February 11, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode of the "HR Mixtape," host Shari Simpson welcomes Stephanie Lemek, founder and CEO of The Wounded Workforce. With over 16 years of HR experience, Stephanie discusses the importance of creating trauma-informed workplaces. She shares insights on how trauma affects employees and the critical role HR professionals play in recognizing and addressing these issues.
Key Takeaways:
- Understanding Trauma: Learn about the prevalence of trauma among employees and its impact on workplace dynamics.
- Self-Care for HR Professionals: Discover the significance of self-awareness and self-care for HR leaders to combat secondary trauma and compassion fatigue.
- Seven Principles of Trauma-Informed Workplaces: Explore actionable steps to foster a supportive work environment that prioritizes safety, trust, community, and empowerment.
Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation that emphasizes the need for empathy and understanding in HR practices.
Guest(s): Stephanie Lemek, Founder and CEO, The Wounded Workforce
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 Stephanie Lemek founder and CEO at The Wounded
Workforce. Stephanie has over 16 years of experience in
(00:24):
a variety of HR roles, spanning various industries and
helping businesses create supportive workplaces. Stephanie's passion
is helping leaders understand and respond to the traumatic experiences
Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you
(00:44):
so much for having me. I am thrilled to join you here. I thought
maybe we could start with you sharing a little bit about your background
and how you got into this space around trauma-informed
Yes, it is. It's quite a journey. I'll try
and do the cliff notes version so I don't bore everyone. But
(01:05):
I am one of those funny HR professionals that actually planned
to get into HR. So I went to college and
kind of fell in love with HR coursework, and
at the same time, I had an opportunity to help out at
all things at a retail store, helping out with some of
their HR functions. And I was like, this is, this is perfect. This
(01:28):
is what I want to do for my career, right? I loved and still love
kind of that special place where you're helping an organization
be successful, but you also get to help individuals. It's
kind of the best feeling. So intentionally went
into HR. as a career and I spent about 16 years
in-house as an HR professional and I say
(01:50):
I've done everything from intern to the most
senior HR role in an organization. I've worked in big
fortune 500 companies and I've worked in
small startups so I don't think any HR person would
ever tell you they've seen it all but I've seen a lot
and I know how different scenarios kind of show up and A
(02:11):
lot of different types of workplaces as well, you know, whether
it's a tech company or a construction company, these are experiences I've
had in-house. A common
story we hear from a lot of people and a lot of HR professionals is,
you know, during the pandemic, throughout the pandemic, post
pandemic, my relationship with work and
(02:33):
how I was showing up, how I felt I was able to contribute
best. I was kind of rethinking what
that looked like. For me, I really want to make an
outsized impact on. how we all experience work.
I also am what I would say is
a change maker. I like to make big changes. I
(02:55):
like to be a catalyst. And when you get to the most
senior HR role in an organization, that can
be great at the beginning, But eventually you do
need someone who has, you know, a sense of stability at
that most senior level. So I thought maybe the right place for me,
both for me and for the organizations and people I support, is
(03:16):
for me to take a step outside of organizations and do
something a little bit different. So I did that, gosh,
about three years ago now. I went out on my own and started my
own HR consulting journey. You know, the
beautiful part of that is I had space to really focus on things that I
was passionate about, I was curious about. And for
(03:36):
me, I have had my own. kind of journey and experience kind
of recognizing my own traumatic experiences and how
they were showing up for me in the workplace. And at the same time, I
was looking how could I better support organizations I
wanted to partner with and have different conversations. And
as silly as it is, I got into this work because I just wanted to
(03:57):
read a book about trauma-informed workplaces. I was like, hey,
this could be a great way to change some conversations around
mental health and diversity, equity, inclusion, maybe find
ways to call people in instead of folks feeling called out,
really include people and include supports in
our workplace. As we've done in health
(04:19):
care and recovery and education, even in yoga, there
are these trauma-informed practices. So it's like, I want to read
a book so I can help my clients do this. And
Shari, I could not find that book that I wanted to
read. You know, I found pieces
of what I was looking for, but I couldn't find something that really made
(04:41):
trauma-informed practices work for our modern workplace
and also made them accessible. You know, I
don't think everyone should have to have a degree in psychology to understand
how to better work with folks and build systems and cultures that
are really supportive for others. So I
decided, well, if it doesn't exist, I'll go ahead and make it.
(05:04):
Hopefully one day I still write the book, but anyone who's been on
an authorship journey knows that that is a long one. And
for me, you know, I mentioned I see myself as a catalyst. I
wanted to make an impact faster. And I'm a big believer
in empowering folks to be able to make these changes in their organizations.
So that's what led me to found the Wounded Workforce and
(05:25):
start putting out resources around what
trauma-informed workplaces are and how we can take those
principles that are rooted in trauma-informed care, which is
originally created by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
how we can take those principles and build really amazing
(05:48):
This is such a needed resource in the HR space. And
I, and I'll share, you know, two personal stories because I think it,
it just highlights the work that you're doing and why it's so important for
HR to have a perspective on it. So the first one is, you
know, I was in a situation as a HR business partner at the
time. And I received a phone call
(06:08):
from an employee who was clearly in crisis. They
had barricaded themselves in a washroom and
were clearly having some sort of breakdown in the moment. And
as an HR person, I wasn't sure what my responsibility was or
necessarily how to handle the situation because they
(06:29):
weren't on site. They weren't even working that day. It just happened to
have this phone call. And, you know, fortunately there
was other people that I could tap into, but not everybody has that. And
then the other thing I would share is there's not enough content about
these types of situations in conferences that we're
going to. You know, I sat through a session
(06:51):
two years ago and it was one of those, you know, like side
stage sessions. So it wasn't even in a room and it was about supporting
employees who might be demonstrating suicidal ideation.
And it was one of the most impactful 20 minutes I have sat
through in my HR career. So this is definitely something
that's needed. And I think the place to start obviously is with HR.
(07:15):
So how do we help our HR leaders recognize that
there are these subtle signs that we can start to pick up on
Yeah, I'm going to maybe surprise you a little bit with my
answer. And I'll kind of give you a twofold. First
of all, we do need to be talking about this. And
I'm so grateful for you giving me the opportunity to talk about this because
(07:38):
a lot of folks are scared to talk about trauma. They
hear the word trauma, they hear the word suicide, and it's like, oh, we're not
going to talk about it. But these things that are scary, the
more we talk about them, actually, the less scary they can become.
And the more empowered we can be to make the difference for ourselves and
others. So again, I have to say thank you so much for
(07:59):
giving, you know, me the opportunity, giving your listeners the space
to learn more. You know, I'm going to share a pretty staggering
statistic. I know I was surprised when I first heard
this statistic as well, is that 70% of
US adults self-identify as having one
or more traumatic experience in their lifetime. So these
(08:21):
are the folks that are raising their own hands and saying, I
have experienced trauma. And so if we're, you know,
taking this statistic at face value, if we are
looking at this and saying, okay, you know, let's ignore maybe
folks who don't recognize an experience
as traumatic or don't recognize, you know, a
(08:43):
past challenge as something that has, you know, potentially long lasting impacts.
70% is still an enormous amount of your employee population
that is directly impacted by a traumatic
experience. And then even when we kind of extrapolate on
that, 70% of the people we know we
(09:03):
care about have been impacted by trauma. Even if we
are one of those lucky few people who haven't experienced trauma
directly, we may be experiencing it
or impacted by it in a secondary way.
So those things absolutely show up in all aspects of our
life including the workplace. So really this
(09:24):
is something that is showing up
regardless of whether or not we are taking the time and talking about
it and addressing it proactively. When it comes to
thinking about HR professionals and how to
think about trauma in the workplace, I
actually am going to give probably some surprising advice. I
(09:45):
know as a fellow HR professional this probably would
have surprised me too. I would be ready to get out my
checklist, all these new programs, all this new
information to learn and research about. I actually don't want you
to do that. I actually want HR professionals to start with themselves. I
actually think HR professionals have an incredibly
(10:07):
challenging job. And this is a conversation that we've been having
over the course of the last five years for very good reasons. It
continues to be a very challenging climate for
HR professionals, even as we look at the first
few weeks of 2025. The
thing about HR professionals' work is I think
(10:29):
they're absolutely more susceptible to experiencing
trauma at work than we recognize. A lot
of times we think about folks experiencing trauma in
the workplace as first responders, people working
in hospitals, kind of those obvious things. But as
I began to learn more and do more research about trauma and
(10:51):
trauma-informed workplaces, it became really clear to
me that a couple things came up a lot for me as a
professional and other professionals I knew really well. And
those were the concepts of secondary trauma and
compassion fatigue. And I'll get my little nerdy
hat out and talk about these. But I think these are really eye-opening concepts
(11:12):
when we think about the wide and broad range of traumatic impacts
for us and why I really want HR professionals to
start with themselves on this journey. I really want anyone to
start with themselves on this journey. So the concept of
secondary trauma is the idea that constantly being
exposed to, witnessing, watching, hearing about
(11:35):
someone's traumatic experience can create the same
physiological reaction in you as
a person experiencing trauma. So you are essentially
traumatized by being exposed to these experiences of
trauma over and over. This sounds pretty, you know, That
sounds pretty specific. That sounds like something we would think of for, you
(11:58):
know, a paramedic or a police officer to experience. I
also would say think about some of the things HR professionals engage
in, in terms of leaves of absences, navigating
really challenging parts of the workplace. Sometimes it is severe
illness, deaths. Sometimes it is serious. harassment
(12:19):
issues I know during the Me Too movement. You know, HR professionals
who are investigating some of those allegations absolutely
experience secondary trauma. A slightly
different but similar concept is the idea of compassion
fatigue. So compassion fatigue is
what I almost like to refer to as emotional burnout. Because
(12:42):
you're constantly drawing from this well of
empathy, of compassion, about caring for others. and
you're not refilling it in the right way, you kind
of get to this place of emotional numbness or
being unable to feel, unable to kind of access that
full breadth of your emotions, that best version of
(13:03):
yourself. And these things are fueled by those same things
we talked about with secondary trauma. HR professionals
absolutely experience this. Then layer onto that social
media, news, all of these things where we are
constantly inundated with really
(13:23):
potentially traumatic images on an almost daily basis,
there's a high probability, if we're not pretty thoughtful about
it, that we ourselves could be not operating from
our best HR leadership capacity because
we're experiencing some of these things. So I'm a big believer
(13:44):
in kind of taking that step back, taking stock and
where we're at. I think some of the conversations we've been having about burnout is
really incredible and really helpful around this
to really understand, hey, how am I in
terms of my own mental health, my own mental wellbeing, and
then how can I kind of check into self-care as
(14:05):
a way to get better. And then I want
to talk about next steps of how we can start to bring in
those trauma informed practices for your team. After
we feel like you as that leader, you as a person spearheading this,
really have the space to do this
work because I know the people who want
(14:27):
to do this work are also probably the ones most at
risk to experience secondary trauma and compassion fatigue because
you do care so deeply about work, about others.
I definitely witnessed compassion fatigue as the
height of the pandemic continued with
(14:50):
my peers, not just internally, but externally and the
HR community in totality. I think we all had to
take a little bit of a deep breath and figure out, and we
started to see more webinars and content around
setting boundaries and having appropriate kind of work
balance, if that's even a thing, balance with work.
(15:13):
But let's, so you get to the point where you're, where you're able to identify
in yourself where, where you sit. What's
your next step as an HR person who wants to bring this into
your organization? And Ingrin, we've talked about on the podcast before
things like psychological safety and you know, having
good communication and good cadence hygiene in some of those
(15:34):
kinds of things. But this is such a specific type of
communication. So how do we take that
next step so that we can become educated in this and
Absolutely. So becoming a trauma-informed workplace sounds
intimidating. And it is and it isn't. I'll offer
(15:55):
that. It is this and isn't. And like most things that
I would put in the bucket of cultural change, it is
a journey. It is something to, you know, have
a game plan for and have some patience around getting to that point.
It also is one of those things, every change you make is going to
be incredibly impactful. So when we look at what a trauma-informed workplace
(16:17):
is, it comes down to four things. It is an organization
that understands what trauma is. So that's step
one, is do you understand what trauma is?
And this is, again, we're not expecting anyone to become psychologists,
mental health practitioners. It is as simple as learning
the definition of trauma and what
(16:40):
some of its impacts could be. The next is understanding and
appreciating the prevalence of trauma. Fun fact,
you have a little bit of understanding just from this
podcast alone and some of the prevalence and impacts of
trauma, how it shows up for adults and how it shows
up in the workplace as well. So those are
(17:01):
the first two of four steps is basically an understanding of
the definition and prevalence of trauma, getting a better sense of
what it is, how it shows up, and creating a
space of shared understanding. Because one thing I get a lot is,
you know, oh, we have folks who are from older
generations, and now we have Gen Z entering the workplace, we
(17:21):
have these wild different understandings of trauma and
I always say yes of course we do because our knowledge
around trauma and the neuroscience of the brain has advanced
wildly in the last decade. So I
would expect to be there to be different understandings so level setting
that definition and understanding among your organization is really important
(17:43):
too. Once you get past that, the next
two things are kind of the journey phase of
a trauma-informed workplace. And it's simple and
complicated at the same time. So the simple steps are, as
an organization, as a leader, as an individual, you
are actively avoiding re-traumatizing survivors. And
(18:07):
four, you are actively seeking to minimize harm.
So those things sound pretty simple. We wanna make
sure we're actively minimizing harm, we're actively avoiding re-traumatizing survivors.
That gets a little bit tricky because, as I mentioned,
we're not mental health professionals. We're not psychologists. Our job
isn't to diagnose or treat trauma. In fact, we never want to
(18:30):
do that. That's not helpful. And that's a lot
of pressure to put on ourselves. We don't necessarily need
to understand someone's traumatic experience. We may
not want to hear that traumatic experience. We may not have the space, and
they may not want to share that. That's not part of
a trauma-informed workplace. What we use
(18:52):
to build those steps to avoid re-traumatization and
actively minimize harm are the seven principles of
trauma-informed workplaces, which are based in
the original principles of trauma-informed care from SAMHSA. And
so these are the tools and the lenses that
we use to evaluate our processes, our systems, our
(19:13):
decisions to make sure we're thinking about
the impacts of trauma, the root of trauma. And so
as individuals in our workplace show up, we've
thought about those potential impacts without needing to know
anyone's story. And what I love about it is
this very intimidating sounding concept of
(19:33):
trauma-informed workplaces I actually think can
become the easiest way to infuse
a very mentally healthy organizational culture
because it infuses it into the day-to-day activities of
the workplace versus, you know, relying on extra steps
having to happen. So that's
(19:57):
really very broad overview of
what that looks like, but that is how to
begin the journey. And like I said, a long-term journey
in terms of shaping those processes. Could
you walk us through those seven steps? I would love to walk you
through the seven principles. So the seven principles are
(20:19):
pretty straightforward, but there's a little bit of nuance to
them as well. And as I talk through them, and even as
I experienced, you know, this research, when I first started doing
it, I was like, Oh, these are things that we should be talking about
and doing in most workplaces anyway, just doing them
in a more deliberate way and leveraging this research that we have. So
(20:40):
first and foremost is safety. I think we all kind of
understand safety as a foundational need. So safety,
when we look at it, has kind of three components. I like to think of
safety as kind of that three-legged stool. If one of these legs is
missing, we don't really have a strong sense of safety in
our organization. So we want physical safety. So
that's kind of the obvious one. So if you are talking about OSHA
(21:03):
rules and regulations, if you're talking about emergency procedures for
natural disasters, that is physical safety. It is the physical
safety of your physical person. and the workplace. The
next is, you know, the hot sexy topic we've been
talking about the last few years and that is psychological safety.
So that is that felt permission for candor, that ability to
(21:25):
show up in a genuine way, to challenge things,
to ask questions. And we know there's a
massive benefit to creating psychological safety in
workplaces and on teams. Tons of research around that.
And lastly is financial safety. We
all know most of us work well to pay our bills, to
(21:48):
provide for ourselves and provide for our families. So let's
think about how that is obviously connected to
our work in our workplace. So in creating financial safety
is really important because if someone is always kind of
worried about their ability to provide, It's
pretty hard to show up as the best version of yourself. I oftentimes will
(22:11):
share with people, think about the last time you had a major financial concern and
how often you thought about it. It's pretty disruptive. And
financial safety, a lot of times we talk about it in
the framing of financial wellness, but that can be everything
from paying a living wage having emergency funds
or resources for employees to offering budgeting services
(22:32):
or 401k. So there's a wide range of things that
fall in there that most organizations actually do a
really great job with. Perhaps we just don't talk about
it in the context of safety. Next is
trust and transparency. Pretty obvious
one, pretty basic. The idea here is I like to think
(22:53):
about it as building trust through thoughtful transparency. Leave
it to a almost 20 year HR professional to
be thoughtful about transparency because we know we can't always be
transparent about everything. Can't share confidential
information. We think about thoughtful transparency in
how we empower people, give people the right information and leverage
(23:16):
that to build trust and not only build organizational trust,
but trust throughout the organization within teams and
individuals. Next is the concept of
community. So a strong supportive community is
so important when it comes to supporting individuals who
have experienced trauma. In mental health
(23:39):
or psychological communities, often this is
referred to as peer support. I think a better term is
community when we think about the workplace. It's the idea of
building community and allowing community to happen in
your organization and to be thoughtful about how we
bring people together. For example, folks listening in
(23:59):
probably have people who talk about community
in terms of an onboarding program or a new manager
program. Next is collaboration. Collaboration
in the sense of trauma-informed workplaces really
looks at power imbalances inherent to
the workplace and how we can overcome and mitigate those.
(24:23):
Next, we have empowerment. And empowerment is
a big one. And it has four distinct parts we talk about.
Choice, strengths, leverage, recognition, and
growth. Next is humility and responsiveness.
This is a super important one. We know that
imperfection is avoidable. So we want to make sure part
(24:45):
of how we conduct ourselves, how we conduct our organization is
making sure we're humble enough to understand when things don't
go right. And then we move forward to responding and
correcting those actions and learning from them. And
last, but certainly not least, is cultural, historical, and
gender issues. I like to call this principle a happy
(25:06):
partner to DEI initiatives, but really
what this encapsulates is cultural, historical, gender
issues, how they play into experiences of trauma, and
also systemic and generational issues that come
into play with trauma as well. So there is a lot there,
very high level overview, but those are the seven principles kind
(25:28):
Stephanie, this was such a great conversation. I feel like we probably
could spend a podcast on each one of those seven. Yes. So
if you're listening and you're interested, definitely go down that rabbit hole because I
think there was a lot there to unpack and a lot we can bring back to
our organizations to make them trauma informed
workplaces where we are making better decisions and
(25:49):
providing support in a different way. So thanks for taking some time
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 Stephanie Lemek founder and CEO at The Wounded
Workforce. Stephanie has over 16 years of experience in
(00:24):
a variety of HR roles, spanning various industries and
helping businesses create supportive workplaces. Stephanie's passion
is helping leaders understand and respond to the traumatic experiences
Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you
(00:44):
so much for having me. I am thrilled to join you here. I thought
maybe we could start with you sharing a little bit about your background
and how you got into this space around trauma-informed
Yes, it is. It's quite a journey. I'll try
and do the cliff notes version so I don't bore everyone. But
(01:05):
I am one of those funny HR professionals that actually planned
to get into HR. So I went to college and
kind of fell in love with HR coursework, and
at the same time, I had an opportunity to help out at
all things at a retail store, helping out with some of
their HR functions. And I was like, this is, this is perfect. This
(01:28):
is what I want to do for my career, right? I loved and still love
kind of that special place where you're helping an organization
be successful, but you also get to help individuals. It's
kind of the best feeling. So intentionally went
into HR. as a career and I spent about 16 years
in-house as an HR professional and I say
(01:50):
I've done everything from intern to the most
senior HR role in an organization. I've worked in big
fortune 500 companies and I've worked in
small startups so I don't think any HR person would
ever tell you they've seen it all but I've seen a lot
and I know how different scenarios kind of show up and A
(02:11):
lot of different types of workplaces as well, you know, whether
it's a tech company or a construction company, these are experiences I've
had in-house. A common
story we hear from a lot of people and a lot of HR professionals is,
you know, during the pandemic, throughout the pandemic, post
pandemic, my relationship with work and
(02:33):
how I was showing up, how I felt I was able to contribute
best. I was kind of rethinking what
that looked like. For me, I really want to make an
outsized impact on. how we all experience work.
I also am what I would say is
a change maker. I like to make big changes. I
(02:55):
like to be a catalyst. And when you get to the most
senior HR role in an organization, that can
be great at the beginning, But eventually you do
need someone who has, you know, a sense of stability at
that most senior level. So I thought maybe the right place for me,
both for me and for the organizations and people I support, is
(03:16):
for me to take a step outside of organizations and do
something a little bit different. So I did that, gosh,
about three years ago now. I went out on my own and started my
own HR consulting journey. You know, the
beautiful part of that is I had space to really focus on things that I
was passionate about, I was curious about. And for
(03:36):
me, I have had my own. kind of journey and experience kind
of recognizing my own traumatic experiences and how
they were showing up for me in the workplace. And at the same time, I
was looking how could I better support organizations I
wanted to partner with and have different conversations. And
as silly as it is, I got into this work because I just wanted to
(03:57):
read a book about trauma-informed workplaces. I was like, hey,
this could be a great way to change some conversations around
mental health and diversity, equity, inclusion, maybe find
ways to call people in instead of folks feeling called out,
really include people and include supports in
our workplace. As we've done in health
(04:19):
care and recovery and education, even in yoga, there
are these trauma-informed practices. So it's like, I want to read
a book so I can help my clients do this. And
Shari, I could not find that book that I wanted to
read. You know, I found pieces
of what I was looking for, but I couldn't find something that really made
(04:41):
trauma-informed practices work for our modern workplace
and also made them accessible. You know, I
don't think everyone should have to have a degree in psychology to understand
how to better work with folks and build systems and cultures that
are really supportive for others. So I
decided, well, if it doesn't exist, I'll go ahead and make it.
(05:04):
Hopefully one day I still write the book, but anyone who's been on
an authorship journey knows that that is a long one. And
for me, you know, I mentioned I see myself as a catalyst. I
wanted to make an impact faster. And I'm a big believer
in empowering folks to be able to make these changes in their organizations.
So that's what led me to found the Wounded Workforce and
(05:25):
start putting out resources around what
trauma-informed workplaces are and how we can take those
principles that are rooted in trauma-informed care, which is
originally created by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
how we can take those principles and build really amazing
(05:48):
This is such a needed resource in the HR space. And
I, and I'll share, you know, two personal stories because I think it,
it just highlights the work that you're doing and why it's so important for
HR to have a perspective on it. So the first one is, you
know, I was in a situation as a HR business partner at the
time. And I received a phone call
(06:08):
from an employee who was clearly in crisis. They
had barricaded themselves in a washroom and
were clearly having some sort of breakdown in the moment. And
as an HR person, I wasn't sure what my responsibility was or
necessarily how to handle the situation because they
(06:29):
weren't on site. They weren't even working that day. It just happened to
have this phone call. And, you know, fortunately there
was other people that I could tap into, but not everybody has that. And
then the other thing I would share is there's not enough content about
these types of situations in conferences that we're
going to. You know, I sat through a session
(06:51):
two years ago and it was one of those, you know, like side
stage sessions. So it wasn't even in a room and it was about supporting
employees who might be demonstrating suicidal ideation.
And it was one of the most impactful 20 minutes I have sat
through in my HR career. So this is definitely something
that's needed. And I think the place to start obviously is with HR.
(07:15):
So how do we help our HR leaders recognize that
there are these subtle signs that we can start to pick up on
Yeah, I'm going to maybe surprise you a little bit with my
answer. And I'll kind of give you a twofold. First
of all, we do need to be talking about this. And
I'm so grateful for you giving me the opportunity to talk about this because
(07:38):
a lot of folks are scared to talk about trauma. They
hear the word trauma, they hear the word suicide, and it's like, oh, we're not
going to talk about it. But these things that are scary, the
more we talk about them, actually, the less scary they can become.
And the more empowered we can be to make the difference for ourselves and
others. So again, I have to say thank you so much for
(07:59):
giving, you know, me the opportunity, giving your listeners the space
to learn more. You know, I'm going to share a pretty staggering
statistic. I know I was surprised when I first heard
this statistic as well, is that 70% of
US adults self-identify as having one
or more traumatic experience in their lifetime. So these
(08:21):
are the folks that are raising their own hands and saying, I
have experienced trauma. And so if we're, you know,
taking this statistic at face value, if we are
looking at this and saying, okay, you know, let's ignore maybe
folks who don't recognize an experience
as traumatic or don't recognize, you know, a
(08:43):
past challenge as something that has, you know, potentially long lasting impacts.
70% is still an enormous amount of your employee population
that is directly impacted by a traumatic
experience. And then even when we kind of extrapolate on
that, 70% of the people we know we
(09:03):
care about have been impacted by trauma. Even if we
are one of those lucky few people who haven't experienced trauma
directly, we may be experiencing it
or impacted by it in a secondary way.
So those things absolutely show up in all aspects of our
life including the workplace. So really this
(09:24):
is something that is showing up
regardless of whether or not we are taking the time and talking about
it and addressing it proactively. When it comes to
thinking about HR professionals and how to
think about trauma in the workplace, I
actually am going to give probably some surprising advice. I
(09:45):
know as a fellow HR professional this probably would
have surprised me too. I would be ready to get out my
checklist, all these new programs, all this new
information to learn and research about. I actually don't want you
to do that. I actually want HR professionals to start with themselves. I
actually think HR professionals have an incredibly
(10:07):
challenging job. And this is a conversation that we've been having
over the course of the last five years for very good reasons. It
continues to be a very challenging climate for
HR professionals, even as we look at the first
few weeks of 2025. The
thing about HR professionals' work is I think
(10:29):
they're absolutely more susceptible to experiencing
trauma at work than we recognize. A lot
of times we think about folks experiencing trauma in
the workplace as first responders, people working
in hospitals, kind of those obvious things. But as
I began to learn more and do more research about trauma and
(10:51):
trauma-informed workplaces, it became really clear to
me that a couple things came up a lot for me as a
professional and other professionals I knew really well. And
those were the concepts of secondary trauma and
compassion fatigue. And I'll get my little nerdy
hat out and talk about these. But I think these are really eye-opening concepts
(11:12):
when we think about the wide and broad range of traumatic impacts
for us and why I really want HR professionals to
start with themselves on this journey. I really want anyone to
start with themselves on this journey. So the concept of
secondary trauma is the idea that constantly being
exposed to, witnessing, watching, hearing about
(11:35):
someone's traumatic experience can create the same
physiological reaction in you as
a person experiencing trauma. So you are essentially
traumatized by being exposed to these experiences of
trauma over and over. This sounds pretty, you know, That
sounds pretty specific. That sounds like something we would think of for, you
(11:58):
know, a paramedic or a police officer to experience. I
also would say think about some of the things HR professionals engage
in, in terms of leaves of absences, navigating
really challenging parts of the workplace. Sometimes it is severe
illness, deaths. Sometimes it is serious. harassment
(12:19):
issues I know during the Me Too movement. You know, HR professionals
who are investigating some of those allegations absolutely
experience secondary trauma. A slightly
different but similar concept is the idea of compassion
fatigue. So compassion fatigue is
what I almost like to refer to as emotional burnout. Because
(12:42):
you're constantly drawing from this well of
empathy, of compassion, about caring for others. and
you're not refilling it in the right way, you kind
of get to this place of emotional numbness or
being unable to feel, unable to kind of access that
full breadth of your emotions, that best version of
(13:03):
yourself. And these things are fueled by those same things
we talked about with secondary trauma. HR professionals
absolutely experience this. Then layer onto that social
media, news, all of these things where we are
constantly inundated with really
(13:23):
potentially traumatic images on an almost daily basis,
there's a high probability, if we're not pretty thoughtful about
it, that we ourselves could be not operating from
our best HR leadership capacity because
we're experiencing some of these things. So I'm a big believer
(13:44):
in kind of taking that step back, taking stock and
where we're at. I think some of the conversations we've been having about burnout is
really incredible and really helpful around this
to really understand, hey, how am I in
terms of my own mental health, my own mental wellbeing, and
then how can I kind of check into self-care as
(14:05):
a way to get better. And then I want
to talk about next steps of how we can start to bring in
those trauma informed practices for your team. After
we feel like you as that leader, you as a person spearheading this,
really have the space to do this
work because I know the people who want
(14:27):
to do this work are also probably the ones most at
risk to experience secondary trauma and compassion fatigue because
you do care so deeply about work, about others.
I definitely witnessed compassion fatigue as the
height of the pandemic continued with
(14:50):
my peers, not just internally, but externally and the
HR community in totality. I think we all had to
take a little bit of a deep breath and figure out, and we
started to see more webinars and content around
setting boundaries and having appropriate kind of work
balance, if that's even a thing, balance with work.
(15:13):
But let's, so you get to the point where you're, where you're able to identify
in yourself where, where you sit. What's
your next step as an HR person who wants to bring this into
your organization? And Ingrin, we've talked about on the podcast before
things like psychological safety and you know, having
good communication and good cadence hygiene in some of those
(15:34):
kinds of things. But this is such a specific type of
communication. So how do we take that
next step so that we can become educated in this and
Absolutely. So becoming a trauma-informed workplace sounds
intimidating. And it is and it isn't. I'll offer
(15:55):
that. It is this and isn't. And like most things that
I would put in the bucket of cultural change, it is
a journey. It is something to, you know, have
a game plan for and have some patience around getting to that point.
It also is one of those things, every change you make is going to
be incredibly impactful. So when we look at what a trauma-informed workplace
(16:17):
is, it comes down to four things. It is an organization
that understands what trauma is. So that's step
one, is do you understand what trauma is?
And this is, again, we're not expecting anyone to become psychologists,
mental health practitioners. It is as simple as learning
the definition of trauma and what
(16:40):
some of its impacts could be. The next is understanding and
appreciating the prevalence of trauma. Fun fact,
you have a little bit of understanding just from this
podcast alone and some of the prevalence and impacts of
trauma, how it shows up for adults and how it shows
up in the workplace as well. So those are
(17:01):
the first two of four steps is basically an understanding of
the definition and prevalence of trauma, getting a better sense of
what it is, how it shows up, and creating a
space of shared understanding. Because one thing I get a lot is,
you know, oh, we have folks who are from older
generations, and now we have Gen Z entering the workplace, we
(17:21):
have these wild different understandings of trauma and
I always say yes of course we do because our knowledge
around trauma and the neuroscience of the brain has advanced
wildly in the last decade. So I
would expect to be there to be different understandings so level setting
that definition and understanding among your organization is really important
(17:43):
too. Once you get past that, the next
two things are kind of the journey phase of
a trauma-informed workplace. And it's simple and
complicated at the same time. So the simple steps are, as
an organization, as a leader, as an individual, you
are actively avoiding re-traumatizing survivors. And
(18:07):
four, you are actively seeking to minimize harm.
So those things sound pretty simple. We wanna make
sure we're actively minimizing harm, we're actively avoiding re-traumatizing survivors.
That gets a little bit tricky because, as I mentioned,
we're not mental health professionals. We're not psychologists. Our job
isn't to diagnose or treat trauma. In fact, we never want to
(18:30):
do that. That's not helpful. And that's a lot
of pressure to put on ourselves. We don't necessarily need
to understand someone's traumatic experience. We may
not want to hear that traumatic experience. We may not have the space, and
they may not want to share that. That's not part of
a trauma-informed workplace. What we use
(18:52):
to build those steps to avoid re-traumatization and
actively minimize harm are the seven principles of
trauma-informed workplaces, which are based in
the original principles of trauma-informed care from SAMHSA. And
so these are the tools and the lenses that
we use to evaluate our processes, our systems, our
(19:13):
decisions to make sure we're thinking about
the impacts of trauma, the root of trauma. And so
as individuals in our workplace show up, we've
thought about those potential impacts without needing to know
anyone's story. And what I love about it is
this very intimidating sounding concept of
(19:33):
trauma-informed workplaces I actually think can
become the easiest way to infuse
a very mentally healthy organizational culture
because it infuses it into the day-to-day activities of
the workplace versus, you know, relying on extra steps
having to happen. So that's
(19:57):
really very broad overview of
what that looks like, but that is how to
begin the journey. And like I said, a long-term journey
in terms of shaping those processes. Could
you walk us through those seven steps? I would love to walk you
through the seven principles. So the seven principles are
(20:19):
pretty straightforward, but there's a little bit of nuance to
them as well. And as I talk through them, and even as
I experienced, you know, this research, when I first started doing
it, I was like, Oh, these are things that we should be talking about
and doing in most workplaces anyway, just doing them
in a more deliberate way and leveraging this research that we have. So
(20:40):
first and foremost is safety. I think we all kind of
understand safety as a foundational need. So safety,
when we look at it, has kind of three components. I like to think of
safety as kind of that three-legged stool. If one of these legs is
missing, we don't really have a strong sense of safety in
our organization. So we want physical safety. So
that's kind of the obvious one. So if you are talking about OSHA
(21:03):
rules and regulations, if you're talking about emergency procedures for
natural disasters, that is physical safety. It is the physical
safety of your physical person. and the workplace. The
next is, you know, the hot sexy topic we've been
talking about the last few years and that is psychological safety.
So that is that felt permission for candor, that ability to
(21:25):
show up in a genuine way, to challenge things,
to ask questions. And we know there's a
massive benefit to creating psychological safety in
workplaces and on teams. Tons of research around that.
And lastly is financial safety. We
all know most of us work well to pay our bills, to
(21:48):
provide for ourselves and provide for our families. So let's
think about how that is obviously connected to
our work in our workplace. So in creating financial safety
is really important because if someone is always kind of
worried about their ability to provide, It's
pretty hard to show up as the best version of yourself. I oftentimes will
(22:11):
share with people, think about the last time you had a major financial concern and
how often you thought about it. It's pretty disruptive. And
financial safety, a lot of times we talk about it in
the framing of financial wellness, but that can be everything
from paying a living wage having emergency funds
or resources for employees to offering budgeting services
(22:32):
or 401k. So there's a wide range of things that
fall in there that most organizations actually do a
really great job with. Perhaps we just don't talk about
it in the context of safety. Next is
trust and transparency. Pretty obvious
one, pretty basic. The idea here is I like to think
(22:53):
about it as building trust through thoughtful transparency. Leave
it to a almost 20 year HR professional to
be thoughtful about transparency because we know we can't always be
transparent about everything. Can't share confidential
information. We think about thoughtful transparency in
how we empower people, give people the right information and leverage
(23:16):
that to build trust and not only build organizational trust,
but trust throughout the organization within teams and
individuals. Next is the concept of
community. So a strong supportive community is
so important when it comes to supporting individuals who
have experienced trauma. In mental health
(23:39):
or psychological communities, often this is
referred to as peer support. I think a better term is
community when we think about the workplace. It's the idea of
building community and allowing community to happen in
your organization and to be thoughtful about how we
bring people together. For example, folks listening in
(23:59):
probably have people who talk about community
in terms of an onboarding program or a new manager
program. Next is collaboration. Collaboration
in the sense of trauma-informed workplaces really
looks at power imbalances inherent to
the workplace and how we can overcome and mitigate those.
(24:23):
Next, we have empowerment. And empowerment is
a big one. And it has four distinct parts we talk about.
Choice, strengths, leverage, recognition, and
growth. Next is humility and responsiveness.
This is a super important one. We know that
imperfection is avoidable. So we want to make sure part
(24:45):
of how we conduct ourselves, how we conduct our organization is
making sure we're humble enough to understand when things don't
go right. And then we move forward to responding and
correcting those actions and learning from them. And
last, but certainly not least, is cultural, historical, and
gender issues. I like to call this principle a happy
(25:06):
partner to DEI initiatives, but really
what this encapsulates is cultural, historical, gender
issues, how they play into experiences of trauma, and
also systemic and generational issues that come
into play with trauma as well. So there is a lot there,
very high level overview, but those are the seven principles kind
(25:28):
Stephanie, this was such a great conversation. I feel like we probably
could spend a podcast on each one of those seven. Yes. So
if you're listening and you're interested, definitely go down that rabbit hole because I
think there was a lot there to unpack and a lot we can bring back to
our organizations to make them trauma informed
workplaces where we are making better decisions and
(25:49):
providing support in a different way. So thanks for taking some time
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