How to Become a Trauma-Informed Workplace

For those working in human services, compassion fatigue and the associated symptoms of burnout occur all too often. Caring for clients going through trauma or who have difficult living conditions can have adverse effects on staff’s mental health. In order to take care of your staff, it’s important to adopt a trauma-informed care approach within your own organization. By creating a trauma-informed workplace, you make it easier for staff to get the mental healthcare they need, while creating a better culture, reducing turnover, and more.

What is trauma?

Trauma is the emotional and physical response to experiencing or witnessing an event that is dangerous, frightening, or life-threatening.

The impact of trauma can make itself known in several ways. It is important that providers understand that the trauma-inducing event is not nearly as important as what the trauma means to the person who experienced it. Additionally, trauma can affect different groups or communities in extremely different ways.

We should, thus, take a multi-faceted approach to understanding trauma. The following characteristics provide a good starting point for understanding what exactly trauma looks like:

• Trauma experiences often overwhelm a person’s coping resources.
• Trauma often leads the person to find a way of coping that works in the short term but causes serious harm in the long run.
• Trauma is always defined by the individual.

By coming to a better understanding of what trauma is, your organization can adopt better practices to recognize trauma, burnout, and compassion fatigue among your staff.

What is a trauma-informed workplace?

A trauma-informed workplace is an organizational environment that acknowledges the prevalence and impact of trauma and integrates this understanding into its policies, procedures, and daily interactions. Rooted in the principles of safety, trustworthiness, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural humility, a trauma-informed workplace prioritizes the well-being of both employees and the individuals they serve.

In such a workplace, leadership recognizes that trauma — whether experienced personally or vicariously — can affect job performance, engagement, and overall health. As a result, trauma-informed practices are built into all levels of the organization. This includes creating physically and psychologically safe spaces, promoting transparent communication, providing access to support resources, and empowering staff through shared decision-making.

A trauma-informed approach also emphasizes the importance of preventing re-traumatization. This means fostering a culture where empathy, respect, and inclusivity are standard. Supervisors and managers are trained to recognize signs of stress and secondary trauma and are equipped to respond with sensitivity and support. Regular opportunities for reflection, self-care, and professional development are encouraged to build resilience and reduce burnout.

For organizations in the behavioral health and human services fields, adopting a trauma-informed model not only benefits staff but also enhances service delivery. When employees feel safe, supported, and valued, they become better equipped to provide compassionate, effective care to clients who may have experienced trauma themselves.

Ultimately, a trauma-informed workplace is more than a set of practices — it’s a cultural shift. It reflects a deep commitment to the health and humanity of every person within the organization, fostering an environment where healing, growth, and meaningful work can thrive.

How to become a trauma-informed workplace

Though recognizing the need for trauma-informed care in clients is what you are trained to do, recognizing the need for it in your own organization can prove difficult. When it becomes clear that staff within your organization do require trauma-informed care, there are several steps you should take.

Buy-in from leadership

The first step to becoming a trauma-informed workplace is to gain buy-in from leadership and the board. In order to do this, it might be helpful to present information on trauma-informed care and secondary traumatic stress to management. You may want to frame the conversation around the concept that self-care is non-negotiable in a trauma-informed organization, and leadership needs to “walk the walk” for staff to embrace self-care. Having honest conversations with management, providing resources, or encouraging the use of a staff wellness screening tool are other considerations.

One way to keep leadership interested is to provide ongoing data about the benefit trauma-informed care is having in the organization (both human benefit and fiscal benefit if possible). It can help to explain that not taking care of staff comes with a huge cost (turnover’s high expense, for example) and trauma-informed care and burnout directly contribute to staff productivity and getting the job done.

Staff resources and training

After you’ve successfully gained the buy-in of leadership, it’s time to begin implementing your trauma-informed workplace program. This can take several forms, but it’s important to emphasize training and education. Provide staff members with training to recognize the signs of burnout before they become too severe and actively empower them to advocate for their own mental health.

Here are some ideas for preventing burnout:

• Train all staff in vicarious trauma in new hire orientation.
• Offer other training regarding self-care.
• Offer trauma-informed, reflective supervision.
• Encourage supervisors to check in on their supervisees and explore how the person is doing, outside of the responsibilities they have.
• Offer EAP benefits that provide free short-term counseling for staff.
• Offer discounts for health clubs.
• Teach mindfulness to staff.
• Create a safe environment where staff can talk about their fears and worries without fear of repercussion.

Creating a trauma-informed environment is an overriding approach to preventing burnout. When staff feel  heard, understood, valued, and appreciated by co-workers and management alike then they can begin to heal.

Collect feedback and improve on your trauma-informed approach

Finally, collect feedback on your trauma-informed workplace program. This way, you can ensure that the steps you and your organization have taken to implement a trauma-informed care approach to staff members’ mental health actually works. A staff survey that specifically asks questions about staff wellness and needs may prove helpful. This type of initiative usually requires the work of an implementation team that focuses on communicating for buy-in, creating a sense of urgency, planning for the future, and other implementation steps.

By collecting feedback, you’ll gather data that can allow you to iterate on the program and make improvements. In this way, your organization can work to consistently create the best environment possible for staff members. By doing so, you’ll decrease staff stress and unhappiness, improve the culture of your organization, and reduce turnover associated with burnout and compassion fatigue.