Four Ways We Can Be Sensitive to Trauma at Work

A trauma-informed approach begins with understanding the physical, social, and emotional impact of trauma on the individual.

This approach incorporates three elements:

1. Realizing the prevalence of trauma
2. Recognizing how trauma affects all individuals involved with the program, organization, including its own workforce; and
3. Responding by putting this knowledge into practice

By being trauma-informed, it allows us to understand their potential paths for healing, recognize the signs and symptoms in staff, and put knowledge into policies, procedures, and settings.

• Realization: where everyone understands the widespread potential of trauma and how it affects employees
• Recognize: where people can recognize common signs of trauma
• Response: where organizations respond to the potential prevalence of trauma by embedding practices and behaviors that are sensitive to this reality
• Resist re-traumatization: by paying careful attention as to not create a stressful or toxic environment that can re-traumatize individuals

Implementing trauma-informed approaches cannot be done overnight but this is a sustainable management technique.

It is important to infuse compassion into the workplace and the people from the top should also believe that it is a worthwhile endeavor.

In order to incorporate compassion in the workplace, we can ensure that compassion is a core corporate value and infuse it throughout the employee life cycle then you can begin to roll out the 4 Rs into your organization.