Even though burnout is a common experience for many people, it’s only recently been defined as a concept. This is great news because it removes its misdiagnoses as anxiety, depression, and mental health breakdowns.
For you as a manager, burnout should be easier to discuss compared to other mental health issues because it’s less stigmatised.
Let’s get into what burnout means, the signs employees might be suffering burnout, and how to provide effective support.
Burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been managed successfully. It is characterised by three things:
Feelings of exhaustion
An increased mental distance and negativity towards work
Reduced professional efficacy
Burnout is often confused with mental illnesses like anxiety and depression because they may cause similar feelings and symptoms. However, burnout is specifically related to the workplace and is not considered a mental illness.
In contrast, depression and anxiety have varying causes, pervade all areas of life, and need professional treatment. It’s worth bearing in mind that individuals can be suffering from burnout and mental illness simultaneously.
Look for these common signs of burnout in employees
Employees may exhibit some or all of these common signs of burnout. It’s important for you to be aware of these signs, so you can recognise when employees need support.
Decreased productivity
The usual level of performance takes a nosedive, with employees struggling to complete previously manageable tasks and meet deadlines.
Chronic fatigue
Constant tiredness is a hallmark sign of burnout. Even after a full night’s sleep, someone suffering from burnout is always tired. To you, this may come across as sluggish energy or disinterest in their work.
Emotional detachment
Another telltale sign of burnout is a withdrawal from the social aspects of work. Employees may be less willing to involve themselves in conversations with colleagues, are increasingly reserved in teamwork activities and simply don’t attend work social events.
This is because burnout can result in feelings of emotional detachment from all areas of work, even from people they’ve been close to.
Irritability and mood swings
When you know people well, it’s easy to pick up on when their moods are substantially different to their usual demeanour. People with burnout often exhibit frequent mood changes, are more easily frustrated, or are unusually short-tempered.
Decreased creativity and problem-solving ability
Burnout hampers both decision-making and creative thinking. Look out for employees who are struggling to apply their usual creativity and make a decision on work problems.
Increased absenteeism
Watch out for more frequent sick days, especially if it becomes a recognisable pattern. People with burnout often hope a short break will make things better and take time off in an attempt to ‘sort themselves out’.
Physical Symptoms
Our bodies and minds are one whole unit of being. Many people are surprised to learn that burnout can have physical symptoms like headaches, gastrointestinal issues, increased susceptibility to germs because of a weakened immune system, and the consequences of sleep deprivation.
Pay attention to staff that mention assorted ailments that increase in volume over a period of time. Physical and mental health are inextricably linked, so we need to consider employees holistically.
Lack of motivation
It’s likely that you’ll see employees lose their previous enthusiasm for work, possibly to the point where the motivation for even the most routine tasks disappears. This symptom can be misinterpreted as laziness and care needs to be taken to discuss it with compassion. Burnt-out employees are not deliberately trying to shirk their work onto someone else.
Cynicism or negative attitude
Someone who’s burnt out may express this through a generally negative attitude or cynical comments towards their specific job, their colleagues, management, or the organisation as a whole.
Feelings of inadequacy
Burnt-out employees may lose self-confidence in their work and abilities. They can continually feel that, regardless of the amount of effort they put in, they’re not achieving anything worthwhile.
How to support burnt-out employees as a manager
As a manager, your response to burnt-out employees needs to operate on two levels:
1. Immediate actions against burnout
If burnout triggers an incident at work, you need to be able to provide immediate support.
For example, an employee abandons their work and comes to you to express their difficulties. What are you going to do and say in the moment? It’s important to think this through and discuss it with senior leaders, hopefully, before it ever happens.
Consider what this person needs from you in this vulnerable position of exposing their difficulties. Firstly, they need to feel heard by someone who’s not sitting in judgement.
Secondly, they need reassurance that they don’t have to tackle this workplace burnout alone. That you’ll help them and there’s a range of support available.
2. Long-term actions against burnout
That initial interaction is important. And help like ‘take the rest of the week off’ is most likely welcome, but it’s not the whole answer employees with burnout need. It’s like using a plaster to cover a wound that needs stitches. It covers things up, but it’s not going to heal properly.
Organisations are increasingly looking at the range of support they can offer employees who suffer from burnout. If you recognise the signs of burnout in an employee, it’s time to think about and discuss what you can do together to dig out the root causes for that individual.
This includes things like:
Encourage open communication
Actively create a safe environment where employees like them can discuss their stress levels, workload and concerns – without fear of negative consequences. They need to know they can discuss feelings of burnout in the workplace with the people who can help change things for the better.
Promote work-life balance
Take notice of how much work-life balance your employees achieve and:
Enforce taking breaks
Ensure all vacation days are booked and taken
Don’t pile on additional work, if the expected workload has been achieved. This behaviour from management leads to overworking and the uncertainty of ever-changing parameters.
If you don’t step in when their work-life balance is off-kilter, it’s a tacit agreement that work should be prioritised over all else.
For example, if you see someone consistently working late, ask them why. Tackle the issues that make them feel they can’t leave things until the next day. Maybe offer help to prioritise their tasks.
This demonstrates to staff that you don’t expect them to behave this way – that you’d prefer them to have a healthy balance.
Offer flexibility
As much as possible, offer flexible working hours or remote work options. Of course, this isn’t possible for lots of businesses, simply because of how they operate. But sometimes just flexible start and finish times to the working day can make a huge difference to your employees.
For example, reducing stress for those doing the school run by saving them money on breakfast and after-school clubs, and decreasing the rising tension of ‘getting there on time’ during the daily commute.
Showing empathy and giving a practical solution in this way helps bring stress levels down and helps prevent burnout. Really the question should be, ‘Is there any reason not to offer flexible or remote working?’
Redistribute workloads
Keep an eye on how workloads are distributed across and within teams. Be particularly vigilant for individuals who are taking on too much. Tasks need to be delegated fairly and with realistic expectations of outcomes.
If workloads are consistently too much for the number of employees, either reduce the workload or take on more staff.
Set clear expectations
You can’t know you’re being successful at work if you’re not sure what you’re aiming at. Make sure employees are crystal clear on their roles, responsibilities and the outcomes you expect from them. Clarify priorities within their task list. This helps them understand where to direct their focus, especially if things get overly busy.
Provide resources for stress management
It’s a great idea to include a resources section within your Mental Health Policy. Some companies provide internal support, like:
Counselling services
Wellness programme
Stress management workshops
Meditation classes
Gym memberships
It’s also a good idea to include external sources of support that are available, that you don’t pay for. Things like: wellness apps, online learning, local classes, and numbers for various helplines that tackle specific issues.
Different people have different ways of managing stress. So it makes sense to curate the broadest range of available resources possible. That way all employees will find something useful.
Encourage professional development
Do your employees often stay in the same role, doing the same job for long periods of time? Some people are totally happy with that position. Others begin to feel like they’re stagnating, which is often the start of burnout.
To make sure everyone has a sense of purpose and feels like they’re growing at work, facilitate professional development. Training and mentorship are obvious options, but also ask them if they’ve seen anything they’d like to pursue that you can help make happen.
Foster a positive work culture
No, this isn’t as easy as it sounds, we know. But the culture of an organisation starts at the top. Promoting a positive work culture means you:
Celebrate achievements
Thank people for their effort, as well as their work product
Value people’s individual skills and personalities by openly acknowledging their ‘soft skills’ contributions
Always use respectful language and appropriate tones of voice
Collaborate with other colleagues and recognise the part teamwork plays in the organisation’s successes
You are the example to everyone else in your organisation. If you regularly do these things, others will take your lead and you’re more likely to create a positive work environment that keeps workplace stress and burnout at bay.
Lead by example
One way to bolster honest communication is to talk about your struggles with work-life balance, previous colleagues, clients, your mental health, or recurring physical health issues. You also need to model healthy work habits, like taking breaks and leaving at a reasonable time.
This is not the time for ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ Show the importance of balance by sticking to the same rules as everyone else, maintaining your own boundaries, and truly leading by example. If you’re leaving when you said you would, it’s OK for them to leave at the appointed time, too.
Provide time for recovery
Have a recovery plan specifically for burnout. Encourage the individual to recharge during some time off, then perhaps have a staggered return.
This might look like part-time hours for the first couple of weeks before they go back to full-time hours. Or perhaps they return to full-time hours, but you adjust their workload to avoid instant overwhelm.
Regularly check-in
Make sure you regularly check in with employees who have returned after being burnt out. Things rarely resolve immediately, overnight. Keep the dialogue open and make any necessary changes for long-term support.
Professional burnout and mental health training for employees
You’re not on your own. Managers everywhere are implementing strategies to prevent burnout and support systems for employees who are suffering from the syndrome.
Resilient People can help with various training packages and continued support that’s specific to your organisation’s needs.
These are just some of the options you can choose from:
Aware: Half a day, for all staff, to raise awareness of mental health issues in the workplace
Thrive: Half a day, for all staff, equip everyone with the knowledge to spot the signs of potential mental health problems and know what steps to take
Respond: Full day, for managers and team leaders, delivers a foundation of mental health, psychology and well-being knowledge for you to take back and apply in a holistic approach to mental health in the workplace.
Mental Health First Aid: 2 days, accredited, trains designated people to be mental health first aiders
Trauma Risk Management: 2 different courses, 1 for practitioners that lasts 2 days. 1 for managers that takes 3 days. Specific training on how to deal with trauma in the workplace.
Give us a call today and we’ll figure out what’s best for your team.
It’s a given that taking care of people’s physical health is an important part of making sure employees realise their full potential and companies thrive, yet many businesses are still unaware of how to carry out a mental health risk assessment.
And while most organisations are on their way to accepting that mental health is just as crucial, there’s a big difference between being committed to the idea of mental health support and actually putting it into practice.
That’s where a mental health risk assessment comes into play to boost your business through happier, healthier employees. It gives you an opportunity to support, understand, and make reasonable adjustments to people who are dealing with mental ill health.
In this blog post, we go into how you can identify potential mental health risks, evaluate their impact, and how you can implement measures to mitigate these risks in your workplace such as Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training.
What is a mental health risk assessment and why is it important?
A mental health risk assessment is your internal procedure to identify, evaluate, and address risks to the mental health of the people in your organisation.
The prospect of defining your organisation’s mental health risk assessment can be somewhat daunting. There are several legal obligations to meet and the issues themselves are of a delicate, personal nature.
But this can be an incredibly positive experience because, at its very core, you’re finding the best way to look after your employees.
It’s not just individual employees who benefit from robust mental health risk assessments and supporting policies. Healthier staff usually means a healthier bottom line too!
Benefits to your business include:
Less sickness absenteeism
Reduced staff turnover
Increased productivity
Step 1: Identify potential mental health risks for your employees
It divides the experience of work into 6 key areas that are connected to:
Increased absences due to sickness
Higher accident rates
Lower productivity
Poor health
It’s your good management of these 6 areas that make sure your workers have the opposite experience.
What are the HSE 6 key areas of work design?
1. Demands
When employees have high-pressure roles with big demands, it can cause a strain on their mental health. People feel like they are constantly failing and under pressure if they’re overloaded with too much, or the wrong type of, work.
When you properly manage employee demands, they feel that they can cope with the workload, work patterns and work environment of their job.
How to ensure demands are not causing poor mental health:
Ensure employees understand what they have to do and how to do it
Regularly assess if the demands and deadlines of the work are achievable
Update training as required
Match your staff’s abilities and skills to the requirements of each role
Evaluate the idea of flexible working hours as a way to manage demand on employees
2. Control
If people lose autonomy and control over their work, they become disengaged and less productive – especially if there’s no obvious way to grow and advance.
You should avoid micromanaging and ensure that employees feel they have a say in how they do their work.
How to give employees adequate control:
Involve employees in decisions about work patterns, breaks, and workloads
Encourage employees to use their existing skills and take initiative, and to learn and apply new skills that put them in the position to advance to more complex jobs
3. Support
If employees feel that they have no one to talk to about workplace issues, they can’t see any resolution to those problems. This lack of support likely leads to an increase in sickness absence, as people can no longer tolerate a situation they see no way out of.
Instead, you want employees to feel that they get the right level of information and support from both their immediate colleagues and senior leaders.
How to offer the right support:
Your organisation has policies, procedures, and systems in place to support employees – particularly in terms of what support is available and how to access it
Your management team have clear systems to support their teams
Your employees know how they can look after each other
Regular formal and informal feedback helps to identify any resources employees may need to do their job to their best
4. Relationships
Anything relating to poor relationships is a high cause of workplace stress. Discipline issues, frequent grievances between staff and bullying exist when there hasn’t been enough investment in building a positive working environment.
To create a good workplace culture with healthy relationships, you need all colleagues and managers to act professionally and shut down unacceptable behaviour immediately.
How to maintain good workplace relationships:
Zero tolerance of any bullying or harassment behaviours in your organisation
Active promotion of positive workplace behaviours to promote fairness and cooperation
Clear systems for reporting and dealing with unacceptable behaviour, for employees and managers
5. Role
People feel nervous and anxious about their job if you don’t set clear expectations about their role. Everyone in your organisation needs to understand their role and responsibilities and be kept in the loop if anything changes.
How to set clear employee roles:
Make sure every role has a clear set of requirements and responsibilities: job description, induction checklist, and new employee job specification statements
Make it clear who employees should go to if they have questions about their roles and responsibilities
Explain how each role fits into the success of the wider organisation
Update your team if any roles change and how it impacts them
6. Change
Any changes at work can be incredibly stressful for employees, particularly if there’s a risk to their job security. The worry of uncertainty in the organisation’s future reduces people’s ability to focus on their work.
You want employees to feel that they’re kept in the loop during times of change, though regular, clear communication.
How to positively approach change:
Explain the reasons behind changes to employees, ideally with time to process what they mean for them
Consult with staff about prospective changes to get their ideas and so they feel invested in the new thing, rather than just someone that has to deal with the fallout
Give clear timetables for when any changes are becoming reality and support for any job changes this causes.
A key factor for all these 6 areas is that there’s a well-understood system in place to hear and address employees’ concerns with any of these issues.
Being listened to and seeing action taken around individual issues is essential to mitigating workplace stress.
How to measure mental health risks at work
These 6 factors – and any other elements that are important in your organisation – can be measured in a number of ways, such as:
Questionnaires and surveys
Focus groups
Observations
1:1 interviews
Reviewing employee records – employee turnover rates, exit interviews, and absenteeism rates
Using the data insights from both qualitative and quantitative research is a powerful way to get an accurate picture of your organisation’s current risks to good mental health.
Step 2: Evaluate the impact of those identified risks
Let’s be honest, you were probably muttering ‘Yes, we already do that’ as you read through that list!
Of course, you’re already taking care of your employees’ mental health and making sure you’ve reduced the level of workplace stress for as many people as possible…
But even when you already know the inner workings of your organisation, using the HSE framework gives you a panoramic perspective on your employees’ experience and spot any workplace risks to employee mental health.
You can now evaluate the impact of those risks and put control measures in place to reduce or remove them.
Assessing severity and likelihood
You need to consider the likelihood of each risk happening and your proposed controls.
It’s easier to see the big picture by using a table, grid or other visual framework to map out your risk matrix for mental health. You’ve probably already got something similar for physical risk assessments.
However you decide to present it, your mental health risk matrix has all the key information in one place, including:
Risk: All the risks to employees mental health
Impact: Their impact on individuals, other staff, and the organisation, if they occur
Likelihood: What are the chances of them actually happening?
Controls: What you put in place to mitigate or eradicate the risk
Prioritising risks
It makes sense to focus resources and attention on the highest-impact risks that either affect the highest number of employees or have the most severe consequences.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t recognise the importance of other risks, but it indicates where to start as you tackle the risks to employee mental health you have identified.
Legal compliance considerations
Legal compliance underpins all your policies, and mental health is no exception. Just as with physical health, you have a legal responsibility to help employees with mental health. This applies whether work is causing workplace stress or exacerbating an existing mental illness.
It’s also your responsibility as an employer to minimise the risk of work related stress by identifying any risks and mitigating them as much as possible.
The current UK laws relevant to your management of your employees’ mental health at work are:
Step 3: Implement measures to mitigate mental health risks
Risk assessments are one thing, but it’s action that makes the real difference. You’ve moved through a lot of important steps already:
A full mental health risk assessment to identify areas of risk in your organisation
Considering the impact of each identified risk
Evaluating the likelihood and severity of each identified risk
Prioritising the order in which to tackle the risks
Now you’re at the action plan stage. You need to plan what you’re going to do, who’s responsible for this action point, and the timeline for getting things done. This needs to be clearly articulated for each of the risks you identified during your mental health risk assessment.
Organisations often invest in professional training to support whole staff mental health awareness development. Sometimes issues can be resolved with simple adjustments to work patterns or communications.
It’s a great way to kick off education around mental health awareness, spotting signs and symptoms of mental ill health, and workplace stress management techniques.
Mental Health Policy Development
It’s important that your documentation is fully interconnected. This means using the information from your risk assessments to inform your DEI policy, bullying and harassment policy, and any other policies where you see relevance – not just creating or updating a specific Mental Health policy.
You need to make sure your policies don’t just sit in a Health and Safety folder until something goes wrong.
Your mental health policy needs to be a working document that people in your organisation understand and feel they can contribute to.
Just like your policies for physical health and safety, when things change – either within your organisation or externally – update the policy accordingly.
Employee support services
Many organisations include employee support services that offer professional support for good mental health. For example:
Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs): Providing access to counselling and mental health resources. This might be simply signposting all the locally available support there is and curating it in one place for your employees to easily access. Other organisations may be able to invest in actual on-site, or paid-for counselling services for their staff.
Wellness Programs: Promoting physical health activities that can improve mental well-being. This might look like free yoga classes at the end of the working day, or subsidised membership to the local gym. Again, even just doing the ‘finding out’ and putting all the available local activities into one list is positive input from an employer.
Workload management
Workload management can be tricky because it can be quite nuanced. But it’s essential to hear how your staff are feeling about their workload, and type of work, in order to avoid burnout and eventual resignation.
Even slight adjustments, like flexible start and finish times, can make all the difference to productivity and good staff mental health.
Improve employee communication and involvement
Honest communication is at the heart of understanding your employees. You need to know:
What will help them avoid workplace stress?
How you can support them in times of mental ill health?
These are difficult things to talk about, so trust needs to be built by regular check-ins and employees being involved in developing solutions. They need to know that you will listen empathically, maintain confidentiality, and together find practical and effective ways forward.
Regularly review your mental health risk assessments
A mental health risk assessment isn’t a ‘one and done’ thing. Like any other risk assessment, time for review and adjustment needs to be put in the diary.
Situations change, people experience unexpected trauma or mental ill health, work environments need to adapt to a new challenge, so ongoing mental health risk assessments need to incorporate all those things.
Whatever review structure you already have in place for other areas of your business are likely to be helpful with this. Figure out how you’re going to measure the success of your risk management measures, how you’re going to get feedback from employees, and embed the expectation that this will be reassessed on an ongoing basis.
Take a proactive approach to mental health risk assessments
As managers, you have a brilliant opportunity to add another layer of protection for your staff through your mental health risk assessment process. It will become another reason why your people love working in your organisation.
Hopefully, this has helped you envisage a framework to build out your mental health risk assessments. Resilient People are here to back up your bold leadership with expert training and support – for you and your employees.
Let’s have a chat about how we can help you support good mental health in your organisation.
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
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:
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.
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
“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…
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.
Before we can protect our employees from physical danger, we must understand the threat and assess the risks involved. Then we can provide effective protection.
Likewise – before we can create a trauma-informed workplace environment, we must understand what trauma means and evaluate its impact on our workforce.
A quick look at ‘trauma’ as a Google search term, demonstrates the rise in interest in the topic from an interest value of 31 in the UK in 2019, to 63 in 2024. That means there’s over double the amount of people searching for ‘trauma’ today than 5 years ago.
While this indicates there are more discussions and awareness around trauma, it can also result in the diffusion of meaning. That’s why establishing the definitions of what we mean by ‘trauma’ and ‘trauma-informed training’ is so important.
In this article, you’ll find:
Definition of trauma and it’s context
Experiences that can cause trauma – including specific workplace trauma
Effects of trauma on your employees
How widespread trauma is among your employees
The importance of trauma-informed training in the workplace
Expert trauma-informed workplace training with Resilient People
TW: In this article you’ll read a list of different events that can cause trauma, and references to emotions and behaviours that can be induced by experiencing a traumatic event, this includes suicide.
It also includes statistical information about fatal workplace accidents and non-fatal workplace injuries. Consider whether this is the right time for you to read this, before you go any further.
Understanding the impact trauma has on your employees
Words matter. You need everyone to have a shared understanding of what ‘trauma’ means, before you can build a trauma-informed workplace.
What is trauma?
In a 2022 article for Vox, ‘How trauma became the word of the decade’, Lexi Pandell explores how, “The very real psychiatric term has become so omnipresent in pop culture that some experts worry it’s losing its meaning.”
She discusses the various research done through the 1990s into the specifics of different traumatic experiences – like ‘generational trauma’ and ‘collective trauma’.
And then the world went online. As she says: “It didn’t take long after researchers began to grasp the concept of trauma for the nation to reach a flashpoint: trauma as trend.”
Now, we hear the word ‘traumatic’ used to describe a really long tailback on the motorway. Or someone telling you about their recent trip to the supermarket exclaims, “What a trauma that was!”
Trauma has become a term to overstate an everyday inconvenience – often for comic effect.
But it’s also used more seriously in news reports, particularly around stories involving someone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
What’s your employees’ existing understanding of ‘trauma’?
Your employees arrive at any trauma-informed workplace training with a confused definition, where only the most extreme symptoms of trauma response are common knowledge.
Building a genuinely trauma-informed environment begins with a clear, shared understanding of what ‘trauma’ actually means – with all its nuances.
It doesn’t help that even mental health professionals don’t have one clear definition. So we look to our policy makers for clarity. In its 2022 guidance, ‘Working definition of trauma-informed practice’, the UK government defines trauma as:
“Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as harmful or life threatening.
While unique to the individual, generally the experience of trauma can cause lasting adverse effects, limiting the ability to function and achieve mental, physical, social, emotional or spiritual well-being.”
“There’s no rule about what experiences can be traumatic. It’s more about how you react to them.
What’s traumatic is personal. Other people can’t know how you feel about your own experiences or if they’re traumatic for you. You might have similar experiences to someone else, but be affected differently or for longer.”
They list all feelings that a traumatic event can generate, like fear, shame, humiliation and invalidation.
Importantly, Mind also defines the different ways that trauma can happen – it’s not always caused by a one-off tragedy.
You may experience trauma from ongoing situations, childhood experiences, living or working in a traumatic environment, or from historical trauma in your family or community.
A traumatic event includes things like:
A near-death experience
Witnessing someone else’s death
Serious accidents
Complications during childbirth
Serious illness diagnosis
Physical or sexual assault
War or conflict
Natural disasters, like flooding or fire
Terrorist attacks
Workplace trauma
Workplace trauma can also start from one incident or from enduring repeated stress over time.
Situations that can cause workplace trauma are:
Moral injury: When you’re put in a position that goes against your sense of integrity – that’s in opposition to your values, beliefs or morals. This can happen when there are poor safety practices, a lack of resources, rules that don’t look out for everyone’s best interest, you’re part of a failing system that you aren’t in a position to fix, or you witness regular immoral or dangerous behaviour from other colleagues or senior leaders.
Financial insecurity: You’re only contracted from project to project, you’re concerned about losing your job, you see no pathway to promotion – all of these things create a constant lack of job security.
Bullying or harassment: This takes many forms – including extremely subtle tactics – and causes severe distress.
Witnessing criminality: Seeing regular criminal acts, including violence, in your workplace is incredibly stressful.
Unfairness: Treatment that persistently discriminates against, or ignores, an individual or group of people – in practice or policy.
Absence of support: Lack of support from colleagues, immediate supervisors, senior management or the company as an entity.
Physical injury or fatal accident: Having an accident, or witnessing harm to someone else, is a common source of workplace trauma in several industries.
To fully support all your employees, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are certain groups of people who are considered more likely to experience trauma than others, or experience it more frequently, including:
People react to traumatic events in their own way, so the effects of that trauma can vary enormously person-to-person. They include a range of physical and emotional reactions that affect how people behave.
Physical reactions to trauma
Our body can have physical reactions to a traumatic event like, headaches, shaking, tiredness, randomly placed aches and pains, changing appetite, memory issues, dizziness.
Emotional reactions to trauma
Traumatic events can cause a range of emotional reactions, including:
Self-blame, shame, guilt
Anger, fear, panic, shock, horror, betrayal
Grief and sadness
Hypervigilance
Confusion, loss of memory
Disconnected and numb to any emotions, including positive ones
A workplace trauma can leave people questioning not just their own purpose in life, but how they perceive who they work for.
“Not doing or being interested in things you used to enjoy
Feeling detached from other people
Acting in ways that are reckless or self-destructive
Being angry and aggressive towards people or things
Being hypervigilant, or ‘on guard’”
All of these may become apparent in the workplace, as well as at home – especially if the traumatic event happened at work.
For example, a train driver being involved in a suicide, or construction workers that witness the fatal accident of a colleague.
Productivity at work after a traumatic event
If your sleep is plagued with dreams, you’re constantly worried about having another flashback, you’re struggling to contain difficult feelings and your memory is fuzzy – it’s unlikely that you’re going to be working to your full potential.
An individual’s productivity level may well decrease as they tackle their trauma. But the right trauma-informed training within your organisation ensures that they are safe while they heal and get back on form.
Each of your employees will try and deal with their personal reactions in their own way. Some people use drugs and/or alcohol to self-medicate the physical and emotional effects. Others might use self-harm to self-soothe their pain.
Trauma can leave people unable to meet their own basic needs, like personal hygiene, clothes and home cleanliness, and eating properly. Suicidal thoughts can become constant for people dealing with trauma – including thinking about ways to take your own life.
How widespread is trauma among your employees?
‘Trauma experience’ isn’t usually something that’s often measured. But what we can do is look at what causes traumatic events in your industry and see how likely they are to impact your employees.
Rate of fatal injuries in the construction industry is 4.2 times that of all industries
45 fatal injuries to construction workers in 2022-23, 3 fatal injuries to members of the public on sites
51% of fatalities resulted from falls from heights, 12% trapped by collapse or overturned vehicle, 10% hit by a moving or falling object, 10% hit by a moving vehicle, 6% electricity
Between 2020-2023, 53,000 non-fatal injuries, 28% required 7+ days off work
Total cost in 2021-22, £1.3bn, which accounts for 6% of the total cost of all work-related ill health and injury
Reasons for self-reported work-related ill health: 54% musculoskeletal disorders, 24% stress/depression/anxiety, 23% other
Looking at just those two industries’ figures for non-fatal and non-reportable injuries shows how regularly employees are experiencing or witnessing just that one type of traumatic event.
What’s the HSE report for your industry? The starkness of the numbers really illuminates the potential scale of the trauma suffered by your employees as they go about their everyday job.
Just as you diligently mitigate physical risks, the right training helps you build structured support for those impacted by trauma.
The importance of expert trauma-informed workplace training
By investing in trauma-informed workplace training, you’re leading your team towards a compassionate and psychologically safe environment. It helps your people confidently look out for each other after a traumatic event, which means that individuals can access the help they need more quickly.
And your business benefits by having less staff turnover, increased productivity from healthier staff, and an atmosphere for real growth and innovation.
If you want to understand more about how to support employees with any potential workplace trauma, the TRIM courses we provide are perfect. Get in touch for a chat about the best trauma-informed training for your organisation’s needs.
Anxiety is the focus of Mental Health week in 2023 and here we explore how it impacts on the Workplace
Background
Anxiety is a widespread and serious issue facing millions of UK employees today. It often goes undiagnosed and unsupported, leading to negative impacts on both mental health and work productivity. In the workplace, employees suffering with anxiety can experience a broad range of issues, including difficulty concentrating, increased stress levels, and decreased job satisfaction.
The Problem
For those suffering from anxiety, even simple tasks can become overwhelming, significantly impacting their ability to accomplish their job responsibilities. As a result, employees may feel isolated from their colleagues, leading to a sense of detachment and disengagement from the workplace. Furthermore, anxiety may cause employees to become fatigued, especially regarding decision-making, which can lead to poor job performance, low morale, and even job loss.
Improving the Situation
It’s becoming more of an accepted fact that employers today need to prioritise workplace wellness by taking proactive measures to support their employees’ mental health. By investing in initiatives that prioritise mental health, such as Line Manager Training and Mental Health First Aid, employees are provided with the necessary resources to manage their anxiety more proactively. Additionally, workplaces that foster a supportive work environment that allows for open communication about mental health issues can help reduce the stigma surrounding anxiety and encourage employees to seek help when needed.
Next Step
If you would like to learn more about how Resilient People can support your organisation’s mental health plans simply use the website’s contact box and we’ll be back in touch pretty quick!
We also have a free poster to download and share with your colleagues, if you would like https://tinyurl.com/4mryveh2
Imagine this scenario: an employee has fallen and broken their leg. What would happen in your organisation?
Obviously, the company would fulfil their legal and moral obligation, to treat the injury with a first aider until appropriate medical intervention is available; allowances would be made for the employee, taking into account the impact their injury will have upon their work and performance; recognition would be given to the fact that getting into work on a morning would be more of a challenge; as they would not able to competently complete some of their jobs due to their injury, changes to work would need to be made.
Now imagine that in this scenario, the employee has not broken their leg, but is suffering from a mental health condition. Their condition is not visible, but its implications on their performance at work will be just as significant.
Would you know what to do if a member of your team needed support with a mental health condition?
How would you respond to an anxiety attack, for example?
If you yourself had a mental health condition, would you know what support was available or who to turn to in your workplace?
These are the kinds of questions employers need to be asking themselves. Mental health is a hot topic and it’s not surprising when 1 in 4 adults will be diagnosed with a mental health condition this year.
What is Mental Health First Aid?
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) raises awareness and increases understanding of mental health conditions in the workplace. Over two days, delegates are trained in spotting signs and symptoms of common conditions, supporting someone with poor mental health and signposting appropriate help and support.
These ‘Wellbeing Champions’ can be from anywhere within your business and will be the ‘go to’ people for mental health support in your workplace. They will be joining a community of over 2.6 million MHFA-trained people in twenty-five countries around the world.
Currently, there is no legal obligation to provide MHFA in the workplace, but employers do have a duty to provide their employees with a safe working environment and must take reasonable care to prevent personal injury within the workplace. It is easy to see why many people believe that First Aid and Mental First Aid should be given equal importance in the place.
What impact can Mental Health First Aid have on my organisation?
The largest cause for staff absence is depression, stress and anxiety. Training Mental Health First Aiders increases awareness of signs and symptoms of mental health conditions, meaning they can be identified and tackled earlier. It also reduces the stigma around mental health in the workplace, meaning that people feel safer to seek help.
Where can I find more information?
Learn more about Mental Health First Aid and how it can help your business by contacting Resilient People on [email protected] or following us on Twitter @GetResilientUK to find out more about our open courses or on-site training delivery options.
How would you deal with career disruption? How resilient would you be to a change of direction? The author of this article proposes six steps for building your career resilience. These steps will help you deal with any unplanned career changes, whether that’s being laid off or experiencing a major life event which affects your career choices.
Be adaptable
Being open to change is important for career success. Some behaviours that help develop an open mindset include proactively learning new skills, believing in your ability to succeed and taking risks.
Use and apply your skills
After attending training, do you typically forget the new skills when you return to the workplace, or do you try to put the new skills you’ve learnt into practice? It takes grit to continuously practice and hone new skills to achieve a goal. The author cites work by Angela Duckworth, a Harvard University researcher who has identified ‘grit’ as one of the key traits that predicts success in life.
Build a strong network
The author points out that starting to build relationships when you’re unemployed is too late. She references a 2001 report by Monica Higgins and Kathy Kram who found a strong network needs quality and diversity. Quality is not just about building relationships with influential people; it’s also how good these relationship are. Diversity means having a wide-ranging network of people at different organisation levels and from different sectors to provide alternative perspectives. The author makes the point that networking isn’t just about adding connections on LinkedIn, but it’s about meaningful relationships where you also contribute ideas and provide support.
Maintain your health and balance
Looking after your own well-being during any major life transition or event needs to be your priority. You need to take time to rebuild your strength and your buoyancy. Changes can be unexpected and may be a result of a family event affecting your professional life. Don’t underestimate the need to focus on your health and the importance of addressing any negative self-talk.
Follow your instincts
The resilience literature highlights the importance of self-efficacy and self-perception to a person’s career success and their willingness to try new things. What does your instinct tell you is the right avenue for you at the current time and where you want to be in the future?
Control yourself
Angela Duckworth identified self-control as another predictor of success in life, alongside grit. Being able to regulate your behavioural and emotional impulses is vital, but needs to be paired with a determination to succeed in what you do. Overall, to be career resilient, we need to have self-discipline, take opportunities to develop, be mindful of the need to be adaptable, build a strong network and believe in our ability to weather the times when we get blown off course.
We are feeling honoured and excited to be delivering a presentation based on one of our sessions on Building Resilience today at the Civic Hall in Leeds for the Mental Health Charity MIND and Mindful Employer.
We hope that everyone who is attending the presentation enjoys it and finds what we have to share with you interesting.