Trauma-Informed Human Resources with Stephanie Lemek
Still think trauma isn’t relevant to your work? Recent populations studies have shown that virtually all people have or will experience trauma in their lifetime. Whether it’s your employees, customers, or clients, individuals have experienced some form of trauma in their lives and it can impact how they interact with you and your business. In this episode of A Trauma-Informed Future, host Katie Kurtz is in conversation with career HR professional and CEO & founder of the Wounded Workforce, Stephanie Lemek. This episode shines a spotlight on the essential role of trauma-informed practices in transforming workplace culture. Stephanie highlights examples of how trauma-informed practices contributes to a healthier, more inclusive workplace culture, which translates to higher employee engagement, retention, and overall organizational success.
Learn more about Stephanie:
Stephanie is on a mission to build trauma informed workplace cultures, leading her to found The Wounded Workforce™ in 2023.
Stephanie has over 16 years of experience in a variety of HR roles, spanning various industries and in organizations ranging from large Fortune 500 to growing start-ups.
In every role, Stephanie noticed that the workplace just isn’t built with everyone in mind. And despite the best efforts of HR teams and leaders, sometimes people still don’t have the right supports to be successful.
With a lifelong mission of helping both organizations and individuals be successful (and at the same time!), there had to be a way to create organizational cultures where everyone can be successful- and that’s where trauma informed workplaces come in!
Through a passion and research, Stephanie found that what she was looking for to help leaders, HR, and Talent professionals approach the workplace with an understanding and responsiveness to the traumatic experiences over 70% of adults bring with them to the workplace, didn’t exist. So, she set on a mission to build it herself!
Connect with Stephanie:
Website: https://www.thewoundedworkforce.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Wounded-Workforce/61551729635346/
Show Transcript:
Katie Kurtz (she/her): hi everyone welcome back to a Trauma-Informed Future podcast. I am so delighted to be joined here today by Stephanie. Welcome. I feel like that's been a long time coming for us. Yes, we've had conversations. I'm like, wait a minute. I just was like, you've been on this podcast, right? I'm like, no.
Oh my gosh. We need Stephanie on. So welcome welcome, thank you. I'm excited for our conversation today and I would love for you to introduce yourself in your own words to everyone.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Thank you so much, Katie. I am so thrilled to be here and so grateful for the opportunity to chat with you and chat with your audience about myself and my journey.
So my name is Stephanie Lemick. I am a former HR executive. It's wild to say, but I almost spent two decades in-house, in traditional corporate environments. Fortune 500 companies, startups, kinda everything in between. Doing that in-house HR and on my own kind of journey, which I'm sure we'll get into during our conversation today, I ended up.
In involved [00:01:00] in entrepreneurship and going on that over the course of the last three to four years in exploring that, and a beautiful experience for me as part of entrepreneurship has been exploring the impact of trauma-informed practices. On the workplace and how we can use this moment where collectively, we've come out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are continually experiencing collective trauma in a variety of different ways. And honestly, gen Z I'm a big fan. They also are really pushing for us to change the way we talk about mental health in the workplace and also the role work. Takes and our overall kind of health and wellbeing.
So I think this is the moment to look at how we can reshape the workplace. And for me it's well, duh, I hate to say it, but well, duh. All of this work already exists. All wrapped up in the original concept of trauma-informed care. [00:02:00] I'm super excited to chat more about that, explore that this kind of light bulb moment for me is what led me to found my organization, the wounded workforce, where we're focused on that workplace mental health advocacy and helping really translate the concept of trauma-informed care into the modern workplace.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Let's talk about that light bulb moment, because I think that we all have it. And something that's so commonly said on this podcast is it makes sense, right? Yes. And like you just said, it's yeah, duh. Yeah, it makes sense and it. People often they'll get just stuck in the words, right.
They get stuck in the language or the complexity of it all and, and I think you said something before we record this translation, like how can we translate the complex into tangible, real life? Just things that make sense so we can create that connection. Because I too find that once we really start [00:03:00] to break down and create shared language and understanding that like click happens and people are like, oh, right. And it's I heard a colleague of mine say this morning. It's trauma informed care is not adding another thing to your plate. It is the plate. Right? It's the plate,
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): yeah.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): The foundation for everything. So it's not more. And I was like, oh, I love a little visual.
So I love for you to share maybe a little bit about your own trauma-informed journey and like those light bulb moments you've had and what you see now in the work you do.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Absolutely. I love that analogy too. I might have to borrow that.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): It's a good one.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): It is. So for me, it's I think a twofold journey.
I think there is my personal journey, which I would say is, again, a very probably common story at this point. But, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a acting head of HR or practitioner, navigating everything that was going on along with my own past, I finally. Actually engaged with a counselor, a therapist and that was really eye-opening for me.
[00:04:00] And one thing that was incredibly eye-opening was, even though I had spent nearly two decades in an HR role, in an HR setting as an HR leader, I wasn't recognizing how trauma and trauma responses were showing up for me in moments of work. And having a professional make those connections for me was really helpful for a variety of reasons.
So I had this. Own journey. I went on around working with my own traumatic experiences, working with my own diagnoses. I do have a diagnosis around major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder that I navigate personally. So I think that's really locked in and for me it's the power of how much better.
My life is how I'm able to show up in my life and for others by being able to receive those right supports and that trauma informed supports from, therapists, medical professionals, et cetera. I. I did have some awareness to trauma-informed care [00:05:00] because I'm lucky enough to have a mother who used to be a nurse at a VA medical center.
I have a brother who is a firefighter paramedic. I have a dear friend who is a doctor of nursing practice. I am of course, afraid of blood and needles and all those things, but I have some amazing medical professionals who are all very trauma informed in my life. So I have that awareness there. The big light bulb moment.
I would say the connection that brings the concept of translating trauma-informed care to the workplace. For me, it's really specific. It's a really specific story. I love that I have this oh wait, we should do this, and. It was very early on in my entrepreneurship journey. I went to a Cons conference for construction HR professionals, and that seems very specific.
Yes, it is. It's been about a decade in the construction industry, so that makes it make a little bit more sense. And my goal was to meet new clients. I got no clients full [00:06:00] disclosure, but I did have this amazing idea. And what it was is we were having this great conversation at the conference about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
And construction and all the amazing work that was going on in the industry. All the amazing people doing all the things you would hope for. Which for people not familiar with construction may be surprising, but the industry is actually very invested in diversity. But then you look at the results and they're it's like a wah moment.
The results just weren't there. Like for some reason it wasn't landing. I think the place we're at now in where our society is, where kind of political discourse is perhaps we're not so surprised to see those results not hitting what we would want. I'm like, huh, this is interesting and my wheels are turning.
How can I do a better job to help potential clients really get DEI to land in their organization and to see those impacts? The very next conversation we had in the conference was about the [00:07:00] mental health crisis and construction, and for individuals not aware, construction is really facing a very significant mental health crisis.
There was a report that came out from the CDC about five. Five or so years ago now that showcase that the rate of suicide in the construction industry was incredibly high one of the highest in any industry. And for context, when you think of construction, even if you're not familiar with the industry, you probably think of it being a really dangerous job.
And it is. But when we look at the statistics, the top four kind of reasons behind fatalities on a construction job site, when we look at those top four, we combine them and we multiply that by five. That's the number of suicides that are occurring within the industry annually. So it is significant. And then we also layer on some of the challenges related to.
What I would say [00:08:00] drug use addiction opioid addiction, overdose deaths, those are also significant as well. And so how can we tackle this and how can we talk about it proactively? I am also someone who's very focused on talking about mental health proactively, so there's a whole other conversation we could have there too about.
You know how we talk about suicide prevention and then also talk about mental health proactively. But we are talking about this and I'm having this light bulb moment where I was like. These two problems are different, but they're also the same and that how do we find ways to call people in and provide them with the support that they need in the workplace?
I was like, that's trauma informed care, Stephanie. I was like, that's what that is, and I was like that. Great. I'll read a book about trauma-informed workplaces. And we'll be off to the races. I'll be able to really help the construction industry potential clients do what they need to do. And I think many [00:09:00] people listening, Katie, I'm sure you have experienced this 'cause you are, deep in doing this work as well, is that I couldn't really find what I wanted, I couldn't find, the true translation, making it accessible, making it work for the people I wanted to help impact.
A lot of what I found was, really heavy psychology and that makes sense. But it also was, this has worked in corporate America for 20 years. I'm like, this isn't gonna land, this isn't gonna work. Or what I found was pieces of trauma-informed care, or trauma-informed care called something else.
And. So what? What's interesting about that? I couldn't find what I was looking for partially because people were piecing it out or MAs having it masquerade as something else. And for me that the problem there is twofold. One, it made it really hard for me to find what I was looking for, and two, I think.[00:10:00]
So much of what I do is rooted in decades of really important work around trauma informed care. And for me, I think it is both. It would be disingenuous, and I think it would be for, to me, ethically wrong, to not make it clear that this work is rooted in all those decades of work. And it just rooted in the concept of trauma informed care.
So that's where it comes to trauma-informed workplaces. And I cannot tell you how many conversations I had when I started the wounded workforce where people were like, you should call it something else. Do exactly what you're doing, but just get rid of the word trauma. And I just decided to dig my heels in and be stubborn and say, no, that's what it is.
And also, if we never normalize talking about trauma. How are we ever gonna get better? So that is, that was not a very short light bulb moment story, but that's really how, the work I'm doing, the Wounded Workforce came to be is because I just, [00:11:00] I couldn't find what I was looking for and I just know that this can make such a huge difference for organizations and for individuals.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that you've highlighted so many key things and I wanna just first, clap, clap to the acknowledging Yes. Trauma's a big word. Yeah. And we've, it's it holds a lot and it makes a, it raises a lot of discomfort, but I'm not gonna not use that word.
Right. And I keep thinking about how when I first started as out as a social worker, 15 years ago, no one was talking about therapy. Therapy was like, like you don't talk about it. Mental health was still very stigmatized. And I'm still acknowledging that both are still highly stigmatized. Yeah. But it's now a little more stigmatized if you're not talking about mental health or therapy.
If you're not in therapy, people are like, what, and it's become, [00:12:00] there's been so much work, like decade, like you said, decades of work that have gone into de-stigmatizing mental health and therapy. Yeah. And addiction. And it's still there, but it's nothing. Nothing like I've ever seen it and.
That's because we are receiving the language to name a thing, and we're talking about it, and we're talking about it everywhere. And I think the sa I always say the same thing oh, I know you don't like it, but I wanna invite you to yeah. To understand like why, like what about it and how can we start talking about it?
Because we, once we do, and I think we're on the rise of doing so. We're gonna destigmatize and it is going to become more of the norm of how we see each other as people. So yes to that. Love to hear it. I know everyone listening is also into that because we're trying collectively together in our small steps.
But I wanna kind venture back to the window [00:13:00] workforce and talking about the integration of trauma-informed care into HR and into just the workforce practice. Because I'm a firm believer as a suicide loss survivor having lost my mother-in-law and father-in-law both to suicide, that trauma-informed care is suicide prevention.
And I know that with my full head and heart that is, and a lot of people are like stunned when I say that. But I think that trauma-informed care, to your point. Is that underlying foundation to really all of it, to everything, right, to all those different programs we've seen from emotional intelligence to, motivational interviewing, all these different things, all these different preventative things.
It's all intersected and I, I think the big thing is like. Helping people look at this thing, this trauma-informed care thing, and then applying it. That's where we lose people is like the intention and the implementation disconnect. And so I would love to hear from you [00:14:00] because I know you do so much work in, I know in the construction world.
Yeah. But also just in workplaces in general, from the HR expertise you have and experience, like when we say trauma-informed care in the workplace. What are we talking about? What does that look like? What does that feel like?
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Absolutely. And I love the point you made about, it is a holistic thing and this is where I get really excited when I can get someone's attention.
They're open, they're willing to listen to what trauma-informed care can do in the workplace. Get really excited because I think a lot, especially as a former HR executive, so much of the work we do in the workplace is ends up being really disjointed and it feels disjointed to us as the person generally.
Doing the work around performance management, around benefits, around succession planning and hiring and all these other things, and it'll feel disjointed to us. It feels a [00:15:00] million times more disjointed to the employees that are actually experiencing this. And then at the same time, I feel like, especially when we look at managers, leaders, HR professionals, because of the shift.
That I think we're all very glad the shift to being more open and talking about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. There is this underlying, okay, now I need to take on the role of a mental health professional and absolutely not know, we are not qualified to be mental health professionals, nor should we have to be unless that's literally the work we're doing, but.
Even if that's the work we're doing, we are not going to provide, those counseling, those diagnoses to our own team members if it doesn't work that way. And so I think with trauma-informed workplace practices or trauma-informed workplace culture, what we're really doing is connecting all of this work into something that's this common threat that everyone can understand.
Everyone can [00:16:00] understand what trauma is. Everyone can understand trauma's impacts. Without us needing to understand the specifics of someone's traumatic experience, we don't need to do that. We can use these tools to understand how do we think about how trauma impacts us, and how do we think about actively avoiding re.
Traumatizing or triggering employees, and how do we actively avoid harm? And we do that through these seven principles that we have. And truly, they are trauma-informed, care simplified to layman's terms, using the words for corporate America. And thinking about each of the lenses is how I approach it with practitioners.
And the idea is whenever you're creating a process, a system, a policy. How are you considering each of these lenses of a trauma-informed workplace? How are you thinking of safety and how safety shows up from physical safety, psychological safety, financial safety? [00:17:00] How are you creating a compensation policy that looks at that?
And then also, how do we piece through different things? How do we look at empowerment? How do we look at power dynamics through co collaboration and all of these different things? And it's a huge lift. Just full disclosure and I never try and say, Hey, this is gonna be easy. It's not. It is a significant culture change.
Anyone who has been doing any kind of organizational culture change, whether that is in, corporate America, non-profits. Teaching. When you are changing the culture of something, it is a big flip. It's a hard challenge, and I think just because something's a big challenge doesn't mean even those incremental changes are incredibly meaningful and impactful.
So what I typically recommend is looking at where are you already strong in your culture? So construction's a lovely example. Construction is great at physical safety [00:18:00] because of compliance requirements because they do want their employees to go back home to their families, their friends safe. So how do we look at safety in a trauma-informed way, and then also consider psychological safety and financial safety and expand that as we look at all of our processes and systems, how we approach our employees and our teams, and build a.
Success from there. I do, I offer certifications for HR professionals specifically, is where they're targeted. Currently, the one I'm thinking of is the trauma-informed workplace practitioner and in that certification and each of those kind of aspects of trauma-informed workplaces or trauma-informed care, we're calling out what that is.
But for me, what's really important is highlighting what it looks like in practice. So one of my favorite examples I lo I love astrology, I love the Chaney app. I don't know if I have any other Chaney app fans here. Oh yeah. We love Chaney app, but [00:19:00] we like when we look at financial safety, for example, so they have a floor, so they pay all of their employees, I believe it's a minimum of $70,000 a year, and they have this floor of expected benefits and all these different things.
And I love this policy because it is. Actually an action. We're in a successful organization and it is a beautiful example of financial safety. Another one we can look at is there's a resource called Canary that offers kind of emergency funding and emergency funding resources for employees when they experience a hardship, a natural disaster, a variety of different things.
This. Service comes in and helps resolve those financial challenges in a way that can again, provide that baseline of financial safety. And I think what's great is, I don't know if there's an organization out there getting trauma informed workplace practices 100%, right? Probably there isn't.
Hopefully one [00:20:00] day there will be one that's pretty darn close. But there's a lot of really great trauma-informed practices and processes existing in corporate America already. And if we can showcase those examples and let people think about how can we build from there and how can I make this work in my own organization, I think that's where we really start to see greater success that starts to snowball and really shift the culture.
If someone understands the power of choice and empowerment in their organization as a manager, if they leave and move to another organization, they're also taking that with them as well. So really it is a big. It's like grassroots to like snowball, like shifting the way we approach and understand how we show up at work.
And then also we're taking that burden that many folks are feeling around showing up and providing kind of mental health care. We're shifting that to really understand like, no, it's actually about showing up as humans and finding ways to support each [00:21:00] other. Founded in. As I said earlier, decades of work and research and information, and a lot of this is honestly, it actually hits exactly some of the biggest issues that we have in the workplace in terms of, managing people, maximizing productivity for people.
It impacts that as well, even outside of how we support from a mental health and suicide prevention capacity. It's just good business. In addition to being the right thing to do. Talk about a slam dunk.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Right. Okay. Yeah. Yes. I say this all the time too because this is what ends up happening. I do a lot of work inside organizations, workplaces, and it's oh, this is nice, but who has the time?
What, who's gonna lead this? Who's gonna champion? And it's like culture shifts always feel like this weighted down thing because it's like, how do you change. Culture, and I always tell [00:22:00] people like, pause. And remember that culture change happens one small shift at a time. Yeah. And the more we model, and especially for people who are in workplaces who aren't at a level of readiness for this, that we can model and mirror it in our relationships at work with clients, with consumers, patients colleagues.
Yeah. So that people start to feel what it's like to receive, be on the receiving end, and then start, that's how we can start to build that momentum or that snowball or groundswell. Absolutely. But I'd love to talk a little bit about kind of the ROI of trauma-informed care. Because I think that like I, a part of me in my like little anti-capitalist heart is no, but it's also we live in capitalism, like we gotta talk about it. Right. And it's not like glorifying the productivity and all of that, but it's just the reality. It comes back to common sense, right? If you [00:23:00] have established trust in relationships at work, we know trust leads to safety.
Of all forms, right? Like you mentioned, like psychological, social, financial, all these forms of safety. Yeah. And if people feel safe at work. What's possible, like we're more engaged, right? Which means we're gonna be more productive, our performance is gonna increase or exceed, we're gonna have better experiences, meaning we're gonna stay, or we're gonna create such a culture that people are gonna flocking, be flocking to our organization and filling those positions and then staying in them.
And that means you're gonna have better outcomes. We build, when we build trust, we're also building profitability, and I don't think people get that and I don't understand. Why it's not that complicated.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): It's not that complicated, and it's been, I mean, it's been showed by people much smarter than me.
I love to, I love being able to b, borrow and leverage all this amazing research. The [00:24:00] example around psychological safety of psychological safety is like the number one indicator of success on a team, and it is. You. You can't have a trauma informed organization team without psychological safety. And also there's a lot to piece out there.
And I think this is where I get frustrated is a psychological, safety is like the sexy term. It's what we're all talking about. I love that we're all talking about it. It's probably one of the hardest parts. Of creating a trauma-informed organization because of how much we have to navigate in terms of power imbalances, in terms of choice, in terms of just like our finances, it's so unpopular, but I'm big on like those people are working to provide for themselves and their families, not just 'cause they, it's a fun thing to do. That's a core of oh my gosh, I need this job. I need to keep doing what I'm doing. That has a big impact on how we behave and how we can sense psychological [00:25:00] safety and.
It's so interesting. It's this thing that's so powerful and one of my favorite places to start, this is really specific, but one of my favorite places to start talking about a trauma-informed approach within an organization is when we think about empowerment. And so empowerment is a overarching theme or lens of trauma-informed workplaces, and it's broken out into.
Growth strengths, leverage, recognition, and choice as components of how you feel empowered in organization. I. Strengths leveraged. I'm gonna, I'm gonna shout out Gallup and Clifton strengths right here. I am guessing if there's anyone who's ever taken a Clifton Strengths assessment. If there's any HR practitioners out here, you know what I'm talking about, these assessments.
Give us information about how people work, how people approach work, and how much [00:26:00] that helps improve business outcomes. Like Calip has been rolling at this for, 60 plus years, and they have all this data and research around, seven x-ing profit profitability on strengths-based teams, reducing turnover, reducing customer complaints, increasing quality, and then also that retention and engagement that we get really excited about as professionals, but then just as human beings, just that one little tiny component.
Of a trauma informed practice around leveraging team members' strengths. It also improves folks' quality of life overall. And this is I mean, Gallup has like teams of PhD researchers combing through this data, updating it consistently, and it is very much focused in the. Capitalist idea of how this actually really benefits your [00:27:00] organization, your productivity, your profitability, your ability to grow.
And then I think if we're being honest with ourselves, inherently we know. We know when we worked with a team where you feel like you can show up and be the best version of yourself, and we've been, hopefully not very often. I know I've definitely been on teams where I have been absolutely not the best version of myself and all of those.
Key things we're missing. The psychological safety, financial safety choice, the ability to really recognize different challenges and backgrounds and people that come, come to the workplace. And I love my favorite, I shouldn't have favorites among my children of trauma-informed principles, but my favorite is, humility and responsiveness.
No one does ever get it all the way, right, all the time. And that's us as individuals. That's organizations. And I think the fact that we can [00:28:00] say, Hey, I didn't get it right. How can I do better? How can I correct harm? I think just if we were able to do that more deathly as leaders, as organizations, we would be living in a whole different world.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Oh my gosh, yes. I. I think, and you touched upon this about financial safety, and I think that's so important to reiterate too, is that, I think we make the biggest shifts when we can integrate trauma informed practices into our workplaces because we spend 70% of our life working, right? Yeah.
And we know that is. Also gonna have a further reach into not just the people that work there, but the people receiving whatever the product services, et cetera. Right? Yeah. Obviously we know. Anyone who learns about trauma-informed care quickly realizes our secret, which is you can't compartmentalize it to just your professional life.
It impacts our personal life [00:29:00] too. But we don't, we tell them that until they come in and that little ping goes off. But I think. What's always important to acknowledge, and I like to do this, and I think you harped on it a little bit with financial securities, that a lot of people are going to a job for a job.
Yes. They need to pay the bills, they have to work and we also need to acknowledge that not everyone is going to be able to feel safe at work, unfortunately, because of the systems that exist. The policies or just the reality of the. Of reality of that for some people. Yes. And I think that's more the reason for companies to adopt trauma-informed care into their culture is because even though someone may not feel 100% safe, like I can think of jobs where I didn't feel 100% safe.
Yeah. In, in all rounds of safety, but I still benefit from, yes. The, that, those trauma [00:30:00] informed practices, and again, like you don't have to experience trauma to benefit from trust and safety in the workplace. Like again, it's a win, win for the person, the culture, and the company's bottom line. It's all, everybody wins.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Everyone wins. Yes. Yeah. And I think it's so important. I think, I am. I'm a realist. I'm a call it what it is, kind of person. That's probably why I've, dug my heels on. I'm like, we're calling it trauma informed. It's what it is.
We've gotta be honest about why people work. We've gotta be honest about where we're falling down and know that like we can get better and that it's a journey to get better, but that progress is better than ignoring it because we can't attain perfection. And I think so often we go, Hey, this isn't perfect, so we ignore it, or I don't have an easy solution, nothing.
Is an easy solution when it comes to [00:31:00] people. We are so complex. I mean, that's why AI doesn't have a chance. Like we've, they've got AI has hundreds of years to go. It's such complexity. There's so much there. To navigate and to unpack. And again, I, it goes back to that humility and responsiveness.
That's why I love that. And I think of the person I am today and being able to say, gosh, I make mistakes every day. I, but I can learn from her making it better. Like, how do I move forward? Stephanie, 10 years ago, in the middle of her HR career. It would've been so emotionally devastating for me to make a mistake and admit that I did something wrong.
And a lot of people are in that place when it comes to their work environments, and there's a lot there to unpack, but I just think we all could live really better lives if we are focused on that progress and how do we take those small step forward and that's the thing. Someone who is not safe at work, [00:32:00] if we can just maybe make them physically safe, that is an improvement, that is a marked improvement to their life.
If we can just make them financially safe, that is a marked improvement to their life. Now we can't, get complete, pat ourselves in the back and get complacent, but we can acknowledge that these incremental changes have massive impacts to those people directly impacted on your teams. But they also have.
Corresponding impacts on our society as well. And to your point about, we spend so much time at work, how much our workplace impacts ourselves and our families, our loved ones, how it impacts how we experience the world. If we could change it. So the workplace was creating more positive experiences and impact, what results could that have on a whole host of other things?
One thing I think about a lot is how it can impact adverse childhood experiences and how bringing trauma-informed workplaces to the [00:33:00] forefront can change the way the next generation of children experiences their childhoods because of the workplaces there. Parents are existing in, and there's some cool research, I won't rabbit hole, but there's some really cool research about especially blue collar workers and the impact of their jobs on children.
And it's staggering. And to think that work doesn't have such staggering impact on everyone, I think at this point is incredibly naive to say the least.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think we have to remember that work no matter what industry, no matter what job is a part of a system and we exist in systems.
And when we think about the ACEs study, which is one of the most repeatable. Yeah, forms of research we have with lots of gaps and whatnot. And I've spoken at [00:34:00] not, at length about that, but I always come back to the work of Dr. Wendy Ellis in that, we think of ACEs as this tree and here are like in the fruit of the tree and the leaves are these adverse childhood experiences, but like kids just don't have.
Yeah. Trauma, it just doesn't happen, right? It's rooted in these adverse community environments. So this para of ACEs model really shows that when we think about the roots and these systems, work falls in there because if there is financial instability or insecurity, it's gonna impact housing and it's gonna impact safety.
Location, which gives rise to adverse community environment or adverse community child childhood experiences. And so that interconnection is so key to understand and that how that also impacts generationally. Yeah it almost dare I say, becomes like a responsibility. Like we have a social responsibility to be.[00:35:00]
To move past our discomfort of the word trauma and to begin to stay open to understanding what it really is. Absolutely. And that it, that everyone, if. Almost every single person on this planet has or will have experienced trauma. And we know that everybody has experienced stress. So I always like to start with that.
Like when we say trauma informed, we're talking about first and foremost stress. So like we can all, we all know what that is. So how can we start there and look at trauma as this extreme form of stress and how can we prevent that and it, when it does happen, how do we. Restore back to neutrality and build that resilience capacity.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Absolutely. You said a couple of things. I just love hearing and it's the system aspect, and this is one where I get really I get very on my soap box when it comes to organizations. A lot of the. Workplace mental health, wellbeing, wellness, whatever we wanna [00:36:00] call it that exists in our workplaces, relies heavily on individual action and individual choice.
And there's probably a whole conversation we can have about our individualistic society that we have in the United States. But the challenge here is a lot of what we're actually navigating isn't. A symptom of individual choice or individual action. It is a system, a symptom of the systems we're existing in.
And you hear it a lot when people talk about burnout. For example, burnout is a symp, a symptom of a toxic or an unhealthy work environment. Well. When all we do is focus on individual action when it comes to mental health or wellbeing advocacy in the workplace, we are missing all of the other things in the systems we exist in and have to exist in to care for ourselves and our families and our jobs.
And so that's where, for me, I get really focused on, again, people are [00:37:00] like, you're just a big picture person, and maybe that's the case, but also those systems, when we think about that incremental change, I. When we're making that incremental change as a system level, that ripple effect is quite large.
Especially as opposed to, okay, now you have a habit to go for a walk once a day. That is great. I love it that people are doing that, but why aren't we tackling this challenge on both sides from individual action, but then also not just relying on individual action. It's not everyone's responsibility to like.
Fix everything that happens and a lot of times we don't have the control to be able to do that. That's why the rate of trauma is so high. When we tackle the system, we can have a much more outsized impact and then also deal with the challenge more holistically. Yes. And then I wanna, yes. Yes. I wanna also say that there is this very specific memory I have, and as many people may [00:38:00] imagine, the construction industry is not super excited to talk about trauma.
So, that's, when I bring up the term, it's Ooh, how's this gonna land? But my favorite. Definition I've ever gotten from trauma about trauma was from a group of construction professionals. And it was this, probably 50 something year old superintendent. I said, what does trauma mean when I say trauma?
What does that mean to you? And he said, it is just the shit that we all deal with sometimes in our life. And I mean, that is not a technical definition, but I think it's a really accessible definition in that, there's. These moments, these really challenging times, stress, difficult moments where we all experienced at some point in our lives.
Wouldn't it be great if the systems we existed in and lived in were built to support us in those challenging moments?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely. I mean, trauma-informed [00:39:00] care, trauma-informed leadership, the approach in of itself makes workplace culture an asset and it makes. You instead of waiting to have to be resilient or waiting.
I mean, the pandemic is a great example of no one was ready for that. Even public health systems who studied pandemics we're not ready for that and we should not have to wait. We should be able trauma. This is a cohesive approach that already exists. Yeah, that can make. Create a culture designed for resilience and it's not complicated.
Everything that you and I teach, even if it's different are really doable. Yes. Yes. And again, like I always tell people, it's probably affirming what you're already doing. Now you know why you're doing it. Yes. Don't you wanna know why walking, taking your little mental health walks, like why that's important.
It's not just like good, right? It's like there's a [00:40:00] reason, as much as I hate the pizza party, slap on, there's actually a benefit to the pizza party, which is co-regulation, right? Yes. Like connection, so levity, laughter, those kinds of things. And so that's what we're doing. It's not complicated, but it is a choice and we need more workplaces to be choosing the more humane option.
That is again, what? What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose by choosing this approach?
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): I think it's, I think it's I think there's a lack of awareness and I think there's a lot of fear and, we can work past both those things. I'm fully confident and I'm grateful, for, the people listening in today, the work you're doing, Katie, all of us doing this work, we are working, separately, but also together and changing this conversation and I think it's powerful.
And so that's where I, I think it's doable. I think we're gonna get there and I think we're gonna get there sooner than maybe we [00:41:00] even hope.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I agree. I, every day I am instilled with the hope happening and, connected with so many people in the field like yourself, and then just people adopting this approach all over the world.
And there is a groundswell happening. And I think the more we can shine light on the people doing this every day the more we need to to your point earlier, like we need to highlight these tangible examples to, to show that this is happening. Back toward the beginning of this conversation of the more we talk about it, the more we see people, we influence people in our lens of influence, right?
Yeah. Both personally, collectively, and culturally. So the more people can see it, feel it, the more we can really become, this becomes just the norm, right? There is no trauma informed workplace just. The workplace. Right? Workplace. Yes. And that's the goal. And will I see it in my lifetime? I hope [00:42:00] I'm very persistent and fired up to make that happen.
And I am seeing it more than ever. But we need people to take a courageous step forward to and have a willingness to see that this isn't scary, this isn't clinical. No one's asking you to do more, we're just asking you to do it differently. Yeah. And we'll show you how. It's not complicated, but you just have to choose it.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Yes. Ugh, I love that. That's so perfect .
Katie Kurtz (she/her): thanks so much, Stephanie. Before we go into our gentle spritz how can people connect with you, the wounded workforce, all the incredible things you do. I know you have a podcast that you have tons of webinars and. All sorts of things.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): I do all sorts of things. All sorts of things. , I love to bite off more than I can chew. That's the kind of my, I know nothing about that. So the best way to connect with me is I would say you can always find me on my website www.thewoundedworkforce.com. You can find me on social media. I'm [00:43:00] most active on LinkedIn.
I have my personal page, and then also the Wounded Workforce has a page. And then you can always email me as well, and it is a really hard email. It is stephanie@stephanielemek.com. I'm always so excited to talk to people who are passionate about this work. My I I. It is such a gift and a privilege that I am able to do the work and operate in this space, and I take that very seriously.
And so I'm always thrilled to talk to people, to partner with people, to find ways where we can really help this take hold and snowball. And I think we can see it in our lifetimes. I'm excited to work myself out of a job. That's the goal. Same.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely same. I would love to just be gardening and have more puppies and, live it up.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): 100%.
Yes. Yes. Awesome.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Well, everything's linked in the show notes so please be sure to connect with Stephanie. Definitely I. Join the [00:44:00] party on LinkedIn. I've always been talking about how like it's, I've always been on Instagram, but LinkedIn in the last few years and it's been such a great place, especially for trauma informed leaders to connect Yeah.
And learn and share and amplify what we're doing. So, yeah. Alright. Here is our gentle spritz. I, I say one word, but if you want more to use more than one, that's okay too. Right choice. So if you could describe trauma-informed care in one word, what would it be?
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Choice.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Love it. What is your current go-to for caring for your nervous system right now?
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Hot yoga.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Ooh, okay. Yeah. And what does a trauma-informed future look like for you?
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Human.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Love it. Thank you so much, Stephanie, for joining us and sharing everything. Thank you for having me. This with such a great conversation and I'm excited for people to connect with you.
Stephanie Lemek (she/her): Absolutely.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thank you so much Katie, and thank you for all you do.
