Trauma-Informed Talent Planning

Recently, I participated in a talent planning exercise with my Executive and peers at work, which turned out to be trauma-informed. I have never participated in or even read about trauma-informed talent planning before, but it was such an amazing experience that I have to share it with you.

The Talent Planning Process

Some may have never heard of the talent planning process before, so let me start there. In companies like the one I work for, talent planning is a process that is undertaken by Senior Executives and their direct reports to assess the talent that is on the team to determine whether they are ready for a growth opportunity, a good fit for their current role, or are needing coaching to improve their performance.

The managers talk about the people on their team individually to inform the leadership team about how each person is doing in their current role, their strengths and improvement opportunities, and whether they are ready for advancement. This may be done in an offsite or in several very long sessions as we did it.

When you are a junior-level employee, like I was for much of my career, the talent planning process is quite a mystery, and you never really know what happens in there. I was given a gold nugget of advice one time by a senior leader that helped me to move up quite significantly. He told me that when it comes to talent planning, it is not enough to make sure your boss knows the good work you are doing, your boss’ peers also need to know about the good work you are doing so that when they are all sitting around the table talking about you, they will already know who you are. That piece of advice was a game-changer for me, and now I find myself at the talent planning table.

What Does Trauma-Informed Mean?

In 2014, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) put out a white paper in their HHS Publication titled “ SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach.” They were dealing with the issue of how they should have a consistent approach to care for trauma survivors across all healthcare disciplines so there would not be further traumatization.

They use a four-R rubric to describe a “trauma-informed” organization, program, or system:

• “ Realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand potential paths for recovery;
• Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved in the system;
• Respond by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and
• Actively resist re-traumatization “

In a white paper by the National Fund for Workforce Solutions titled “ A Trauma-Informed Approach to Workforce,” the authors applied SAMHSA’s six key principles trauma-informed organizations follow to the workplace:

I have only included brief parts of both of these articles, but the authors did a great job pulling out the principles and applying them to the workplace. I have included links to the articles above and highly recommend checking out the articles yourself.

What Does Trauma-Informed Talent Planning Look Like?

It is one thing to theorize about principles and strategies, and it is totally another story altogether to actually implement them into “business as usual” principles and strategies. One thing I despised in my undergraduate psychology classes was that you had to learn a bunch of theories that were not useful in real life. If I can’t use it, it is useless to me.

We did not set out to do trauma-informed talent planning, but when you invite a trauma-recovery career coach to the talent planning table, that is what happens…if it is allowed by the senior leader, which, in this case, it was.

We worked our way through the top performers until we got to the employees that were designated as needing performance management…meaning that they were not performing at their best and needed some intervention. I listened with intent as my peers talk about how these employees were outstanding performers and had a sudden change in their performance, resulting in “being prickly,” not paying attention to detail, not following through on tasks, and not meeting deadlines.

These employees do not report to me (I currently have no direct reports), but I know some of them because they attend my weekly “Mental Health Minutes” call. I asked questions about the suddenness of the behavior change and suggested that something happened on that team or in that employee’s life to cause what sounded to me like a trauma response. I explained to my boss and peers that when someone doesn’t feel safe in their environment or with certain people, safety will become their first priority over performance.

The team has experienced a lot of change over the past 1.5 years that I’ve been here, with changes in leadership, reorganization, and new people coming in that impacted the chemistry of the team. So, it was understandable if employees were feeling a little insecure about their jobs.

When an employee is not performing up to expectations, the conversation that usually follows is about what remediations (consequences) will be put in place to address the performance “issue.” That is what happened next in our process until I pushed on the process and my peers to consider the presence of a potential trauma response in their behavior. I noted that these were employees who had been top performers at one time until something happened to change that. I have so much respect for my manager and peers because they were able to receive and consider a different perspective.

I offered to provide some coaching for these employees to help them get back on track, and we created a different approach to dealing with these employees. THAT is trauma-informed talent planning. It is recognizing the presence of trauma in an employee and coming up with a solution to support that employee, so they can be the best version of themselves and help the company.

The Challenge

I submit to you that we are a long way off from leaders at every level of an organization understanding and being able to recognize what a trauma response looks like on an employee’s behavior and performance. I believe that leaders are not unwilling to consider the impact of trauma on their employees (especially after COVID), but rather that they are just not aware of what it looks like.

I can point it out to my team because I am a survivor, and I know the impact it has had on my behavior and performance. I, too, was “prickly” at one point in my career, but a heavy hand was not helpful to me, and I suspect it wouldn’t be helpful for other trauma survivors.

It took me a while to find my voice, but now that I have, I speak for trauma survivors so they know they are not alone and to inform leaders on how they can help their employees be the best version of themselves so that they can add value to the organization.

It takes a lot of money, time, and effort to replace an employee, but it only takes some effort and kindness/compassion to help employees be their best.

I thanked my manager for allowing me to pull this perspective forward and allowing me to have a voice at the table. She said that it was a privilege and that I was helping them all to be better managers. THAT is real leadership! I told her that if I could have a job where I worked with all the managers across the company and trained them on trauma-informed management practices, I would do that in a heartbeat. I feel like there might be a book in there for me to write at some point, but not anytime soon.

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