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The Truth About Trauma Support

What does the word “trauma” mean to you? As a trauma therapist who supports different employees from all over the world, I’ve heard countless definitions over the years.  Many of them assume that trauma can only result from a unique event that is recognisably shocking, such as being a victim of crime, or witnessing a major terrorist attack. In reality, physical and emotional trauma can be caused by any number of life events, including those that may appear ‘harmless’ to those...

"Maternity Leave is Just a Long Holiday, Isn’t It?"

If I had a pound for every time I heard this from an employer, I’d be a millionaire by now. Admittedly, I don’t always hear it first-hand.  It’s often the pregnant employee herself who tells me, that on her last day the boss offered what seemed like “a final farewell, even though I’m planning to come back”.   Then, the boss will deliver their parting shot: “I hope you enjoy your lovely long holiday!”  Employers, I have to ask: do you honestly think matern...

How to Support Your Employee’s Return to Work After Stress-Related Leave

Even before the Covid pandemic hit, the UK was home to a stressed-out workforce.  The Mental Health at Work Report 2018 found that one in three employees had been “formally diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point in their lives”. Fast-forward to 2022, and our mental health crisis appears to have deepened.  This year’s CIPD Health and Wellbeing at Work survey observed that mental ill health is the “top cause of long-term absence”, w...

Is there a perfect recipe for self-care?

If you had asked me this question twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have known how to answer. Back then, I didn’t know that my brain was the most energy-expensive organ in my body.  I had no idea that every thought, interaction, and decision I made would ‘spend’ energy – a bit like drawing money from a bank account. And just like a bank account, if you keep on making withdrawals from an ever-depleting store of energy, you will end up where I was.  Exhausted, stressed, an...

Employee Support: How to Plan a Phased Return to Work (Post-Covid)

Pre-Covid, if you asked an employer for a common reason why a member of staff might take an extended period of leave, they would probably reply “maternity leave” or “sickness”.   Now, as we all know well, the landscape has shifted.  Many companies found that the existing policies they had in place weren’t able to accommodate the rapid and unprecedented changes they found themselves implementing remote working, furlough, and reduced hours, to name just a few. On top of this, m...

Beyond EAP: A Year in Review

Have you heard of a ‘round-robin letter’? Some people include these in the Christmas cards they send to their friends and family.  In the letters, they describe the year’s key events for them. While it’s easy to think of a round-robin letter as nothing more than an opportunity to boast (let’s face it, sometimes it is!), they allow your loved ones to stay in touch with the details of your life.  In a world filled with fleeting social media updates and snatched text m...

Employee Bereavement Support: Why It’s Never Just About ‘Taking Time Off’

When you imagine somebody who has recently been bereaved, what kind of person would you picture? Perhaps you thought of a weeping widow clad in black, or a child losing a beloved grandparent.  Almost certainly, the person you imagined was suffering the loss of a loved one. Bereavement is an intense experience that strikes us all in many and varied ways, sometimes when we least expect it.  However, although bereavement is a response to a personal loss, such loss isn’t always due ...

How to Manage Maternity Leave, So You Retain Happy and Talented Employees

5 Things She Could Be Thinking (But Not Saying)...Many employers think of the words “maternity leave” as a signal for change. Change as in: who’s going to provide maternity cover, and for how long?  How and when will you keep in touch with your new mum, so that when she finally returns to work, she can pick up right where she left off? Meanwhile, the new mum herself will be experiencing an overwhelming barrage of emotions, some of them for the very first time.   While i...

What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Reduced Hours after Maternity Leave!)

In September this year, Alice Thompson was awarded £185,000 by an employment tribunal.  The tribunal ruled that Alice had suffered indirect sex discrimination when her employer refused to consider her flexible working request. Alice had asked her employer, a small London estate agency, if she could work reduced hours following her maternity leave. Although she had created a detailed proposal, and “would have been more than happy to hear a counter offer, what might work for them...

EMDR Helped Prince Harry – Could This Effective, Fast-Working Therapy Help Your Employees?

As an Employee Support Coach, I have trained intensively in diverse and accredited therapies. Working with forward-thinking HR leaders, Beyond EAP provides specialist support for life’s toughest challenges.   These challenges come in many forms, and they affect all of us in different ways.   It is therefore important that I can draw upon a range of techniques for each individual employee I work with, to help them build emotional resilience for the future. One of the mo...

Why Do So Few Employees Use Their Benefits-Packed KIT Days?

I was so happy to report recently that two of the firms we support, BDB Pitmans LLP, and Winckworth Sherwood LLP, have agreed to amend their policies, now classing my planned parental coaching sessions as paid Keeping In Touch (KIT) days. These firms will not only be better able to retain talented people, but their employees are more likely to feel valued and supported during one of life’s most significant transformations. What Are KIT Days? Naturally, we are a strong advocate of these ten fle...

How Do Employers Tackle the Taboo Subject of Abortion?

Our work as employee support coaches takes us in many different directions. Put simply, we are the people whom organisations contact when an employee is struggling with an intense life challenge, such as diagnosis of a terminal illness, bereavement, depression, and starting a family.   Some employees are also referred to us before and after they have been through an abortion.   We applaud these organisations, since abortion is a taboo subject for many, and one we’...

What Happens When an Employee Issue Is Too Complex or Traumatic for EAP?

Recently, we made the important decision to re-brand the business. When we founded Confidence to Return in 2014, we wanted to focus completely on supporting new mothers, facilitating a safe, happy, and confident return to work following their maternity leave. Maternity and parental coaching remains the core of my work to this day.  However, over time the company’s services have evolved, to incorporate support for employees going through some of life’s toughest and most traumat...

Postpartum psychosis and the workplace: the value in support

As an employee maternity coaches, we have welcomed the media’s recent foray into talking about postpartum psychosis (described by the NHS as a “serious mental health illness that can affect a woman soon after she has a baby”).  That phrase “postpartum psychosis” sounds terrifying in itself, doesn’t it?  It seems completely out-of-kilter with that lovely Hollywood vision of a beautiful baby being handed to an impossibly glowing new mum. Yet when we really think about what co...

How to support your employees through miscarriage trauma

Trigger warning: includes words used to describe the surgical management of miscarriage. Society celebrates pregnant women and babies. New lives are embraced. Cards, flowers and congratulations are sent.  But every year one in four UK pregnancies – about 250,000 – end in miscarriage, which is the loss of a pregnancy in the first 24 weeks. When this happens, society is silent. The joy is replaced with ‘it’s personal’ and ‘not nice to talk about’, leaving women to face the shock...

How the aftermath of suicide ripples through generations

The two high-profile suicides of Caroline Flack, Keith Flint and Mike Thalassitis which were highlighted in the media recently, have really resonated with us. It’s been very poignant and made me recall our own family experience with suicide. It’s made me question, has much changed in mental health support since the 1970s? My grandad was 64-years-old when his body was found in the River Thames, London, by a sailor on a small boat near Westminster Bridge in the 1970s. At the Coroner’s Court,...

If EMDR can help a Spice Girl, it can help your employees

If you’re like us, you relish those moments when you can relax and read a good book. I had chance to indulge in reading a few during the recent festive break that have left me feeling inspired. Among them, two that stood out were by well-known celebrities who have each encountered traumatic personal relationships and have survived to tell their tales. Melanie Brown’s, ‘Brutally Honest’ and Tina Turner’s ‘My Love Story’ are on a similar theme, with both women hav...

A lawyer’s last lesson in how to talk to colleagues about cancer

Charlie Hainsworth was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2017, aged 38. She’d gone to her GP after noticing a strange hardness to one of her breasts. Within three weeks she was told that the cancer had spread to her bones and that it was incurable, something known as secondary breast cancer. Months of chemotherapy, a mastectomy and radiotherapy followed to maintain and prolong her life. We had the privilege of knowing Charlie in the final year of her life and want to celebrate everything s...

Be ready to deal with the ‘quiet horror’ of a traumatic birth

My nephew was born after a traumatic caesarean section 22 years ago and I witnessed the emotional harm it caused my sister for years to come. I’m not telling an unusual story here, by the way: giving birth is terrifying for many women. The Birth Trauma Association estimates at least 20,000 women suffer birth trauma every year. So, my nephew was due early in the July. My sister and brother-in-law were ready for their first baby: they’d been to the NCT classes, learnt about the breathing and �...

How to help employees let go of emotional issues

When employees suffer a traumatic event such as losing a baby, a divorce, death of a loved one or any other one of life’s big challenges, we expect them to react emotionally. For a while, allowances are made for unusual behaviour because we expect them to get back to being ‘themselves’ over time. But did you know emotional trauma caused by these common, if distressing, life experiences can leave a negative imprint on a person’s brain in the same way as soldiers are affected by military a...

How coaching can reveal the right decision after loss

A business owner hired us because a long-standing and valuable employee had suffered 4 personal losses in less than 3 months. Her auntie, mother and husband had died, along with the life plans they had made for the future. Overwhelmed, she had been off for 2 months when her employer asked Beyond EAP to support and facilitate her return to work. My work with her is a good example of how ‘right’ result is not always the one you expect. ‘Unsure if she wanted to return’ It was a challenging ...

Why your employees can’t just ‘get over’ grief

When Fiona Cosh was first offered Grief and Bereavement support, she didn’t think it was for her. Her husband of 27 years, Dave, died in early December 2017. Fiona, a legal Secretary at Winckworth Sherwood, soon decided that she did need professional help to deal with her profound grief. And she’s glad she did. She says: ‘I can honestly say that if I hadn't had the support, I wouldn't be here at work full time today. I would still be a long way off, struggling to understand all the differe...