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How do you support people who hear trauma every day? (Safe Steps)

Through the Mentally Healthy Workplaces Program, Safe Steps explored new ways to strengthen psychological safety for the staff who provide Victoria's only state-wide 24/7 family violence crisis response service.

 

Psychological safety is fundamental

For Safe Steps, psychological safety is not simply a workplace aspiration - it is fundamental to the work.

As Victoria's only state-wide 24/7 family violence crisis response service, its frontline staff spend every day listening to traumatic, distressing and often life-threatening stories from victim-survivors of family violence. While physical hazards may be limited, the psychological risks associated with ongoing exposure to trauma are substantial, making this a workforce particularly vulnerable to mental injury.

As People, Culture and Wellbeing Director Gayle Antony explains: "Psychological safety is everything for us in an environment where you can't control what they're going to hear."

Safe Steps signed up to the free, WorkSafe-funded Mentally Healthy Workplaces Program to help prepare for new psychosocial regulations and benchmark its approach against emerging best practice. The program helps businesses identify and manage psychological health and safety risks, while strengthening mentally healthy workplace practices. 

The organisation already has extensive wellbeing supports in place, including employee assistance programs, supervision, reflective practice, leadership development and mental health initiatives. Yet Antony believed an independent assessment could reveal opportunities for further improvement.

"We owe our staff the commitment to wanting to keep getting better."

Looking beyond what's already working

Safe Steps' own employee engagement survey had already highlighted several areas for attention, such as a desire for greater flexibility. The survey also helped shape broader work underway to strengthen supervision, reflective practice, leadership capability and staff support.

Antony says the value of the Mentally Healthy Workplaces Program is its ability to provide an independent perspective.

"When you've been in an organisation for a while, you can be blinded and just accept the status quo."

Rather than assuming existing supports were enough, the organisation saw value in testing its assumptions and understanding where improvements could be made.

Building the right scaffolding

Importantly, Antony sees the program as an opportunity to identify new ways of supporting a workforce that is routinely exposed to trauma.

"We can't remove the trauma they hear every day. What we can do is put in the scaffolding to help them cope with it."

For Safe Steps, that means continually strengthening the systems, practices and supports that help employees do challenging work safely and sustainably.

The organisation's experience highlights an important reality for psychologically healthy workplaces: even businesses with strong wellbeing programs can benefit from stepping back, listening to staff and looking for opportunities to improve.

In a sector where the work itself cannot be made less confronting, Safe Steps is focused on ensuring the people who support others are supported too.

The Mentally Healthy Workplaces Program is a free service delivered by AP Psychology & Consulting, providing small and medium-sized businesses with practical tools, expert guidance and tailored strategies to help create positive, psychologically safe workplaces. Funded through the $50 million Return to Work Innovations program, the initiative supports businesses to build positive workplace cultures, prevent psychological injury, and support recovery and return to work.