the generational differences in trauma. It's just being
aware. Oh, you know, and then acknowledging
your role. You know, awareness is we have a
40% higher turnover rate, which is the stat for
(20:54):
non-trauma-informed, psychologically safe,
psychosocially sound businesses. 40% higher turnover
rate, which we know the costs of that are extensive. If
you have a 40% turnover rate higher all of
a sudden, that's not an
individual's resilience problem. That's not a
(21:17):
generation's laziness problem. That's an
internal systemic issue. moving from
that awareness into acknowledgement of the root cause and
being honest with ourselves as leaders and decision makers and
organizations, that is when you're
ready. If we move from awareness into immediate
(21:40):
action, one, that's not trauma-informed because
it causes chaos. And those feelings of chaos
are very much associated with trauma-impacted people. But
it also doesn't get the buy-in we need. It doesn't allow
for stakeholder engagement. It doesn't allow for clear agreements from
(22:01):
top to bottom. So really moving from awareness to
acknowledgement, then building
advocacy around the change you want to make, and then
clear agreements. You know, I call them
declarations of commitment in the book. The CEO has
to sign one that they're committing to the resources
(22:23):
and the accountability and the leadership. I
just saw an article from the CEO of Duolingo that
just came out this morning. 42 new hires,
new graduates, so all Gen Z. And he told them, we're
allergic to toxic behaviors here. As a
culture, we identify it and reject it immediately. He
(22:46):
talked about taking
initiative, kind of universal leadership type concepts. He
talked about being nice. He talked about not
about work-life balance and what it means for success. He's
on record saying that. Now, I love a written commitment because
(23:06):
you can bring the paper in, but because
of the size of the company and who he is,
the whole world now knows that he is committed to
that. So now, if you're not seeing that
in his organization, people can say something because
we know many companies who post their values and
(23:29):
then don't actually apply those.
We've seen that recently with Wells Fargo and the
woman who sadly passed away at her desk and was
not discovered for multiple days. We see that in the suicides
at EY. Your values talk about psychological
safety and all of this, but
(23:54):
This has been a very interesting conversation, and
I think there's probably hours and hours of content that we
could go through. But as we wrap our conversation, I'd love
you to think about that HR professional who's trying
to learn about this, trying to inform themselves so
that they can help really get their organizations ready and move forward.
(24:22):
One of the reasons I did this research and started writing
the book and all of that is because there wasn't a lot out there. We're
seeing some change there. So you can look into Stephanie
Lemick's work at the Wounded Workforce, Dawn Amarek's work,
hopefully my work. So the book, Safe and
(24:42):
Sound, Cultivating a Whole Human Trauma-Informed Approach
for Employee and Employer Well-Being, because both need to happen. and
both are being negatively impacted. It has a lot of resources. It
even has an advocacy workbook in there to help you
start to develop a plan. And it
has tools for different levels of
(25:03):
stakeholder engagement. It has those sample declarations. You
can visit safeandsound.work, which
is a new community. It's been there a while, but
now it's actually ready to launch, and there's courses there.
My building trauma awareness course, which is approved for
three HRCI recertification credits.
(25:28):
And I'm going to be offering some discounts.
So check out the show notes there for your listeners to
be able to join at a special rate. You
can download a done for you presentation on
the business case that talks about all
the statistics. and all the positive statistics when
(25:51):
we do these things. And it's pre-done for you, so you can take that
into your leaders and prove your case. So
you can download that on my website. And
yeah, just learn as much as you can, really. And
remember, you're human, we're all human, and those
systems aren't changing. So let's change the systems that we
(26:13):
can change. Thank you for all the resources and
for taking some time of your day to chat with me. It was so great. I
appreciate everything you do. I love listening to the podcast, so
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find show notes
and links at thehrmixtape.com. Come back
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.