Trauma-Informed Workplaces: Are Your Systems Designed for Survivor Safety?
Most organisations think of "trauma-informed" as a mindset — something managers bring to a conversation when someone discloses trauma. It's a good instinct, but mindset misses where most of the risk actually sits which is in the way that the organisation operates, the processes and policies.
Trauma-informed practice isn't primarily about empathy in the moment of disclosure. It's about whether your policies, systems, technology, data, and everyday management practices increase or reduce someone's safety — often without anyone needing to know the details of their story at all.
This session is for HR, wellness and organisational development teams, policy leads, and Trust & Safety professionals who want to understand what this actually looks like in practice, not in theory.
What we'll cover:
Why trauma-informed people management isn't therapy. You don't need to know who's experienced trauma to design for safety. It doesn't mean removing accountability — it means building systems that work whether or not someone discloses.
A survivor's journey through the workplace. We'll follow a fictional employee , starting with only what a manager would typically see (lateness, missed deadlines, a sudden request to work from home, repeated sick leave) and the assumptions that get made from there. Then we'll add the context underneath, and look at what safety actually means across physical, digital, information, emotional, and employment dimensions. The real question: could the organisation have responded well without knowing what was going on?
Five places to look. People, Policies, Processes, Places, and Technology & Data — the five places risk and safety actually live in an organisation. Most people find at least one they hadn't considered.
Trauma-testing a policy, live. We'll take a fictional HR policy and stress-test it: where does it fall apart for someone experiencing trauma or abuse? Then we'll redesign it around safety, privacy, agency, and choice.
A five-question health check to take back to your own organisation
You'll leave with a different lens on a question you thought you already understood - how to support survivors of trauma in the workplace — and a clear sense of where the next steps are.
This session gives you the map. Our full workshop coming up in November helps you use it — walking your organisation through redesigning the policies, processes and systems this session surfaces.
Free · 60 minutes · Open to HR, Wellness, Organisational Development, Policy, and Trust & Safety teams