Building Trauma Informed Workplaces — It All Starts with Safety

This is part one of the series on building Trauma Informed workplaces; introduced last week. If you haven’t read the introductory article, you can read it here.

Our goal is to build workplace cultures that are trauma informed; where everyone has an opportunity to be successful, regardless of how they may have been affected by trauma.

To do this, I am reinterpreting the trauma informed care principles created by SAMHSA. Focusing on internal organizational culture and more industry neutral terminology.

These principles are as follows: Safety, Trust & Transparency, Community, Collaboration, Empowerment, Humility & Responsiveness, and Cultural, Historical, & Gender issues.

Today we start by discussing Safety. Safety is the foundation of a trauma informed culture; because when we are unsafe, it’s hard to be focused on much else.

More likely than not, you’ve talked about safety at work. However, most likely those discussions were focused on a single aspect of safety, versus the overarching concept as it relates to building a trauma informed workplace culture.

As we look at Safety in the context of trauma informed workplaces, it is best represented by a three-legged stool.

Safety is built by the three legs of physical safety, psychological safety, and financial safety. If any of the three are missing or damaged- your stool won’t work and you won’t be able to build a robust, trauma informed culture on it.

Let’s look at each of the three components of overall safety in more detail.

Physical Safety

Perhaps it is my years in the construction industry, but when I think of the term safety, I think of physical safety.

Physical safety refers to protection from the threat of physical harm from conducting your work, violence, or disasters. Think of keeping your physical body safe when we talk about physical safety.

Occupational Safety

Occupational safety is a key component of ensuring physical safety. Especially in workplace environments and industries where performing the work can prove dangerous.

To ensure occupational safety, proper training, tools, and equipment are important. Because of the broad range of roles performed in the workplace, occupational safety has a broad scope. At its core, each employee should have everything they need to perform their work safely for themselves and those around then. Requirements to meet both compliance for occupational safety standards and to meet the needs of your team can vary widely by industry and organization.

To learn more, check out the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)and the Occupational Safety and Health Organization (OSHA). There are also countless, knowledgeable, and experienced occupational safety professionals who specialize in this work and can be great in supporting action for your organization.

Emergency Preparedness, Response, & Security

Unfortunately, a reality of our current environment is a need to plan and prepare for emergencies. These include natural events (e.g., tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes), diseases, or acts of violence.

Preparation and planning are key- while the hope is that you will never be faced with such issues, hope is not a strategy. Preparation however, is.

It is also important to note, that experience with violence, threat of violence, or natural disasters may be trauma that one or more of your team members brings with them, making effective planning and transparency around preparedness key.

Make sure you have plans that are updated, clear, and accessible for your team- and everyone understands their role in a response. A caution here is to balance the need to plan with overwhelming your team with the idea of a constant threat — this is delicate, as the reminder might be triggering.

Psychological Safety

Discussions of psychological safety in the workplace have increased exponentially in recent years, and for good reason.

Psychological safety is the feeling or belief that you will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with questions, ideas, concerns, and opinions.

Team psychological safety is a shared belief held by members of a team that it’s OK to take risks, to express their ideas and concerns, to speak up with questions, and to admit mistakes — all without fear of negative consequences -it’s felt permission for candor.

Why has the discussion of psychological safety gained so much popularity in recent years? Well, it’s all in the numbers. Leading psychological safety researcher, Amy Edmundson, has been showcasing the link between psychological safety and high performance for years with her research. I recommend her book — The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth if you’d like to learn more.

Additionally, in Google’s quest to build the perfect team, their research also showcased the importance of psychological safety- noting it as the highest determinant of team success of any other factor. Despite the power of psychological safety, it’s existence in many teams and organizations falls far below expectations.

So how can teams and organizations build psychological safety? Well, the good news is that with all the recent research, there is far more available in terms of resources.

The most impactful step is to invest in leadership training at all levels that prioritizes leadership traits associated with creating psychological safety — such as emotional intelligence, situational and cultural awareness, consultative leadership, etc. Because psychological safety naturally exists at the group level- leadership behaviors are key in fostering it across your organization.

Another great resource comes from the team at Google who worked on the research that pointed to the power of psychological safety. You can access their great set of tools here as an excellent place to start.

Financial Safety

This one may be surprising to see as part of overall safety as it is not often discussed outright in organizational/ work settings. Nevertheless, it’s importance is undeniable. Think about the last time you had a significant or major financial worry. How much did that worry affect you- both personally and professionally? Chances are, quite a bit.

So, imagine how ongoing financial insecurity or just a single event where your financial safety is compromised may also impact your wellbeing.

Ongoing financial insecurity might be debt, increased costs of living, lack of livable wage, losing income. An event could be a significant financial loss or unexpected expense or credit card fraud.

Despite not being a popular topic of organizational conversations, many organizations do an excellent job addressing financial safety for their employees. That said, there are many that do not provide adequate supports for financial safety- and often it is for those employers working with lower-income employees, who often need the support most.

Livable wages, paid time off, sick leave, short term and long-term disability are baseline offerings that organizations can provide to provide for in the moment financial safety.

Retirement savings and planning, identity protection, financial planning support — from budgeting to investments, are ways that organizations can support for longer term financial safety as well. An organization I learned about earlier this year — Northstar, which is working to make financial guidance and enhanced financial safety more accessible for everyone. For organizations looking to build out financial safety supports in their organization, this is a great option (even for smaller organizations).

Safety is foundational for trauma informed workplaces and is foundational for our lives as well. As you can see from the article, safety at work can become quite complex, especially as we seek to build a trauma informed culture. However, the benefits of each of the three ‘legs’ of our safety stool have clear benefits for both team members and organizations and provide a steady base to build our trauma informed culture upon.

Make sure to hit ‘follow’ to ensure you don’t miss upcoming discussions over the next few weeks of the other principles of trauma informed cultures.