Your interest in trauma-informed workplace training is to be commended. It’s not an easy topic for anyone to discuss, much less lead. But expert support is there to help you and your staff navigate this serious and sensitive subject matter.

In this article we’ll take you through:

• Advanced trauma support training options
• UK government’s 6 core principles of trauma-informed care
• Impact of leadership on trauma response in employees
• Integrating trauma-informed practices into daily working life

The importance of trauma-informed training in the workplace

Training to deal with trauma in the workplace is crucial. And not just a quick half an hour’s toolbox training. Real trauma-informed training, delivered by experts and tailored specifically to your employees’ needs in your work environment.

The central concept is to put compassion at the heart of people’s workplace experience. It’s not something just the senior management can do, or the appointed ‘mental health ambassador’.

Good trauma-informed training gives everyone the tools they need to support each other during and after a traumatic event: a shared language, proper understanding, and practical strategies.

Trauma-informed training helps employees to:

Spot signs of trauma

Trauma-informed training is not a medical or professional counselling or therapist qualification. But it does mean that everyone has a heightened awareness of what reactions to traumatic incidents might look like.

Discussing what trauma is and the signs they, or others, may exhibit after a traumatic event is the foundation. Recognising that how you feel is the result of a traumatic event is the first step to dealing with it.

And sometimes we don’t see these changes in ourselves. We need those around us to gently point it out if they think we’re acting differently and maybe there’s a reason beyond ‘just being a bit tired’.

Support others through traumatic experiences

Trauma-informed training is another way to create an empathetic workplace where there’s an understanding of how to appropriately respond to traumatic workplace events.

It’s one way for leaders to make sure that judgement of trauma-induced behaviours won’t be tolerated. There’s no, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ derogatory attitude. But instead, ‘What happened to you? How do you feel and how can I help?’ This reduces the stigma that can surround asking for help with mental ill health.

It’s difficult to broach personal subjects involving emotional reactions to horrible things. Professional training embeds the confidence that you won’t be too clumsy, or say the wrong thing, or make it worse. It helps leaders and employees to know what to say and how to say it – even in the worst-case scenarios.

The earlier distress is recognised, the quicker support can be given and, hopefully, prevent the more extreme reactions to trauma mentioned above.

Do no harm

A workplace with a working understanding of trauma will avoid feelings of institutional betrayal and prevent unintentional re-traumatisation of workers who have experienced a traumatic workplace event.

Trauma-informed training is being proactive about your people’s psychological safety.

Advanced trauma support training options

There are different types of trauma-informed training programmes available to organisations, such as:

• Online courses
• One-off workshops
• Expert-led, in-person sessions
• Mental-health first aid training
• Trauma Risk Management course (TRIM) – for practitioners and managers

TRIM is a recognised training programme that’s designed to create a peer-led system of support for traumatic events.

We offer a 2-day course for TRIM practitioners that gives you the tools to support your colleagues. And a third day to develop management capabilities to monitor and take a wider view of how to handle traumatic events in the workplace.

Core principles of trauma-informed care

It’s crucial to select the right course for your work environment and employees. They should all be grounded in the 6 core principles of trauma-informed care, as defined by the UK Government:

1. Safety: There are policies, practices, and safeguarding arrangements in place to protect physical, psychological, and emotional safety.

2. Trustworthiness: Trust is built through the transparency of everyone explaining clear expectations and doing what they say they’ll do.

3. Choice: People are supported in shared decision-making, choices and goal-setting to determine the plan of action they need to heal and move forward from a traumatic event.

4. Collaboration: Between organisations and their workers, and between peers.

5. Empowerment: People feel heard, validated, and supported to make shared decisions – their voice is important to the organisation.

6. Cultural consideration: Treat everyone as an individual, not as a cultural stereotype based on their gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, geography, race or ethnicity.

During the TRIM training, your staff will gain knowledge about things like characteristics of traumatic events, trauma psychology, and risk factors for traumatic stress. They’ll also practise key skills like active listening, de-escalation techniques, and creating psychologically safe spaces.

How leaders can improve trauma response in employees

Leading an improvement in trauma response goes way beyond crisis management. It’s a commitment to a more compassionate attitude.

Leaders model the attitude and behaviours they expect of their employees, as trauma-informed training broadens everyone’s understanding of how to recognise the impacts of trauma and give appropriate support.

The fact that you’re investing time, resources, and money into expert trauma-informed training is a strong signal in itself. But it’s your language and continued actions that reinforce your commitment to a trauma-informed approach. That includes things like:

Be there and listen

Rebecca Brown is a professor of social work specialising in trauma. She explains,
“When people are struggling, they often just need someone to bear witness to their pain, to acknowledge their experience, and to sit beside them in the mess of it all. This is part of the recovery process…

Sitting with this discomfort alongside an employee can be a powerful step towards moving forward and feeling supported by leaders and the organization as a whole.”

No giving solutions – tempting as that may be – just listening, acknowledging and being there with people.

Have the difficult discussions

Find out how a traumatic event in the workplace has altered people’s perceptions about their jobs. What’s changed for them? Reveal if something’s changed for you. And figure out the way forward together.

Workplace culture is led by management, but it only changes if everyone embraces a new collective meaning. So create it together.

Get real about work-life balance

This doesn’t mean offering freebie yoga sessions and fruit deliveries. It means you model real work-life boundaries, discuss how you disconnect from work, and remove any barriers you’re responsible for that get in the way of your people doing the same thing.

Enabling your workforce to properly attend to self-care ultimately makes them more productive at work.

Highlighting what you do, verbalising the difference it makes, and showing that you value this in others tells everyone they should be proud of how they’re managing their mental health. It normalises just having the conversation, which makes it easier to discuss the impact of traumatic events when they happen.

Integrating trauma-informed practices into daily operations

In her Harvard Business Review article ‘We Need Trauma-Informed Workplaces’, Katharine Manning says:

“A trauma-informed organization is one that operates with an understanding of trauma and its negative effects on the organization’s employees and the communities it serves and works to mitigate those effects.

It may not be possible to predict or avoid the next crisis our organizations will face. However, with forethought, planning, and commitment, we can be prepared to meet the next challenge — whatever it may be — and come through it stronger.”

This is not ‘do a course, write a policy, put it in a folder and forget about it’ territory…

It’s more like this:

• Start with a course such as TRIM
• Discuss your specific aims and challenges
• Put them and the practical ‘how’ into an official policy document
• Evaluate
• Act on your conclusions – maybe do some more training, or train more employee practitioners
• Keep the evaluation cycle going. Test and learn. Listen to your people. See what other improvements can be made
• Repeat…

Your commitment to your employee's mental health is unshakeable. Putting these principles into practice can be tricky to define and shouldn’t be ‘set in stone’.

You also need to remain dynamic so it can change to encompass every individual and traumatic event you may endure as a workplace.

Phew, that's a lot, isn’t it?

Health and Safety issues are always a heavy responsibility.

But you don’t have to create this trauma-informed strategy yourself.

Resilient People helps leaders establish and maintain a trauma-informed approach by offering continuous support and regular check-ins after the initial training sessions.

Everything’s about what you and your staff need – not just an off-the-shelf programme. We use our expertise to tailor the right trauma-informed training sessions and continued support for each organisation.

Expert trauma-informed workplace training with Resilient People

Take your first step towards a trauma-informed workplace today. Get in touch for a chat to discuss the best trauma-informed training for your organisation.