KU Business faculty experts discuss: Trauma-informed care in the workplace

It’s estimated that the average person spends 90,000 hours, or one-third of their lifetime, in the workplace. Knowing this, it is increasingly important for businesses to reflect on their environments and learn what the benefits of a trauma-informed workplace may be. 

Meredith Bagwell-Gray, Ph.D., LMSW, associate professor at the KU School of Social Welfare and visiting professor in the School of Business for the fall 2025 semester, is collaborating with Beth Embry, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the KU School of Business, to bring trauma-informed care principles into broader workplace settings.  

As one of four KU recipients of the Keeler-Intra-University Professorship for the 2025-26 academic year, Bagwell-Gray and Embry’s collaboration explores how workplace norms can empower managers to recognize and respond to trauma in ways that foster safety, resilience and productivity. 

Bagwell-Gray earned a doctorate in social work from Arizona State University (ASU) and a postdoctoral fellowship in the ASU Office of Gender-Based Violence. Her research centers on health equity and the intersection of race, gender and age with environmental and contextual factors.  

Their work aims to create trauma-informed workplaces that support employees’ mental health and well-being, foster professional growth and advance not just individual employees but also organizations as a whole. 

What is Trauma-Informed Care (TIC)?  

Although there isn’t just one model of trauma-informed care, our research draws upon and extends a widely accepted one from the U.S. Government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which outlines six principles of trauma-informed care. 

TIC started in the social service and health care industries in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Social service providers realized the prevalence of trauma in the lives of people with mental health and substance use disorders and decided that treatment needs to come from a trauma-informed lens.  

Providers need to be aware of trauma and what it looks like, so they can create spaces that support their patients and clients, rather than revictimizing and retraumatizing them.  

Why is TIC relevant beyond social services?  

We must realize that people aren’t people in isolation. We must look at people in their environment, like their families, educational settings and workplaces or larger communities.  

TIC has been geared toward those who are coming in as clients, but the movement has grown so much that other disciplines are now interested. Education and health care industries have adopted this approach, but we identified a significant gap in general workplaces and business organizations. They could be the sites for the application of this model.  

We are now trying to address this gap to learn what trauma-informed care looks like for managers, supervisors, leaders and anyone else in the workplace setting.

How would you define a “trauma-informed workplace” in the context of business? 

It’s not a simple answer, and it is really what we’re trying to discover through this research. We’re adapting common characteristics of trauma-informed systems — that is, they are safe, collaborative, empowering, trustworthy, supportive of identity and culture and trauma-responsive— and comparing these principles with best practices in the current business literature to visualize what TIC could look like in the workplace. 

We’ve also selected cases of exemplary organizations that are prioritizing employees’ mental health and wellbeing across diverse sectors to both observe and use to develop theory. Our research documents these practices to help inform others on how to do the same.  

Why is it important for businesses to recognize that employees may carry trauma into the workplace? 

Trauma can disrupt the workspace and the ability to use human capital, or the way people gain and apply knowledge and abilities at work. At the end of the day, people add value to the organizations they make up, and it negatively affects the workplace when they can’t express creativity, apply skills or build relationships effectively.  

On the other hand, trauma-informed workplaces may serve as a pathway for healing and post-traumatic growth for people with lived experience of trauma. People can reenvision their narrative through work when they aren’t being defined by their trauma. Those with trauma can thrive and contribute to more company outcomes when TIC principles are brought into the workplace.  

What are some examples of everyday workplace policies or practices that could reflect trauma-informed care? 

A simple way that workplaces can demonstrate trauma-informed care is expressing their respect for employees’ cultures, identities and current life stage, not just during the employment process, but also beyond.  

A personal example comes from my hiring experience at KU. I was seven months pregnant while on the job market and when I came to visit the school, everyone immediately welcomed me without hesitation. Seeing examples of one element of TIC was an important value to me when I was searching for jobs.    

What misconceptions might business leaders have about trauma and its impact on employees?

One misconception may be that businesses and their employees believe adopting the TIC approach means they have to become a therapist in their workplace or be expected to carry more emotional burdens. A trauma-informed organization means that an environment is so safe that employees have the resources and the mental capacity to feel supported despite their trauma without needing to disclose it.  

Along with this, people may believe that we want employees to overshare their trauma at work, but this is not accurate. In a trustworthy, trauma-informed workplace, employees and leaders would encourage boundary-setting and connect people to appropriate support by providing access to employee assistance programs and mental health benefit packages.  

What unique insights or surprises have you gained so far in your research by bringing TIC to business disciplines? 

I have been pleasantly surprised by the attitudes toward and interest in this research, specifically of the business school. Through conversations in the school, I’ve been met with such high receptiveness and eagerness to bring our research into other areas of business, such as being able to talk to various MBA students about the topic and finding opportunities to collaborations further.  

Looking ahead, how do you envision the role of TIC shaping the future of work and business leadership? 

In the future, it would be ideal if workplaces could be places where people can thrive, feel safe and be enabled to recognize their full potential and grow in new ways. That’s why I’ve talked about how the trauma-informed specific environment is essential for trauma survivors, but also beneficial for everyone.  

This leads back to my research with domestic violence survivors too, where we looked at how post-traumatic growth at work can improve self-confidence and economic empowerment that allows individuals to create the life that they want for themselves.  

Where do you see the future of this research going?

I am excited about this research project because it’s going to give us more concrete examples from our case studies, so that organizations can realize that implementing trauma-informed processes is feasible and within reach.  

I also see it being applied for business professionals. For example, individuals moving into management positions, and even seasoned leaders, can have these tools that can better help them support their employees and better meet their organization’s goals in research-backed ways.