By Ray Birch
MADISON, Wis.—Just as credit unions have worked to help their members navigate the pandemic, they need to focus on the physical and mental well-being of their staff to get to the other side of the health crisis—and one person is offering 10 tips for doing just that.
Sharing the advice was Dr. Hammad N'cho, who addressed a Filene Research Institute webinar on “Trauma-Informed Services for Credit Union Employees.”
N’cho explained that not only are staff struggling with the effects of COVID-19 and how it has changed living and working conditions for many, but stresses are being compounded by social unrest, beginning with the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police.
So, just what are trauma-informed services?
N’cho, an executive director at Filene, said trauma-informed services include internal policies and programs that address both physical and emotional factors impacting employees’ lives.
It’s about “trustworthiness and transparency. Communicate policy clearly, openly, and with empathy,” he explained. “Provide peer support, and give staff safe spaces to share concerns and aid one another. This can foster unity and build resilience,” he explained.
Responding to ‘Social Destruction’
N’cho, who has worked for the United States Navy on its psychiatric intervention team and also spent time at the Centers for Disease Control’s epidemic intelligence service, shared guidelines and considerations that credit union leaders can follow to deliver trauma-informed support to their teams.
“There has been a great deal of social destruction,” said N’cho about the past 12 to 18 months. “Even with my outbreak and disaster response training, I was scared. I thought about how am I going to keep my family safe. How is my community doing? And how are communities all throughout the country going to be impacted by the social disruption that was surely coming?”
One Key Focus
N’cho said a key focus of trauma-informed support is delivering programs, policies and procedures that help avoid the possibility of re-traumatizing staff.
“Effective trauma-informed support addresses both physical and emotional threats,” he said, adding the effort can be challenging.
N’cho asserted the COVID-19 pandemic has created one of the most impactful public health crises in most Americans’ lifetimes.
According to N’cho, careful analysis by Filene of many sources surfaced similar themes for an “equitable, trauma-informed policy that promotes psychological safety and mental health.”
“These include the importance of flexibility, innovation, and improvisation in identifying solutions. The benefit of having diverse, multidisciplinary groups develop those solutions. And the need for clear, transparent, two-way communication to distribute information about those solutions and collect insight into problems as they emerge,” N’cho said. “Combined, these themes were ubiquitous throughout our literature and appear to be foundational to facilitating work environments that are safe, enable personal and professional growth, value collaboration, and ultimately maximize productivity.”
Key Recommendations
N’cho said the Filene research shares key recommendations for credit unions to follow, including:
- Lead with flexibility. “Communicate openly and often with stakeholders, especially as new information emerges. Actively and deliberately work to maintain mental health. Talk with other leaders to maintain camaraderie and learn from each other,” N’cho said.
- Provide open, two-way communication. “Deliver clear, honest, and open communication to reduce uncertainty and offset fears. Establish two-way communication channels to foster agency among stakeholders,” he said.
- Support sense- and decision-making. “Use teams to pool knowledge from disparate sources of experience and expertise—both internal and external to the organization—to generate novel, improvised solutions that are responsive to changing conditions and maximize resilience,” N’cho said.
- Ensure mental health is a focus. “When crafting policy, consider mental health and work to avoid the possibility of retraumatizing staff,” N’cho said, outlining key principles to address:
- Employee safety
- Trustworthiness and transparency
- Peer support
- Collaboration and mutuality
- Empowerment, voice, and choice
- Cultural, historical, and gender issues
- Focus on staff from marginalized communities. “Work to understand how stressors have become compounded for marginalized communities, facilitate dialogue to expand awareness and surface specific needs, and tie these efforts to your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plan,” he said.
- Execute an equitable return-to-office (RTO) plan. “Be open to addressing unique differences that can have a significant impact on the successful implementation of an equitable RTO policy. Rely on the insight of staff supervisors and their critical vantage point for monitoring the impact of policy implementation,” he said.
- Work to reduce stigma. “Ensure your work environment is a space free from the negative impacts of COVID-19 stigma by integrating stigma-mitigating actions into your organizational culture,” N’cho said.
- Provide infrastructure to support mental health and well-being. “Promote mental health, well-being, and resilience for staff by providing access to healthcare and training for psychoeducation and mental health management, exercise, and relaxation. Foster peer support networks, and incorporate mental health considerations into new policies and programs,” he said.
- Navigate the “new normal” with flexibility. “Expect emotional shifts and impacts from newly emerging ways of living and working, and help staff re-create healthy structures and routines,” he stated.
- Identify opportunities for post-traumatic growth. “Approach the disruption and rapid changes from the pandemic as a learning opportunity to identify organizational strengths and leverage them to catalyze positive forward transformation. Begin preparing for future pandemics and other crises now,” N’cho said.
Carrying Though a Crisis
“Applied in concert, these approaches can help carry your credit union through a crisis and can even bring your leaders, staff, and organization toward a stronger, more resilient position than where they were before the crisis,” concluded N’cho.