Nan Tien Institute director on ‘organisational trauma’ and compassion

Sue Sumskis shared with The HR Leader why organisational trauma needs more than an EAP, as well as discussing her work with the Australian Compassion Council.

Ms Sumskis is the director of professional education programs and the head of mental health at the Nan Tien Institute. Listen to the podcast for her insights on organisational trauma to understand the effects of a trauma on an overall business, as well as a discussion on leadership and compassion, and why people should be ‘in the moment’.

Ms Sumskis shared the below references for listeners who would like to do further reading on this topic:

• Brown, EH 1997, ‘Improving organisational health by addressing organisational trauma’, Journal of Organisation Change Management, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 175-178.
• Hormann, S 2007, ‘Organizational Trauma: A phenomenological study of leaders in traumatised organisations’, Dissertations & Theses. https://aura.antioch.edu/etds/184/
• Hormann, S & Vivian, P 2005, ‘Toward an understanding of traumatised organisations and how to intervene in them,’ Traumatology, vol. 11, no. 3, pp.159-169.
• Long, S 2012, ‘Trauma as cause and effect of perverse organisational process’, in  E Hopper, Ed., Trauma and organisations, New International Library of Group Analysis, Karnac, London, UK
• Ryan, KD & Oestreich, DK 1998. Driving fear out of the workplace: Creating the high-trust, high-performance organisation, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, USA.