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?As the July Fourth parade stepped off in Highland Park, Ill., last year, police officers marched near the front with their very own grand marshal\u2014Vinny Duke, a therapy dog. Firefighters and their family members accompanied a vintage hook-and-ladder truck.<\/p>\n
Residents, from young children to grandparents, lined the parade route in the Chicago suburb, reveling in the city\u2019s first Independence Day parade since before the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Then shots rang out from a rooftop and bullets rained down on young and old, killing seven people and wounding dozens more. <\/p>\n
As the crowd fled frantically toward safety, Highland Park\u2019s first responders sprang into action, tracking down the shooter and processing the grisly crime scene. <\/p>\n
\u201cMost [first responders] had to leave their families and immediately transition to response,\u201d says the city\u2019s HR manager, Emily Taub, SHRM-SCP. \u201cThey did what was needed to be done before they could check in [with their families].\u201d<\/p>\n
Taub, filling in for a colleague who was on vacation, was thrust into leading logistics at the emergency operations center while also providing HR support to the town\u2019s 250 employees, especially those first responders. <\/p>\n
In addition to juggling nuts-and-bolts tasks such as stocking the emergency center with toilet paper for the influx of staff, she and other leaders kept city employees updated with information during the manhunt and let them know that none of their colleagues had been injured. Taub also called in the 100 Club of Illinois, a group that offers support for first responders.<\/p>\n
Between the 100 Club and the city\u2019s employee assistance program (EAP), Taub had mental health counselors available within hours, including two counselors trained specifically in dealing with trauma. In the ensuing days, small groups, such as shifts of firefighters, could talk through what happened, guided by experts.<\/p>\n
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Taub\u2019s job was hardly done after that day. She has worked for months to help employees through the aftermath.<\/p>\n
Her work didn\u2019t start that day, either. She had laid the groundwork earlier by rolling out training programs\u2014including active-shooter awareness for the entire city staff\u2014and engaging in culture-building efforts.<\/p>\n
Many traumatic events don\u2019t make national headlines as they did in Highland Park and Chesapeake, Va., where a Walmart manager opened fire on colleagues last November. Plenty of other less-obvious cases of trauma, including car accidents, medical diagnoses, domestic violence and deaths from natural causes, regularly affect those in the workplace.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, HR professionals can help by being trained to provide quick and sensitive responses when employees face such life-altering events. <\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of the nature of our work and where we sit in organizations, it will be something HR professionals will have to deal with in their careers,\u201d says Rebecca Edwards, SHRM-SCP, CEO of Infinite HR, a Charlotte, N.C.-based consultancy. \u201cWe have to be that Rock of Gibraltar when something happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
HR has successfully pushed to become a strategic partner in the C-suite, but practitioners need to remember what the \u201cH\u201d in \u201cHR\u201d stands for, says Crystal Whittenton, SHRM-CP, HR director at Southern Outdoor Restoration in Raleigh, N.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are not spreadsheets,\u201d Whittenton says. \u201cIf you lose track of the fact they are humans, the strategy won\u2019t matter.\u201d <\/p>\n
Provide Training<\/p>\n
Given the ubiquity of trauma in the world, some experts are calling on employers to develop \u201ctrauma-informed\u201d workplaces. As a result, a number of training programs have popped up to help organizations through the storms. <\/p>\n
Joelle Monaco, an organizational development consultant in Albany, N.Y., for instance, offers mental health first aid training for public and private organizations. Instead of medical triage skills, she teaches staffers how to handle traumatic events and other difficult situations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re more likely to come across someone with mental health or behavioral challenges than someone choking,\u201d Monaco says.<\/p>\n
The aftereffects of trauma can lead to self-doubt and an inability to solve problems. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnmanaged negative stress can manifest itself if we don\u2019t navigate it with self-care and coping strategies,\u201d Monaco says. <\/p>\n
The training she provides teaches leaders and managers to recognize signs of emotional distress in employees and then connect them with care services. <\/p>\n
Kelsey Crowe runs Empathy Bootcamp of San Francisco. At her training sessions, she offers an \u201cempathy menu\u201d of things to say and do\u2014along with what to avoid. <\/p>\n
The work environment makes what\u2019s already difficult\u2014knowing how to approach someone going through a crisis\u2014even more complicated. Colleagues who don\u2019t know someone well should break through their reticence if they have useful guidance to share, especially from a similar experience, she says. And those who are close to a co-worker going through a difficult time should get past any worries that saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d isn\u2019t enough. <\/p>\n
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But expressing concern shouldn\u2019t be a public performance in the middle of a meeting, she notes. Colleagues also can choose a gesture when words fail them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many different ways to show you care, like a doughnut on their desk when they come back from divorce court,\u201d says Crowe, author of There Is No Good Card for This: What to Say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love<\/a><\/em> (HarperOne, 2017).<\/p>\n Crowe\u2019s menu of empathy gestures also includes offering to take someone out for lunch, pooling vacation time to donate to a colleague, offering to pick up work slack for someone distracted by trauma or organizing a fundraiser for a colleague\u2019s favorite charity.<\/p>\n For her book, Crowe surveyed 2,500 people going through trauma, and most said too few people reached out to them.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were to choose between too much care and too little, too little is awful,\u201d Crowe says. \u201cPeople start to feel like a pariah and everyone is avoiding them.\u201d<\/p>\n Plan a Response<\/p>\n Whatever the traumatic event is, HR needs an action plan, which can include bringing in EAP resources and local government mental health professionals to develop a long-term agenda to deal with the aftermath. Immediate needs can include sharing a list of providers who are taking new patients and arranging group discussions facilitated by a mental health professional, Monaco says.<\/p>\n Not all team members will want help immediately; some will need more time before they\u2019re ready to seek mental health treatment, she adds. <\/p>\n Taub says that after the parade shooting, she made sure to get the message out that there was \u201cno right way to feel.\u201d Highland Park\u2019s municipal employees are spread across various buildings throughout the city, and Taub and her staff visited each one\u2014a practice she had established before the tragedy as a way to get to know workers through \u201cHR office hours\u201d at their worksites. <\/p>\n \u201cWe know there are a number of individuals who are having a difficult time,\u201d Taub says. \u201cWe want to make sure we are best positioning our employees to serve the community. They can\u2019t do that if they don\u2019t have the support they need.\u201d <\/p>\n To that end, the city extended funding for employee mental health benefits so they would be completely covered at least through the end of 2022.<\/p>\n Katharine Manning, whose Chevy Chase, Md.-based company, Blackbird LLC, offers training and consulting on how to create empathy in the workplace, recommends employers adopt a \u201cLASER\u201d approach: <\/p>\n Employees also need to learn to accept help, Taub says. Giving staffers time to decompress and process the tragedy was especially hard when they were working long hours on tasks such as securing the crime scene. Nearby police and fire departments came in to cover some shifts.<\/p>\n \u201cOur inclination is to say, \u2018We\u2019re OK; we can handle it,\u2019 \u201d Taub says. \u201cWe were not OK.\u201d<\/p>\n Clarify Benefits<\/p>\n HR\u2019s role in relaying benefits information can be crucial for those hit with a terminal diagnosis, catastrophic injury or other major trauma. Start by periodically refreshing workers\u2019 memories as to what benefits are available, Monaco says. <\/p>\n \u201cHR people say, \u2018No one uses our EAP,\u2019 \u201d she says. \u201cI say, \u2018How often do you market it?\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n Monaco suggests creating and sharing short videos on what resources are available. Employers can also bring in an insurance carrier representative to talk about mental health benefits. <\/p>\n\n
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