Clinicians and other healthcare workers, as well as trainees and students, face diverse, cumulative, and synergistic toxic exposures that can lead to distress.

Government and business leaders are becoming increasingly aware that their workforces are not meeting organizational needs. This is alarming, but not surprising. We are also realizing that many of our organizations do not meet the workforce’s needs.

As the pace of life accelerates, and as people know more than ever about what works for them (and what doesn’t), there are substantial changes in how we relate to human capital. Success and profitability are intimately linked not only to the quantifiable elements of hiring good staff, but also the deeper equation by which staff can thrive in a particular workplace.

Many organizations don’t think about the impacts of stress on their workforce in a systematic way when designing their organizational policy. How could they? Policies grow over time, and often are reactive rather than proactive. These are the key concepts Greenleaf uses to assess the current Stress Responsiveness of an organization and support the leadership in making more stress responsive policy decisions.

Any stress, both positive stress (excitement) and negative stress (nervousness), involves the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS functions in the background every second of our lives. It regulates the human body’s most basic regulatory processes, including breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, and digestion.

Though burnout and trauma exposure have different causes and symptoms – and require different interventions and remedies – it’s well established that both are highly toxic to the wellbeing, resilience, and health of employees.

Imagine you and a friend are going down a sidewalk and a dog lunges at both of you. For you, the incident may be forgotten in a matter of minutes. Your friend, however, has heart palpitations and then he stays in a funk for an hour. Why is this?

Workplaces are full of demands – most face some levels of uncertainty, pressures, and unpredictability. In addition, many of Greenleaf’s clients face more serious stressors, such as potential injury to themselves or their co-workers or the threat of violence.