The term trauma-informed can be misunderstood and deemed limited in scope for organizations who adopt trauma-informed values. It can be perceived as having a system of policies and practices that only recognize the impact of trauma to individual employees. It is admirable that organizations recognize how trauma can impact staff members in their capacity to work and be productive. Yet there is so much more that trauma-informed values can strengthen within the broader culture of an organization.
According to Gallup, disengaged employees cost the world $8.8 trillion annually in lost productivity (Gallup, 2023). Poor retention not only drains productivity but also erodes the very foundation of a healthy work culture. It is widely known that employee turnover is expensive. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that replacing an employee can cost about one-third of that worker’s annual earnings, including expenses such as recruiter fees, temporary replacement workers and lost productivity (SHRM, 2019). The real cost of turnover extends far beyond recruiting and onboarding expenses.
Further and more revelatory, four in 10 employees say their job negatively impacts their mental health, according to research from Gallup and Workhuman, and over half of employees (52%) reported feeling burned out because of their job, according to a poll from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and Ipsos.
It is clear that our organizations are struggling to create a culture of well-being. These deficits are creating excessive turnover, significant training expense and effort, employee burn-out, low morale and lack of productivity. Even if a primary goal of an organization is profitability the culture has a substantial impact to that goal.
Employees are looking to their organizations for safety, recognition, career growth, positivity, stability, trust, support and a healthy relational and emotional environment. Trauma-informed policies and practices create these types of environments through concepts and skills that promote a healthy workplace.
Essential to this type of environmental change is a commitment from leaders of the organization, a willingness for reframing the organizational culture, conceptual training, skill-based development and champions within the organization for this type of change.
How meetings are run, the physical environment, managerial skills, organizational policies, more democratic styles of decision-making, groups of consensus, HR policies, ways of positive recognition, healthy communication, regulation areas and other practices and management styles are all a part of this change that could reduce turnover, limit burn-out and enhance productivity. This is why Lakeside is so invested in training these values and skills to improve our organizations, businesses, schools and systems of care. We have seen these positive changes in real time and have found that they are significant. It is our hope that we can offer these benefits to all of our organizations and their employees with our training and support.
Gerry Vassar
President/CEO
