%20V2.png)
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
How Can We Prevent Psychological Injury In Our Workplace?
In this episode, we examine psychological injury and the encouraging trend of prioritizing situations that cause Gradual Onset Psychological Injury; particularly Chronic Job Dissatisfaction, Institutional Betrayal, and Toxic Stress.
Our prescription for this episode is to understand the different types of causes of psychological injury: acute event-based causes and chronic environmental-based causes. If you are interested in having your workplace assessed for these causes, check out our Company Culture Health Check!
Past Episode Referenced ("Action is Reaction Fallacy"):
Season 3 Episode 2: What Are Common Stumbling Blocks To Business Growth?
You can reach out to us to talk more about addressing job dissatisfaction and causes of Gradual Onset Psychological Injury, just reach out to us at info@roman3.ca or through our LinkedIn page at https://www.linkedin.com/company/roman3
Don't forget to sign up for our New Quarterly Newsletter that launched this fall!
About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:No, that's just my lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm, Coby, he's James. And, let's get started with a question. How can we prevent a psychological injury in our workplace?
[JAMES]:I don't think anybody's going to really be that surprised at this point that our conversation is going to focus on workplace culture and the employee experience, and we're absolutely going to dive into those elements. But I think what I'd like to do first is, define psychological injuries, where they originate from. So we're talking about psychological injury or illness that's caused by one or more substantial sources of stress at a person's work, or by one or more work, related traumatic events. Oftentimes, the messaging around psychological injury tends to focus on the significant trauma, PTSD, or severe harassment and bullying. and those are incredibly important, and deserved the attention. But they're not the only ways that our workplaces create psychological injuries. They are, however, some of the more easily understood and relatable elements that the general public would be able to resonate with. So I understand the messaging and why there's that focus on those elements. Personally, one of the things that I find actually, quite exciting is that in our home jurisdiction of Nova Scotia, the workers Compensation Board has just implemented a process for supporting the gradual onset of psychological injuries, which includes several other really important elements that I want to explore in our conversation today. And what I'm really excited about is that the recognition and acknowledgement of the gradual nature of these, really significant events that can cause injuries to our teams.
[COBY]:Yeah, it is, something that. So just kind of broad talking about psychological injury. I mean, this is something that, again, going into workers compensation and kind of dealing with kind of like, you know, wellness and everything else like that, too. It is something that has been around, dealing with, has been around for a while in a lot of, provinces and I'm sure in a lot of other jurisdiction states and even in other countries, too, the idea of, especially the big things, like I mentioned, bullying, harassment, traumatic events, the results of workplaces, where you're dealing with things like paramedics and firefighters, those kinds of biggest, big things that can damage our psychological health and can create psychological injury, you know, military stuff like that too. Right. So, you know, really an important thing to be, you know, part of, kind of recovery, and part of these supported, workers compensation and everything else like that too. But you're right, it's one of those things where as important and big as those things are, it's something that they're often like. I like to think of them kind of almost like they're the acute symptoms of psychological injury. Like, you know, something significant and big happens, kind of creates this, you know, big, effort or this big kind of situation, where now there's this kind of like heavy hit injury to your psychological health. And again, like you said, as important as they are and as significant as they are in how they can, like, you know, tear down, someone's mental health and can create psychological injury, it's something where we also need to be looking at, the more subtle, the more gradual as we're talking about here in Nova Scotia, but the more guess, chronic things that add a little bit every day that slowly kind of like, you know, chip away at someone's mental health and how those can be, you know, at the end of the, you know, at the end of the day, just as hard and just as damaging as those big events can.
[JAMES]:Well, and from a workplace perspective, those are elements that we in our businesses can control. certain events, like I think of first responders, having to constantly, day in and day out, be exposed to very traumatic, events that. Is not that this excuses, but that is the nature of the work. And it's very difficult or, to change that element of the work because as a first responder, they are dealing with these often, you know, whether it's a horrific crash or some other. Like it's. It's. I'm glad that there's supports in place to help those individuals deal with those problems, but they're not necessarily an element that the workplace would be able to change, where some of the other pieces from a how do we protect our workplaces, how do we protect our people at work from psychological injuries? There are actually things that a company can do in the way that they are structured, in the way that they are supported, in the way that they provide, training and management and leadership. These are the elements that I want to talk more about because we can, we can have direct control over them. And they will result in less, traumatic events happening in our workplaces.
[COBY]:Right. So I think that, yeah, again, we really want to emphasize the importance of the more acute, situational, bigger, events like harassment, bullying and traumatic events. But I think where if we had to criticize, if we had to put a criticism on the good work that is being done. It isn't that these three things specifically tend to be 90% of the conversation around psychological injury in the workplace. And gradual, again, more chronic, more subtle, maybe even more invisible. Symptoms or situations tend to just to be overlooked or just really not considered for how devastating their effects can be. And in the way that we kind of structure the work that companies do around addressing these things. I think again, it's almost like the prioritization of the bigger acute symptoms tend to almost have a comparable, almost like again, overlooking the gradual pieces. Kind of similar to like, I guess like a visible disability versus an invisible disability, right? Like, you know, so somebody loses a leg and they're, and they're, you know, they're obviously leg racing and they're on crutches or their wheelchair. That's a very big acute problem. It's easy to identify, easy to see, needs support, no question. But that's, but you know, but we've got, we move beyond talking about that's the only kind of disability that there is, or that's the only, or that's, that's the only one that we need to treat, we do now. Or we're better at talking about the more invisible disabilities. Things like mental health challenges, learning disabilities, neurodiverse, like, you know, all these other elements that impact kind of the way that people can, you know, function and function their everyday. Right. Or what we need to do to accommodate or provide support for. So I think that in a way that, you know, the easy to see stuff gets more attention or the bigger acute things get more attention. I think that we can do better at looking at the gradual chronic ways of improvements, kind of like the way that we've started shifting away from completely validating the need to support individual disabilities.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I like that analogy because there is a connection there in terms of, with a visible physical disability limitation. if somebody is in a wheelchair, that's something that is very easy for the general population to identify and understand what the limitations that come with that are. Invisible disabilities, neuro, divergent, learning disability, these things, if you don't experience them yourselves, it can be very difficult for, from the general population to really understand how that limits, And the same kind of thing with the psychological injuries. The, the. I agree with you in terms of the criticism that I would have around the messaging. I understand why, because people will, especially with first responders, and that tends to be a big piece around, the messaging around psychological, injuries, or especially with Nova Scotia rolling out more and more around gradual onset. that's still a big part of their messaging of. Of first responders responding to traumatic events. And the stress that that has on somebody over time causes a very, very real, very impactful, injury to them. That's something that people can grasp onto. there's other elements that, just like the invisible disabilities are much harder for people to recognize, but they are. They can be equally as damaging, equally as limiting, equally as important, especially to the individual who is experiencing those injuries. it can have a very real, very significant impact on their work and on their life, outside of work.
[COBY]:Yeah. I do think that I also want to just take a step back and make sure that we're not coming across saying that someone. That bullying and harassment are as overt as someone losing a leg. Right. Like, you know, obviously those. There is a lot more salty in kind of, again, like, microaggressions and stuff like that, too, or just kind of like, you know, like the hidden actions of bullying. so those. Those are things that, again, I think comparatively to the stuff that we're going to talk about, those are a bit easier to hold on to, easier to identify, easier to grab onto, because they're often event based. Harassment's often event based. Bullying is often event based, and trauma is often event based. I mean, that's a better way to kind of put the kind of border around why we're talking about those kind of collectively versus the things that we're going to talk about that are more chronic.
[JAMES]:And we've been talking about bullying and harassment for years, and it's now codified in a lot of our labor, legislation and our right. We understand it because it's become a part of our discourse now. It's time to continue to expand our discourse, to continue to talk about these more, as we introduce more and more ideas and elements to, especially with the gradual onset component. I think we there, I'm very hopeful that there will come a time where we're actually talking about things like, institutional betrayal and toxic stress in the same way that we talk about bullying and harassment or traumatic events.
[COBY]:Yes. No, and that's good. That's a good segue into talking about the chronic elements that we think businesses really need to understand if they want to prevent psychological injury in the workplace. So you listen to two of them, but I'll just kind of relist them and kind of talk. And kind of talk about kind of one of our truths, or threatening truths of business, how that interacts with the two. So the three we're going to get into are chronic dissatisfaction, institutional betrayal, and toxic stress. But we also. I think I'm going to just put this in here and we'll kind of. I think we'll touch on it as we go through. the action is reaction fallacy is one of the things we talked about in a previous episode, where it's the idea of where workplaces are under the false assumptions that being reactive or doing things after the fact is how business gets done. It's not about planning ahead. It's about responding to when, you know, when things have already gone wrong. And this reactive approach to, or even mindset around business tends to be something where employees feel like they're. Every day is about putting on fires. Every day is about reacting to what happened, and you can never get ahead. And when we were talking about kind of how to classify some of these, you know, some of this reactionary mindset into kind of the. The other elements around chronic dissatisfaction and institutional betrayal and so on, we were like, well, this is kind of something that is a very, a very big, I wouldn't say necessarily cause, but a very big environment for gradual onset psychological injury.
[JAMES]:If this is a prevalent mindset, then there is a much greater chance that your organization is causing some of these other elements around chronic dissatisfaction, institutional betrayal, and chronic. And toxic, stress.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:And if you're. If you're an HR professional, you're. You're. You've probably been exposed to an environment where it's nothing but reacting to fires. And you can probably very much relate to the stress that comes from always feeling like you are reacting to situations and never being given the time, energy, resources, support to actually get ahead on anything. And it's true in the HR realm, but it is true in how businesses approach many elements of organization and structure with their companies.
[COBY]:Yeah. And I think that, again, if I want to classify why these three things are kind of like, kind of are a bit different in the. In the chronic element versus. We talked about the three things of harassment, bullying, and traumatic events. Again, like I said before, the harassment, bullying, and traumatic events are event based. They're usually kind of like, you know, there's a start. There's usually something that is kind of, again, that acute something happens, you know, whether it's happening every day or something happens that's more about, you know, small events, but they're really about events. Whereas the three things of chronic dissatisfaction, institutional betrayal, and toxic stress. They're more environmental things. They're more the kind of the norms and expectations of just this, of, this is just how we work. This is how we do things. This is what you, this is just what it's like every day. Day. That's, you know, that's kind of a nice way to kind of separate the two, because these, this is just gradual every day. This is just our normal. That's what makes this so chronic and, and so slow to onset. Just builds and builds and builds and builds.
[JAMES]:Yeah, let's, let's jump into it. I think we've set the stage fairly well. and I hope people are, used to us enough that they know we value everything else that we've been talking about. But let's get into how do we actually prevent this in our workplace. And the first one really is around chronic dissatisfaction. we've talked a lot about job dissatisfaction on this podcast. It's a major element of what we, of the work that we do with clients in identifying and removing job dissatisfaction. But m now we're talking about what happens when dissatisfaction is left to fester, when it is chronic in the workplace and it's not addressed. And so think about, kind of the, we're still going to talk a bit about, you know, the elements that cause dissatisfaction, but it's that constant day in, day out, month over month, year over year, of feeling like you've been taken advantage of, of feeling like you are nothing valued as part of the organization. That feeling like you, you're just a commodity, a cog in the wheel that, you can be let go at any time. There's no job security here, that the wages are not competitive, they're not sufficient, they're not equitable, that there's no wellness supports. This constant barrage of, elements that cause, dissatisfaction has a direct impact on our mental health, on creating these gradual psychological, injuries.
[COBY]:Yeah, it's the, there's so much of it that can just start to chip away at someone's feeling of self, self worth. There's so much of it that can just be like, you know, I am, you know, like, my identity is, is part of this blob of, you know, like I'm just a number sort of thing, right? The idea of, you know, I'm a doormat to my, to, to my employer. These can damage someone's mental health. These can be like, you know, the, the injuries can just kind of be a boat. My inability to almost like, get any type of, I guess, other than. Other than my paycheck. There's, you know, I. I'm selling. I'm so. I'm selling my soul in order to just, you know, feed my family. And these can be things that, again, over time, can start to really chip away at someone's mental health.
[JAMES]:And we already know this. We're like, we, we already talk about this in terms of, you know, the difference in feeling on. Yeah. Or the approach that you, Sunday night, how do you feel about Monday morning? That idea of, do you dread going into work? That type of stress, the sleeplessness that can come with it, the, having that type of stress in your body all the time. And a big thing with the chronic dissatisfaction. It's soul sucking, right. It just drains every ounce of joy or happiness that you might be able to take from your job and destroys it. It poisons even happy events, milestones. When you are under this constant chronic dissatisfaction, it ruins what could be otherwise great. A great day or a great event or a milestone to be celebrated.
[COBY]:Well, and I mean, like, again, I can't connect a, you know, mental health issue or, you know, or a specific mental injury to, to, to these trees because, you know, I'm not a psychologist, but, but chronic dissatisfaction puts you in a depressive state. It puts you into kind of, you know, like, a pessimistic negative thinking. Exactly. And what it, and what it does, it starts to erode a lot of your personal relationships with people because you're always a sad sack. You're always, you know, Debbie Downer. You're.
[JAMES]:Or you're angry or you're, I mean, depression can, show, up in many different ways. Right?
[COBY]:Absolutely, but, yeah, but just like, this feeling of what you do doesn't matter. You're expendable, and you just kind of dread. I, you just have this general feeling of dread about. Kind of about just, like, just being at work or being involved in this environment. It's something that, again, like I say, it sucks the life out of you, but it really does kind of create this depressive view of your life when you're constantly dissatisfied. I mean, it's just, it's. And then you, and then this becomes a filter that you view everything else through.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:So there really is a lot of, again, negative impact and psychological issues and injuries that can come from this constant heavy weight of this. You, what you do doesn't matter. You are expendables. You know, suffering is just what you're underpaid.
[JAMES]:Undervalued. The conditions are terrible, the policies are terrible, the consistency is terrible.
[COBY]:The. You're not worth a better scenario.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:Right. So, you know, these are the kind of. This is kind of what it can look like when you have. When you have this injury. So I'm, When you're in this kind of environment. So, like, in, you know, so imagine, you know, so it's not hard for someone to envision this kind of attitude in, you know, in themselves or in other people when they're constantly dissatisfied, is that, you know, you just, you know, so if you're, you know, if this is you, every day is a bit harder to wake up. Every day is a bit harder to engage. You feel more numb every day because you're just constantly under this heavy way.
[JAMES]:Of dissatisfaction, and numb is a good way to frame it because it's a. It's the only way to cope with that type of chronic dissatisfaction. Right. Because you still need to get through the day. So we just shut your brain off and pretend everything's fine until you go home and it seeps through and impacts everything else that you do.
[COBY]:Yeah. All right, let's move on and talk a little bit about institutional betrayal.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:So this, is something that I think we could probably do more in the podcast talking a bit about, because it is something that people really do need to kind of be more aware of. It's not. It's a, is a. It's a big thing that's probably doesn't get a lot of, you know, a lot of attention, and it really should. But I was going to define it real quick because it is, again, something most people haven't heard of. So, institutional betrayal, it's a concept that was developed by psychologist Jennifer Fried. So it's about wrongdoing perpetrated by an institution, like a workplace, upon individuals, like employees who are dependent on that institution. This includes failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings by other people, within the context of their institution. So it really gets about when you rely on your company, on your employer, and they do not support or prevent bad things that they could prevent, then you have been betrayed. And I think the hallmark of institutional, betrayal is the complete devastation of trust. It's just one of those things where you relied on them and you still rely on them, and they have broken their trust and they've let you down, kind of, you know, in, either all the time or in other ways, either in events or an environment. Right. But it's this idea of, as an institution, they have betrayed you.
[JAMES]:Yeah, I like this concept. and the language of it, I think, is really interesting. But this can be like, we see this with how a lot of companies broadly, approach the employee relationship, spend years telling people that, you know, work hard, show loyalty, show up, go the extra mile, volunteer, to take on new projects, stay late, don't ask for overtime, do all these things, and you will be rewarded. Like this. We've set people up with for years to have this expectation. Now, that expectation has very much gone away, in popular thinking recently, but it's because of institutional betrayal. It's because companies have repeatedly, time and again, failed to follow through on the promises that they've made. And it's a betrayal of the people who have put in this extra time, who have, shown loyalty, gone the extra mile, and then they are cut, at the first sign of, distress from the organization. Well, let's just cut a couple thousand people so that we can save the stock price from going down a quarter of a percent.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:Like it's.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah, well, and again, so, so.
[JAMES]:I mean, that's a big example of institutional betrayal.
[COBY]:Well, a lot of the ways that we also talk about it, in a lot of work that we do, is we often kind of talk about it in a way that is a bit of a counterpoint to psychological safety.
[JAMES]:Yes.
[COBY]:Right. Because psychological safety is about providing the trust in the environment where people can speak up, share thoughts and ideas, provide feedback, and, you know, without retaliation or ridicule. Institutional betrayal is often, like, what happens when they totally don't do that, when they retaliate or when they ridicule you, or when they don't allow you to do that. Like we talked about, when they create.
[JAMES]:Counterfeit, psychological safety and pretend that they'll offer it and then talk about you behind your back and penalize you.
[COBY]:Exactly, yes. Yeah. And this can be, you know, and this can be such a difficult thing for people to deal with because, like, I mean, when we talk about, like, you know, the idea of performative solutions and performative expectations, you know, sometimes it's a matter of like, you know, we want to have this appearance that we're a good employer, but really, we've just got a really good pr, a really good, like, you know, public face, but we're going to absolutely betray you at a moment's notice.
[JAMES]:We want the benefits, but we don't want to do any of the work.
[COBY]:Exactly. And I mean, you know, so, like, in. In big contexts. It can be like you say, it can be about layups, or it can be about kind of anything like that. even going back to kind of the event side of it. This can be like, you know, bullying in the institution, not effectively resolving the issue, not creating a safe place to work, but it can. But it can also be about neglecting, being neglected or overworked by your manager. Right. It's the idea of, you know, that, you know, often the people in authority, are kind of the embodiment of the institution if, it's designed for you to not get ahead of it. If the normal course of action, the everyday expectation is to, you know, totally, you know, turn on employees or let them down. If, you know, it's like, oh, we might be liable, so let's just sell them out, those types of ideas. Or even just the idea of, you know, I'm, you know, my manager's gonna throw me under the bus just to make themselves look good. These are all different examples of institutional betrayal, and they have, you know, there's so many psychological injuries that can come from this. Right. It's the, you know, like in. In some situations, it. You know, it can be as big as suicide and suicidal tendencies or suicidal thoughts. Right. It's the idea of just kind of having kind of everything, the rug being pulled out from underneath you, or can be. Or it can be the idea of, you know, just, you know, every day I'm constantly let, let down, you know, and it slowly starts to break people.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:And it's one of those things where, again, without a sense of trust, you're constantly in fight or flight mode all the time.
[JAMES]:Well, the erosion of trust in the workplace is so incredibly damaging for so many reasons. Even just from a purely selfish, capitalistic standpoint, companies need to invest in maintaining and building trust if they want to keep productivity up, if they want to be able to, have staff to do the work that's required. When we erode trust, when we break that relationship with people, it affects every interaction that we have with them. They. It is in. It becomes very, very difficult to even have a productive conversation with somebody if the institution has eroded that trust.
[COBY]:Absolutely. So I think that will probably bring up institutional betrayal again.
[JAMES]:It's something that I want to dive into more, too, because it's, It's a really interesting topic, and it relates, as you said already, it relates so perfectly as a counterpoint to psychological safety and the impact of institutional betrayal, I don't think can be overstated.
[COBY]:Well, and again, it's tying it back to the action is reaction fallacy. One of the betrayals that most businesses might not think about is if you are in this always reaction mode, every employee is expected to be a firefighter, putting, you know, putting. Dealing with things as they come up. No one's ever allowed to get ahead. If you're in a reactionary workplace, you have betrayed your employees. So there is a piece to it, too, that again, this idea of the reaction is reaction fallacy has such a. Such a deep impact into. Into creating psychological injuries. But I think a great example of it is one of the betrayals is, yes, you are going to come into this hot mess that is just every day until it breaks you or burns you out.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:So, let's move on to the last one. So, toxic stress. So, toxic stress is something that is, again, it's a big banner with a few things can fit into it, but I think three little subcategories for us to kind of just make sure that we touch on is going to be about inconsistency, kind of poor or ineffective communication and general, incivility.
[JAMES]:Yeah, toxic stress is a big piece. And now I'm gonna. I guess I will share, I was debating with myself, about whether or not I actually wanted to share a personal story, but I've had the fortune or misfortune, to have worked in some very toxic environments. my experiences have been almost completely due to, inconsistency and, unrealistic expectations. but the impact that that has on you every day is devastating. And I can remember specific events of driving into work in the morning and not knowing if my manager was going to be happy. And sunshine and rainbows where everybody gets along and this is the greatest team in the world, and we are all just beautiful flowers. Or I was going to be reamed out in front of my colleagues for some for doing exactly what I was told to do previously by this same manager. Right. This inconsistency, the feeling of helplessness that comes from it, even for someone who is typically m quite vocal, I will say in the workplace, the stress does terrible things to you, and it can cause intrusive thoughts. So I'm just going to say it. I mean, there are times when I was driving into this environment and the stress was so palpable that I could feel a physical reaction as I was driving, to the work. and you get these intrusive thoughts of, well, you know, I could put my car in the ditch and get a day off work, which, no, it's not something that I was going to do, but those. It seeps into your psyche. And the way that this constant toxic level of stress impacts a person is so devastating and it is what drives me absolutely bonkers, is that it is preventable as well. It is something that we can actually, there are strategies that we can do to change this, and it's about making sure. Anyway, management training would have gone a long way to alleviating some of this toxic stress. Making sure that the, the CEO didn't fall into that technical founder paradox that we talk about, that they no longer have the skills to be successful and they're own insecurities causing stress and anxiety in their team. And it's just, it is such a massive topic that, as you said, it encompasses so many other elements, but it, as you can probably tell, is something that's quite personal to me and that it still at years removed from the situation, causes a physical reaction in my, like, I'm actually getting a little worked up now.
[COBY]:Yeah, well, it's something that those, that have been kind of, again, like stewing in that environment, it stays with you. And because, I mean, it's one of those things where it's almost like when you. The thing about these environmental, chronic causes of psychological injury is that. Bye. I. Being chronic and being gradual and happening a little bit every day, your brain starts to change to account for it. You start to process things differently as a survival mode. But the way that it programs your brain is really difficult to un program it. And which is why it can be as devastating towards people and their long term mental health as the acute event based situations. Because your brain is different after. After, you know, a long time sitting in this environment. And I mean, again, toxic stress, a, major, you know, again, kind of resolve, it can be highly anxious, you know, reactions, people, people can live in an anxious state because again, I don't know what's going to happen today. I don't, you know what, you know, I have to prepare, I have to put on my armor for the low grade hostility that I'm going to have just by, you know, by the environment that I'm in. I had to deal with a constant passive aggressive communications from my coworkers and from my manager. But I think the biggest thing is that whole idea of inconsistency, like you said. I mean, we've talked about this before, but inconsistency can look like insanity and trying to plan and prepare for insanity is something that breaks people.
[JAMES]:I would so rather work with someone who is consistently bad at their job than someone who is inconsistent and never knowing what you're going to get one day to the next. Because if you're just bad at your job, then I know how to deal with that. Right around that. Yeah, I can work around that. I can account for that. But if you. If I never know how you're going to respond to of situation, how you're going to react to information, it causes a lot of stress and anxiety.
[COBY]:Yeah. Now here's the. So here, so here's the challenge. We've spent a good chunk of time talking about these negative things, from harassment to bullying, traumatic events, to dissatisfaction to institutional betrayal, to toxic stress. but the question we asked beginning was, how can we prevent psychological injury in the workplace? So really what did we do about it? And I think that a big step towards what to do about it is just understanding this different of the acute versus the chronic, of the event versus the environmental. Because if we're overlooking these m more subtle, gradual pieces, then we're not doing anything to address them. So just by taking a step back and trying to realize that these are probably in, you know, ingrained into your workplaces in some degree or another, is probably going to be one step towards preventing them.
[JAMES]:Also, do not underestimate the impact that the direct manager or supervisor has on these elements, especially because we, whether we're talking inconsistency or. And reaction, being react, having this constant reactionary mindset, are two things that contribute to all of, the psychological injuries.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:And if you are trying to figure out, well, what do we do about this? Understanding how your supervisors and managers, interact with their staff, how they treat people, how they manage, set and manage expectations. All of these elements will be crucial in identifying, and resolving anything related to, psychological injury.
[COBY]:Yeah. So, and one of the things that, you know, maybe the question you'd ask us is, okay, so what do you guys do about this stuff when you work with your clients? Well, largely the things that we, ensure as a foundation of our work is we look at addressing job dissatisfaction and making sure that that chronic state of dissatisfaction is, resolved as, one of the very first things. So a lot of our work is involving kind of initial investigations, kind of figuring out lay the land, but we look specifically for that and the causes of it. And we talked about dissatisfaction, like I said, in a few episodes, in the past, but like our. But one of the tools that we use to try and. Try and chip away getting dissatisfaction out of your workplace is our seven by three rule is trying to make sure that things like your wages, like your job security, like your wellness, like your consistency, are competitive, sufficient, and equitable, because that allows us to figure out, what can we do today to move to you out of this environment that is causing depressive states or causing dread or causing people to feel like they don't matter. And that's. So that's a big part of the work that we do early on. But that's a huge thing that all workplaces could do more of.
[JAMES]:Yeah, it's. If there is job dissatisfaction in your workplace, your greatest return on investment in terms of time, energy, and resources is removing that first, because anything else that you try to do that impacts the employee experience. If there is a active, rampant, or chronic job dissatisfaction in place, your other efforts are going to be meaningless. People, aren't going to trust what you have to say. They're going to fight against any implementation and. Okay, great. So we've had a wonderful outing outside of the workplace where people were happy for 12 hours, and then we're going to toss them back into the environment that treats them like crap. Right. So job dissatisfaction, you're right, Coby. It is foundational to all the work that we do because we have to ensure that those elements are resolved as best they can, before we start looking at other initiatives.
[COBY]:Yeah. And then the next thing that we would recommend and that we do is we look to prioritize psychological safety. We look to make sure that there is a clear path to build trust in the workplace, to avoid betrayal, to make sure that people understand that there are protections in place for their ability to speak up and share ideas, that there's an opportunity for managers and employees to mend broken fences or to build momentum towards a more kind of impactful and effective environment to allow people to give their best work. And we can't do that unless we've addressed things like consistency, you know, things, you know, again, like dissatisfaction, because, you know, they're built on that. But that needs to be a focus, that needs to be commitment and a protected priority for workplaces to prioritize psychological safety. And if they can't walk that walk, then they're falling into institutional betrayal. Yeah, we're just kind of back to where we started, but it has to be a full on commitment to it. And that's a big piece, but that's something that you really are not going to address even psychological injuries around harassment and bullying. You're never going to be able to get to those if you haven't put in the. The infrastructure to support and prioritize psychological safety.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:And then last, I think, is really, again, moving away from that reactionary culture. I mean, we work with teams to try and help address the action is reaction fallacy. And it's something that we definitely need to make sure that we're doing more of. Not we, but we kind of broad. We, out there in the business. Yeah. To make sure that there is this idea of, okay, things don't have to be perfect today, but we have to have a plan for how they're going to be better tomorrow and just try and get a little bit ahead every day to the point that you're not always in reaction mode, that what you're doing has intent, it has strategy. It's moving in a direction that you're choosing to. You're not just, you know, lost in the sea, going with the tides and showing up wherever you end up.
[JAMES]:And honestly, if your business is in this, action is reaction fallacy, it's going to take investment to change because everybody is already tapped out. Everybody is already at capacity or beyond capacity, just responding to the constant stress, fires, situations that pop up. You, if you want to resolve it, you need to find a way to provide some investment, whether that is in additional human resources, so that some of the, stress and anxiety and reactions can be shared amongst others. Free people up, to be able to actually take on that strategic approach. You need to find a way to increase your capacity so that you can have people who are forward looking, who are acting, who are creating the strategy, who are acting with intent, so that that filters throughout your organization. And people aren't constantly feeling like they never get ahead. They can't even keep their heads above water.
[COBY]:Absolutely. All right, so I think this was, a pretty downer conversation, but I think hopefully we turn it around at the end. but, I'm just going to do a bit of a recap, but if anything else you want to add, James?
[JAMES]:No, I think I'm good.
[COBY]:Okay, great. All right, I'm. So the question was, how can we prevent psychological injury in our workplace? Well, we kind of said that there are kind of almost like two different lenses that might be helpful to view the causes of psychological injury. Through. The first one are the big things that are what we refer to as the acute symptoms or the event based systems. Things like harassment or bullying or traumatic events. Major cause of psychological injury, no question. But almost like in a category of big, acute things that maybe get more attention than, the other elements that we talked about, which were the more chronic pieces, the more subtle, the more gradual, the more environmental pieces, which we talked about as being chronic dissatisfaction, institutional betrayal and toxic stress. But also realizing that there's also a bit of the mindset, the kind of governor of our workplaces, which is the action is reaction fallacy. And, you know, if we're always in reaction mode, if we're. If employees are always dealing with chronic dissatisfaction and kind of in a bit of that depressive, numb state, you know, or if they're. They feel betrayed by their institution, they know. And they. And there, you know, is it a sense of, you know, of, feeling that all trust is broken and a sense of a feeling of helplessness can kind of come from those kind of environments? Or it could be the toxic stress of, you know, having this, like, you know, this constant state of anxiety where, you know, where we never know what to expect and, you know, every day is just. Is just something that fills us full of dread and anxiety can be. Can be a really, effective way to negatively program our brains through, going forward. And it can take, you know, major intervention to kind of help us get back to a place where we actually have healthier, you know, mindsets and mental states because of this gradual environment, weighted environment of these negatively, these negative effects on us. So if we, as workplaces, want to prevent these types of things from happening, we need to really understand this chronic and acute, this event or an environmental kind of way of viewing psychological injury. We honestly need to get in there and address job dissatisfaction. We have to, you know, make sure that our workplaces are competitive, sufficient, and equitable. And the factors that impact kind of, employee. Employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction. We need to not undervalue the impact of a manager the manager has on employees. We need to prioritize psychological safety and make sure that we are working and committed to, you know, maintaining trust with our employees. And we need to move away from this action is reaction, you know, mindset or this reactionary culture that many of our workplaces kind of live in every day because these. Overlooking these things makes the problem worse. If you hear this today and you do nothing about it tomorrow, then it's gotten a little bit worse. This is stuff that we have to take seriously. And we're very proud that in our jurisdiction are, you know, the WCB in Nova Scotia is taking this gradual onset psychological injury very seriously. Like other provinces are, and hopefully this will be the norm that will sweep across North America into Europe and maybe start to actually change the things that we need in order to for all of us to have a different relationship with work. Well, thank you. So that about does it for us. For a full archive of our podcast and access to the video version hosted on our YouTube channel, visit www.roman3.ca/podcast thanks for joining us.
[ANNOUCER]:For more information on topics like these, don't forget to visit us at www.roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in spontaneous dance, dry mouth, a version to the sound of James voice desire to find a better podcast.
