Understanding trauma in the workplace and how it affects employees

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.”

This definition is our foundation.

What experiences cause trauma?

The mental health charity, Mind, highlights the personal nature of trauma:

“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:

• LGBTIA+
• Part of an ethnic minority group
• Serving members of the military
• Military veterans
• Serving a prison sentence
• Ex-offenders
• Refugees
• Asylum seekers
• People living in poverty

Effects of trauma on your employees

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.

Behavioural changes after a traumatic event

According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, new behaviours resulting from trauma may include:

• “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.

Trauma in the construction industry

Based on the HSE’s ‘Construction statistics in Great Britain, 2023’ report:

• 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

Trauma in train workers

From the Office of Rail and Road’s ‘Rail Safety’ report for 2022-23:

Fatalities

• Mainline train workers: 2
• Mainline passengers/public: 10
• Trespassers: 10
• London Underground passengers/public: 2

All reportable injuries

• Mainline train workers: 4,251
• Mainline passengers/public: 5,588
• Trespassers: 62
• London Underground workers: 947
• London Underground passengers/public: 3,625
• London Underground trespassers: 18

Shock and trauma

• Mainline train workers: 799
• London Underground workers: 199

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.