Psychological First Aid: Recognizing the Whole Person in the Workplace

Three firefighters putting out a wildfire.

Are you looking for solutions to enhance productivity within your business or organization?
Do you work in a physically taxing or high stress profession, such as a first responder or outdoor guide?
Is your business or organization struggling with decreased productivity and low morale among employees?
Has a recent change or loss impacted the team dynamic?
Are you concerned about inconsistent follow-through, procrastination, high turnover, or a general sense of disconnection between team members?
Is low motivation impacting your business objectives?

As a business owner, you may have noticed your employees experiencing burnout and fatigue. Whether personal issues at home are being brought into the professional atmosphere, or work-related stressors are impacting the team’s sense of unity, you may be looking for solutions to improve emotional health and collaboration within your organization.

Certain Professions Encounter Unique Hurdles When It Comes To Boosting Employee Morale

Given the high-stress nature of your profession, there are workplace challenges specific to your industry. For those working in potentially dangerous or life-threatening situations—like firefighters, medical providers, or outdoor guides—elements of loss can easily contribute to emotional discord and misunderstandings. Especially when that loss is recent (for example, following the death of a beloved team member or a traumatic rescue), it can significantly impact the ways that team members relate to one another.

For instance, you may have noticed tension among your employees or weakened customer service. Instead of being engaged and collaborative, individuals within the team may isolate themselves or become easily overwhelmed. As a result, emotional blowups and reactivity may have replaced a sense of comradery. Perhaps your employees are quick to say “I’m fine” despite clear signals that productivity is suffering.

When the emotional and mental health of your team members is compromised, it presents a liability for your company. Alongside the risk of burnout and high turnover, there are other risks like substance abuse challenges that can jeopardize empathy and decision-making, impact communication, and even result in after-hour accidents or other dangers.

As a leader invested in the success of your company, you are striving to create an organizational culture that both values your workers and is a model to others. Fortunately, by working with a corporate health and wellness consultant, your employees can experience more empowerment, enhanced decision-making, and decreased occupational stress. As these areas improve, you’re likely to see increased productivity and performance within your organization.

When The Emotional Health Of Team Members Is Compromised, Productivity Suffers

A lecture hall full of employees in training.

It may come as no surprise that work-related stress is a major component of emotional health obstacles in this country. According to MetLife, around three-quarters of employers say that organizational distress is a central concern for their company. And of the US workers polled, 76 percent report that their work has had a detrimental impact on their relationships, with 25 percent identifying their job as the number one stressor in their lives.

To tackle this, it’s important for employees to feel cared for and invested in organizational outcomes. However, employers might develop the belief that prioritizing emotional well-being among staff will be prohibitively expensive or cause other tasks to fall by the wayside. And stigmatization can make conversations about mental and emotional health seem taboo in the workplace.

The reality is that emotional health and wellness consulting among employees can increase the overall functionality and success of your organization. As a consultant specializing in corporate health and wellness, I am here to help your organization get back on track and move through the pain points that have developed.

My Approach As A Corporate Health And Wellness Consultant

Wellness consulting is highly customized to your specific workplace, whether that workplace is corporate, nonprofit, or its own unique structure. I work with organizations of up to 100 employees, offering consulting services on a monthly, quarterly, or one-time basis.

What To Expect

In order to understand which approach will be most effective for your team, I will first meet with leadership to complete the initial onboarding process. This will give you a chance to tell me organizational areas of concern (otherwise known as “pain points”), past remedies, and overall goals for consulting. As I better understand the structure of your organization and company norms, I will develop trainings and exercises to enhance your team’s emotional tools. Assessments are performed by employers before and after to track progress.

Given my background in both business and psychology, my role as a consultant is to offer a comprehensive training that honors both the organizational and personal objectives of your team. Depending on your scheduling needs, I am available to facilitate ongoing trainings or one-time workshops. Examples might include trauma-related trainings for those in risky or critical professions, active empathy and listening skills to promote interpersonal communication, and strategies for combatting work-related stress.

Through these trainings, you will get:

Increased employee performance
Enhanced motivation
A strengthened sense of individual value within the team dynamic
Decreased burnout
Better communication between team members
Newfound investment and care among your employees

I maintain a clinical background in mental and behavioral health, but consulting is not therapy. As such, I am available to consult with organizations across the country, whether in-person or virtually. I am qualified to work with a wide range of industries, including First Responders as well as outdoor and guiding professionals. I am actively involved with the Phoenix Fire Department and local First Responders. Additionally, as a board member of Arizona’s Whale Foundation, I work closely with the Grand Canyon River guiding community.

Organizational change within your company is possible, regardless of the challenges your team faces. Working with a corporate health and wellness consultant can be the gateway to your organization’s lasting success.

Still Have Questions About How A Consultant Can Help?

Why is it important for us to invest in our employees’ emotional well-being?

There is a strong correlation between emotional intelligence and productivity; the higher the individual satisfaction, the more devoted employees will be to their work. Oftentimes, as team members become burnt out, they attempt to mitigate stress by considering other jobs, isolating themselves from their teammates, procrastinating, and, in some cases, self-sabotaging.

Investing in the emotional well-being of your staff communicates that you value them in addition to reducing potential risk to the organization.

Corporate wellness consulting is not an industry standard. Why should I do something different than what similar organizations are doing?

Working with a corporate health and wellness consultant is an investment in the well-being and productivity of your team members—both employees and leadership. As the mental and emotional health of individual team members improves, positive change can then occur on an organizational level. Evidence shows that when leadership demonstrates investment in the well-being of their employees, the sense of pride and overall experience of the team improves.

I encourage you to view consulting as a proactive—as opposed to a reactive—measure, helping to reduce the potential of turnover, burnout, and occupational stress.

How will I know if corporate wellness consulting will benefit our unique workplace?

Science doesn’t lie: communication carries energy. How team members speak to one another impacts the dynamic that is carried through the organization. That’s why wellness strategies—including enhanced communication skills and boundary setting—are key to sustaining quality work and productivity.

Organizations that have emotional resources embedded into their workplace culture are better equipped to reduce organizational roadblocks when they occur.