When was the last time you considered the true cost of unresolved trauma in your workplace?
Welcome to episode five in our series Unveiling Trauma's Impact: Navigating the Hidden Costs. In this episode, we uncover the hidden costs of unaddressed trauma in the workplace.
With Allessandria Polizzi, we peel back the layers on the toll that trauma inflicts on businesses and employees alike. From the stealthy financial drain to the lost potential of every team member, this episode is an eye-opening discussion on the imperative, yet often neglected, aspect of mental wellness in our professional lives.
Allessandria sheds light on how a work environment that's tuned into the needs of trauma-impacted individuals isn't just compassionate—it's a strategic edge in today's market. We share stories and strategies that highlight the transformative power of trauma-informed leadership and the collective benefits of a workforce that feels seen, heard, and supported. It's a conversation that champions the psychological safety of employees as the cornerstone for a thriving, resilient organization.
Dr. Allessandria Polizzi is an award-winning and globally recognized thought leader and top-rated speaker on workplace mental health, psychological health and safety, and building resilient organizations. She is the CEO of Verdant Consulting and the ISO global liaison for occupational health and safety. She also serves as an expert on psychological health and safety for professional associations, media, and the National Safety Council and recently published the Workplace Mental Health Strategy Workbook for companies to proactively address this issue.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
When was the last time you considered the true cost of unresolved trauma in your workplace?
Welcome to episode five in our series Unveiling Trauma's Impact: Navigating the Hidden Costs. In this episode, we uncover the hidden costs of unaddressed trauma in the workplace.
With Allessandria Polizzi, we peel back the layers on the toll that trauma inflicts on businesses and employees alike. From the stealthy financial drain to the lost potential of every team member, this episode is an eye-opening discussion on the imperative, yet often neglected, aspect of mental wellness in our professional lives.
Allessandria sheds light on how a work environment that's tuned into the needs of trauma-impacted individuals isn't just compassionate—it's a strategic edge in today's market. We share stories and strategies that highlight the transformative power of trauma-informed leadership and the collective benefits of a workforce that feels seen, heard, and supported. It's a conversation that champions the psychological safety of employees as the cornerstone for a thriving, resilient organization.
Dr. Allessandria Polizzi is an award-winning and globally recognized thought leader and top-rated speaker on workplace mental health, psychological health and safety, and building resilient organizations. She is the CEO of Verdant Consulting and the ISO global liaison for occupational health and safety. She also serves as an expert on psychological health and safety for professional associations, media, and the National Safety Council and recently published the Workplace Mental Health Strategy Workbook for companies to proactively address this issue.
Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.
Invite Manya to inspire and empower your teams + position your organization as a forward-thinking leader in fostering resilience and trauma sensitivity.
Work shouldn't hurt, and so when we create workplaces where it does, we are hurting more than just our employees and we are hurting more than our bottom line. We are hurting the communities and what those people reside. As we, you know, look for to grow more talent in an ever shrinking talent market, understanding how to retain that talent it's a huge business problem, and so when we are informed about how trauma shows up at work, we're better able to retain that talent.
Manya Chylinski:
Hello, welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski, and this is another episode in our series Unveiling Trauma's Impact Navigating the Hidden Costs. Today, we're talking about the hidden costs of trauma in the workplace, and my guest is Allessandria Polizzi.
Manya Chylinski:
She is the CEO of Verdant Consulting and a recognized thought leader on workplace mental health, psychological health and safety and building resilient organizations. We had the best conversation and I know that you're really going to learn a lot listening to this episode. Hi, Allessandria, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to talk to you today.
Allessandria Polizzi:
I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Manya Chylinski:
Well before we dig into the subject matter, the topic at hand today, I ask all my guests if you could have dinner with any historical figure. Who would it be and why?
Allessandria Polizzi:
Yeah, so lots of potential options for that, but the one that I would most like to speak with would be Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Oh, it should be everyone's answer, and so why forced to be reckoned with the ability to speak with Verve and Vigor about the expectation of equality for women? I have several of the t-shirts that have her quotes on them. One of my favorites is not fragile like a flower, but fragile like a bomb, and just how she was able to navigate in a very different time but stick to her values and her ethics.
Manya Chylinski:
Yes, she would be an amazing dinner companion. Yeah, that's a good one, I like it.
Allessandria Polizzi:
A little RBG.
Manya Chylinski:
Yeah, exactly, I think we could all do with a little RBG almost every day.
Allessandria Polizzi:
When I heard that she passed away, my son was with me and he pulled this one and he was like, oh, who's Ruth Bader Ginsburg? I said why? Oh, she died. I had to pull over the car. Oh, yeah, Pull over the car and cry and he felt terrible that he was the one to tell me. But I had to just pull over and like, have a moment.
Manya Chylinski:
Yeah, that was a blow, that one for sure. Well, thank you for sharing. And our topic today is you and I are going to talk about the hidden cost of trauma and how it shows up in the workplace. And when we're talking about hidden costs, it could be financial, it could be things like reduced productivity or things that aren't as tangible, but like lost opportunity cost or societal burdens, long-term consequences that were just somehow not factoring in. So, with that as our starting point, from your perspective, when you're thinking about the workplace, what are the most significant hidden costs?
Allessandria Polizzi:
I can point to any business goal and tell you how having a healthy workplace will increase the likelihood of that being successful and how the opposite is true, and that's not just based on my opinion, but I can probably find a peer-reviewed scientific study that also backs it up. So in our book we just published, for example, we have 20 different business objectives, all of which are furthered and improved by having a psychologically healthy workplace and healthy workers. Healthy company. How does trauma come into that? By equipping leaders and creating a trauma-informed workplace. These are skills that apply to anyone, whether or not they've had trauma or not. These are leadership skills we can put in place, things like giving people the ability to have choice, co-regulating stress responses simple things that we can learn create healthier workplaces.
Allessandria Polizzi:
This is not an issue that's unique to certain industries. It's not unique to only certain quote-unquote types of people or backgrounds. So pretty much any outcome, be it productivity, quality of product, customer satisfaction, change, adoption, learning new skills, tapping into your diverse talent, retention, engagement, present-teaism I mean I can go on and on. We have specific things that happen in businesses that keep the businesses from being as productive and lucrative as possible. Many of them tie back to the psychological health of the workplace.
Manya Chylinski:
Right. So a business exists to serve a purpose or an organization exists to serve a purpose, to make money, to sell a product, to have a service that creates a better world, whatever the end result is. It's not created to be this group of people who sit around and share their feelings. But what is the challenge for organizations that aren't building environments that are psychologically safe or trauma-informed, or are places that are really healthy for the individuals who are working there?
Allessandria Polizzi:
Having a healthy workplace is not the same thing as having people talk about their feelings. So I think about and many folks in this space think about mental health at work in the same way we think about physical health at work. So it's a very easy math for me to say if I don't injure or kill my employees, our business is better. This was a radical concept 100 years ago. We think about mental health as health. We have physical health. We have psychological health. If I have healthy employees, my business performs better. That doesn't mean we have to talk about our feelings. That just means we shouldn't be putting in place behaviors or ways of working that aggravate and have been scientifically proven to either create trauma or be disruptive for those who have experienced it.
Manya Chylinski:
Right. What are some of those behaviors?
Allessandria Polizzi:
I think I mentioned one, which is giving people choice.
Allessandria Polizzi:
Again, this has zero to do with tell me about. No one wants you should not be asking people about their trauma, the trauma informed the emphasis is on informed Right being an informed leader, informed practices. So what we know about trauma is that, especially childhood trauma, it changes the physical nature of the brain so the brain responds to stress in very different ways, so that can be more activated, more extremes, et cetera. So, first of all, knowing that when we can recognize those behaviors as a leader, I don't just think that person's crazy, that person has problems, that person, what's wrong with them. Instead, as a leader, go oh, that person's activated and because I'm informed, I'm not going to respond in kind, I'm going to focus on my regulation, I'm not going to escalate things because that's not productive. Oh, this is a great opportunity for me to help that person learn a better way of responding to stressful situations, to create new neural pathways. Honestly, we can do this for every single person in the organization. They do not have to have trauma to benefit from those types of leadership skills.
Manya Chylinski:
What are some of the barriers, systemic or structural, that you've encountered within the workplace environment that make it difficult for people to address these hidden costs?
Allessandria Polizzi:
I think one is the erroneous belief that what we're doing today is working and that anything additional would deter from this high success rate we have and how businesses are run. Businesses are incredibly dysfunctional and wasteful incredibly wasteful. Two out of every three projects and most projects we invested are big financial investments two out of three fail. Wow, that is not a good ROI. Why do they fail? The majority of time that they fail has to do with communication and interpersonal skills. It doesn't have anything to do with others. It's mostly tied to human being, human at work, right there. If you could just get one more project out the gate, imagine how much better your business would be. 70 percent of managers are consistently rated as being very poor. 70 percent of employees will not speak up if they see a problem or have an idea on how to make the business better. That is a large cache of cash. Yes, if I can unmute my employees, if I could actually tap into the thing I'm paying for, imagine how much better my business would be.
Allessandria Polizzi:
What's in the way? Like I said, one is somehow denial that what we're doing isn't working. Two, I think there's a fear that when we admit that we have emotions, it means we have to talk about them. It does not. I think people are afraid of having to be vulnerable, overly exposed, a peer weak. We have many unhealthy ways of thinking about the human psyche. Those don't really serve us to get the best out of our people.
Allessandria Polizzi:
The other one I get a lot like, I literally had it today was well, how will you measure that? Okay, one the World Health Organization has the psychosocial hazards. Just as we know how to measure physical hazards, we know how to measure psychological hazards. This has been established since 2007 in Canada and Australia, so we're not making it up. And how are you measuring it now? Yeah, how do you think you're not doing damage now? And so I think there's just this. It's just new, it's new for us. But when we stop thinking about it being about feelings and more about it being about health and keeping employees healthy, then the conversation in my mind changes, or it should.
Manya Chylinski:
Yes, I appreciate that. Bringing us back to that it's about health and that organizations need healthy people, how can we foster a greater awareness of what? We're missing when we're not focusing on the health of employees.
Allessandria Polizzi:
Yeah, I think. Number one the next generation is not going to really make this very optional, and so and and this is going to come in two ways. One is, as we're seeing, a demand and a prioritization for better ways of living that are not about living to work. Secondarily, this next generation 100% of them had a childhood traumatic event called COVID, and so that has impacted the development of their brains so that, as they enter the workforce, the need will be so profound and has been profound, as we've seen this next generation enter the workforce. There's really not a lot we can do to avoid it.
Allessandria Polizzi:
There are multiple states Massachusetts and Rhode Island are two of them but there's 32 states that are exploring legislation that would make things like workplace bullying illegal. Again, I get a question about how do you measure that? I'm like the same way you measure sexual harassment, discrimination. We figured it out, so that is a kind of more of a stick approach, but I think, as we see, organizations start to understand that having a healthy workplace is a good business, and that doesn't mean no conflict, that doesn't mean less work, that doesn't mean lower productivity or lowered standards. It's actually the opposite. We will start to see that sea change but it just takes some view at the front end really seeing that through.
Manya Chylinski:
Right, I love talking to you, alissa, andrea, because you make it so clear and in my mind I just think, yes, exactly Everything you just said. Let's check, check, check, let's do this.
Allessandria Polizzi:
What do you mean? Roi? First of all, how expensive do you think it is to not be mean Like? I don't understand. Yeah, like did you somehow see? I don't understand. I've never read one article, not one scientific study, that says that abusing our employees or ignoring their health is advantageous to the bottom line. Not one.
Manya Chylinski:
But there's obviously something built into the system or built into the way that we do business, that is blocking people from seeing that.
Allessandria Polizzi:
Well, so a hundred years ago, we probably thought that we couldn't keep people safe on the factory floor either, that it would bankrupt us. If I have to worry about people being safe on machines, then I can't run my business. A hundred years ago, in fact, I bet you there's people who actually think that now that is not true. We know that not to be true, and so I think the more we can start to really push these assumptions, I think the better off we can be. Like I said, I think there's just a big fear of the unknown. I think there's a big fear of having to be exposed and vulnerable and weak, and that is not at all what we're talking about. Just understand what it is to be human and how to human at work, right.
Manya Chylinski:
It all comes down to that which again seems very simple but isn't necessarily in the actual doing of it.
Allessandria Polizzi:
But the doing of it is. Here's the thing. The doing of it is. The World Health Organization has workplace mental health guidelines. There are 12 identified psychosocial hazards. You can assess your organization today to see where do we have the biggest risk. Right, that's not the heart, that's a survey. Right, these are not difficult.
Manya Chylinski:
The idea isn't difficult, as you're saying. Now that you can even do that assessment, that's not difficult. Is it changing the mindset? It's all but between the ears, my friend.
Allessandria Polizzi:
And it's cultural. And what I find really troubling is the mindset of well, I had to suffer, so other people should have to do the same. That's the mindset that's out there. I mean, they don't say it that plainly Obviously. They don't say it that plainly Obviously, but you know, oh, I never had a problem with this. I bet you did.
Manya Chylinski:
Yes, I was talking to someone about. You know the kind of work that I do, talking about compassionate leadership and building trauma sensitive organizations, which is built off the same framework as your work. And this person said to me that's great, love it. My company's never going to do that. They treat us like we're robots and we don't have feelings and we don't have emotions, so they're never going to invest in this. And I got so frustrated with that response. I'm sure it's absolutely true, given the environment that this person works in, but that was so disheartening to think that there are potentially out there organizations that don't even want to think about making these kind of changes.
Allessandria Polizzi:
Probably. Let's think about any kind of even technology change, which is interesting because most of them are embracing AI. But you think about, like I said 100 years ago when it was, hey, we should probably stop people from getting their fingers locked off, for, you know, let's not leave water on the floor. I bet you there was a lot of resistance to that too, because that's how it's always been.
Manya Chylinski:
Well, and as humans, we're not necessarily great at making changes, even when we know the change is a good change, even when I'm the only one who needs to make the change. But if you're talking about a whole organization, culture and managers and different levels, that's a more complex change and feels like work.
Allessandria Polizzi:
Yet how much work is it to keep working in these dysfunctional workplace? We create so much waste and so much inefficiency in the ways in which we maintain this dysfunctional status quo that it boggles the mind.
Manya Chylinski:
I really appreciate the analogy to factory environment 100-plus years ago because there was a lot of pushback and this is the way that I want to do it and I want to hire younger and younger children to help me do this. I think I just read something about child labor and people wanting to lower the age at which you can hire children. I thought or we could not do that and build psychologically safe workplaces and get more out of the adults who are already working for us?
Allessandria Polizzi:
Again, 70% of your employees are not telling you when something is broken and not working or when they have an idea to make it better. When they did research on things like the Boeing disasters that have happened, they showed that people down the line saw the problem, but either raised it and worked, nor were afraid to mention it.
Manya Chylinski:
Yes, I have read some of those studies too. That's a great segue into the question of what are the ethical and moral obligations of our organizations or us as individuals? The underlying theme here is acknowledge the trauma that's coming into your organization, but the overarching is to build a healthy organization. What is our moral and ethical obligation here?
Allessandria Polizzi:
It's pretty clear Work shouldn't hurt. When we create workplaces where it does, we are hurting more than just our employees and we are hurting more than our bottom line. We are hurting the communities in which those people reside. As we look to grow more talent in an ever-shrinking talent market, understanding how to retain that talent it's a huge business problem. When we are informed about how trauma shows up at work, we're better able to retain that talent.
Allessandria Polizzi:
The thing that I love about this work is that the skills. When you look at the World Health Organization and their framework, it is protective of mental health, so don't have dysfunctional ways of working. That includes things like role clarity and share goals. We're not talking all touchy-feely stuff here Protective. And then there's this middle bit that I really enjoy talking about, which is building skills to navigate challenges in a more healthy and productive way.
Allessandria Polizzi:
These weird humans and for the most part, especially in the US, we are not taught how to human in general. We don't know how to manage the emotional responses. We don't know how to handle stress per se. Educating people on what that looks like and how to do that in a more effective way, specifically leaders that can help drive better outcomes for the business as well as for that human, because if I know how to navigate stress, I want to navigate stress. It's not just work stress, we just have the one brain. Wherever we learn one place, we're going to apply another. That's the opportunity to help make an impact.
Allessandria Polizzi:
The last thing I'll say on this one is that we can no longer ignore the external impacts on the mental health and capacity of our employees. In other words, things like the war in the Ukraine, the economy there's a big concern about political upheaval here in the United States or the war in the Middle East, climate change, ai All of those things put a pressure on the psychological health of our employees and that shows up at work. We may want to say leave it at the door. That's not real. You can't actually do that. That's just suppressing negative emotions, which we all know is incredibly unhealthy, both physically and psychologically. So I think, from a community perspective, we have to be aware of the pressures on our teams, so that we're at least understanding oh, if I'm doing this project at this time, but it's also the time when kids are going back to school, right, gee, could I do that two weeks earlier, two weeks later, like it's simple things that we can decide that have to do with creating whole workers that can be effective.
Manya Chylinski:
Yes, I appreciate you bringing up just the current environment that we're in, with so many different stressors that are affecting all of us in different ways. And you know, listening to you reminds me of something someone said in one of my first podcast episodes, which is that, no matter what, I can't bring 100% of myself to work 100% of the time. And it doesn't even have to be a trauma. It could be that I stayed up too late last night watching the you know division series and so now the next day I'm not going to be 100%, and we have to be building environments where we recognize that, where we're not somehow telling people that you're not enough if you're not bringing 100% of yourself to the job.
Allessandria Polizzi:
Or part of bringing your whole self includes bringing some of those parts of the darker parts. It's a very interesting way of seeing people at work. Some emotions are fine. We don't freak out when someone's angry. You show one other kind of emotion and we got major. It undermines your credibility and, again, I'm not advocating for people showing any emotions at work. I'm advocating for people's emotions being protected and their ability to navigate them and acknowledge that work impacts our feelings right, that we actually have an impact as a result of work.
Manya Chylinski:
Absolutely so. What is giving you hope right now, looking at this landscape and changes we're seeing or not seeing?
Allessandria Polizzi:
I think globally, this is a movement. So the thing that got me super excited about this was when ISO, which is the International Organization for Standardization right the ones who do like supply chain and total quality management and like health and safety, very, very engineering right they launched a standard for psychological health and safety in 2021, and I got so excited, and now I'm the global liaison for that. So that gets me really excited because we're on a path to move out of the. Oh, this is something I can ignore. This is squishy, you can't measure it. Let's just pretend like none of that exists, and we are acknowledging that occupational health and safety is both physical and psychological.
Manya Chylinski:
When I read about that new ISO standard, I remember thinking this needs to be bigger news. Yes, it does.
Allessandria Polizzi:
I was like the game has changed. Yes, and that was like three years ago, but it is in some circles, and so that gives me hope. I think this next generation gives me hope. I think, as we follow in the footsteps of Canada, australia, I mean I think we have to make a difference. I mean our neighbors from the US, our neighbors to the North and the South, both have requirements to have psychologically healthy and safe workplaces with regular audits, both Mexico and Canada. So this is coming. We have 32 states considering this legislation and this is coming.
Manya Chylinski:
So everybody, get ready, get ready, start working on it now.
Allessandria Polizzi:
So you're ready when it comes. Do you want to be in the front end of that, or do you want to be in the back end?
Manya Chylinski:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Allessandria, thank you so much. I can talk to you forever about this and we will after a podcast, but can you let us know how people can reach you to learn more about your work? Yeah, absolutely.
Allessandria Polizzi:
So our company's website is www. verdantconsulting. net. We have just launched a workbook it's available on Amazon that will help organizations build their workplace mental health strategy based on data and business objectives, and you can see me on LinkedIn, as well as TikTok, as your HR Big Sister.
Manya Chylinski:
I will put links to those in the show notes so people can find you easily. Allessandria, thank you so much. This was such a great conversation and I see change on our horizon. Let's go, let's make it happen. Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, Manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com, or email me at manya@manyachylinski. com, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.
