Understanding and Addressing Trauma and Stress in the Workplace

While programs like Bell’s Let’s Talk campaign have helped reduce the stigma around mental health, several indicators show that Canadians still have a lot to learn. There are many different facets of mental health in the workplace, and the terminology used to describe them can be confusing.

Trauma is a good example. It is a hot topic for many workplace mental health stakeholders who see the impact it has on productivity, but many Canadians still don’t fully understand what trauma is or how to prevent and address it.

CAMH defines trauma as “the lasting emotional response that often results from experiencing a distressing event. Trauma can harm a person’s sense of safety, sense of self, and ability to regulate emotions and navigate relationships.”

The word trauma is most commonly used to describe a horrific event (e.g., accidents, violent or criminal acts) that affects us at work; others consider trauma to be a synonym for severe stresses at work. Trauma means different things to different people.  When considering trauma, we consider several factors, including whether the role has unavoidable risks of psychological hazards or traumas.  Think of roles such first responders or hospital ER workers.  Perhaps the role has risks of traumas from accidents (think manufacturing or working with dangerous equipment).  A less commonly thought of trauma is conflicts with customers, coworkers or your organization itself.

We do not contend that these traumas are equivalent in severity and frequency.  Some are situational and rare, others are common.  Some are ongoing. We also note the ability of the employee to resist the impacts of such trauma also varies considerably – the average first responder, teacher or hospital worker is likely more resilient often due to a process of self-selection.  That is, you usually don’t pick those roles if you can’t take the inherent hazards, and for those who do make that choice and lack that capacity, they often leave the sector early in their careers (or they risk long-term burnout if they stay).

In this article, we’ll focus on preventable behavioural trauma.  This is often less severe in the moment (compared to say, first responders), but our research has shown it is fairly widespread in many sectors -and lasting.  The leading factors for preventable trauma are stress, client related, coworker and organizational experiences.

A note on Stress: It is an everyday experience and is a healthy response to challenges. Removing stress from the workplace would be impossible; we all experience a degree of stress in a day. However, what is reasonable is different for everyone.  Excessive stress is a driver of burnout; it is characterized by the inability to focus, continual low energy, and general apathy towards work, and in rare instances, it can be characterized as a trauma.

Behavioural workplace trauma is within our control

There hasn’t been much research on this kind of trauma and stress in the workplace, and surprisingly, few studies have occurred in our post-pandemic world. However, in mid-2023, Mental Health Research Canada had the opportunity to begin to bridge this gap. In partnership with Workplace Strategies for Mental Health and Canada Life, we surveyed over 5,500 working Canadians to study the indicators of trauma and stress in Canadian workplaces. This includes an extensive variety of employment situations from first responders to retail to finance, and both types of trauma.

[See: Trauma and Stress in the Workplace, Mental Health Research Canada]

Over a quarter of respondents felt that people at work don’t often or always recognize the importance of protecting employees’ physical safety, and 45% said the same about psychological safety. The sizeable gap between concern over physical safety and psychological safety is simply unacceptable. When it comes to trauma, the survey revealed that:

• 22% of respondents reported exposure to (any kind of) trauma at work.  This was not surprisingly higher among First Responders (66%), Healthcare (40%) and Educators (29%).  For many of the sectors where trauma is not inherent, they mostly range from 13% to 15% of the working population exposed to trauma.

• 20% of respondents indicated that the nature of their job involves unavoidable risk of psychological harm.  This was not surprisingly very high among First Responders (71%) and low among most other sectors (approximately 12 to 15%).

• Looking across all sectors, clients (46%), coworkers (29%), and direct managers (27%) are the most frequent sources of workplace trauma

Individuals who experienced trauma driven by clients or customers were more likely to have resolved the issue or moved on. However, trauma caused by coworkers, direct managers, senior executives, workplace policies, or compromised values is far more likely to linger or cause residual issues. You can move on from clients or customers, but you continue to work with coworkers, managers and executives.

Prevention strategies are essential to protect employees from lasting harm

The majority of respondents in low-risk environments indicated that trauma is driven by policy, customers, managers, and coworkers. Only respondents from manufacturing and first responders indicated that they experienced trauma as the result of a workplace accident, which tells us that preventing trauma in the workplace is within our control. 

Strategies should include both external and internally driven traumas. Many trauma strategies start with external clients and preventing accidents instead of focusing on the primary drivers of trauma at work — interpersonal conflicts, misalignment of company values with personal values, and inappropriate actions by managers.

Avoiding trauma wherever possible is the most cost-effective means of addressing this issue. Your strategy should account for instances where individuals feel their values are compromised and ensure managers are held accountable for their team interactions. Simple but important policies, like a Code of Conduct to articulate appropriate workplace behaviours are increasingly needed.  In addition, you should consider:

• Building emotional literacy (providing employees with the language to talk about this)

• Crisis management training for leaders and staff

• Creating a program to support employees experiencing trauma

• Training employees in trauma and peer support

• Developing a trauma-informed response playbook

[For more tips, read: How to Build a Trauma-Informed Workplace Culture]

Employees shouldn’t shoulder the burden of recovering from trauma alone

When trauma does occur, many workplaces rely on their Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) and group benefits programs to support employees and hope that they will minimize psychological harm.  Our research shows that very few workplaces have the expertise to address trauma in-house however relying on these supports alone is risky.

Many respondents said they didn’t understand what an EAP was for, and those who did contact their EAP provider were unable to access support due to a surge in demand and insufficient capacity to help.  EAPs are helpful but not a comprehensive plan for dealing with trauma.

Group benefits were helpful; however, many respondents indicated that they struggled to find qualified experts available to support them, and when they did succeed in connecting with a professional, their coverage allowed for fewer sessions than needed. Like EAPs, group benefits are helpful but not something that should be fully relied upon and often not useful for many types of interpersonal conflict.

As Kristy Cork points out in this post, “We shouldn’t expect employees to shoulder the burden of ‘getting better’ on their own. We wouldn’t tell workers experiencing physical health and safety issues to go away on their own and work on it and get stronger; we modify work processes and the environment and provide training to keep them safe.”  Prevention is cheaper and easier than treatment.

These challenges in treating trauma underscore the need to prevent it first and foremost, and respond quickly when someone is harmed to mitigate impact, rather than dealing with it after the fact. By educating your leadership team and employees, setting clear guidelines, providing training and developing a solid strategy to prevent trauma and deal with it swiftly when it does occur, you can build a workplace that is psychologically safe and supportive.

Get to know the authors - Michael Cooper