A Trauma-Informed Approach to Protecting Employee Wellbeing

“Some days I go home and cry because of how badly I’ve been treated,” revealed a Woolworths employee to ABC News in 2023, reflecting on the surge of customer abuse in retail. Their experience is far from isolated. “The screaming, the swearing, the threatening – it’s become a daily occurrence,” a Sydney bus driver told Transport Workers Union researchers, highlighting how aggression has quickly become normalised across our service industries.

These accounts echo across Australia’s service industry, where an alarming 85% of frontline staff report experiencing verbal abuse in the past year alone. As customer aggression reaches unprecedented levels, we’re seeing a concerning trend at the coalface: the traditional ‘customer is always right’ mantra is taking a toll on employee mental health.

The Current Landscape

Recent studies paint a troubling picture. The Australian Industry Group reported that 85% of retail workers have experienced verbal abuse from customers in the past year, whilst the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) found that incidents of customer aggression have increased by 44% since 2021. These statistics aren’t just numbers – they represent real trauma experienced by frontline workers.

Why Customer Aggression Is Rising

The escalation in customer aggression reflects a perfect storm of societal pressures and systemic changes. At its core, unprecedented economic strain is fraying nerves, with rising inflation and cost of living pressures creating a baseline of financial anxiety that often manifests as decreased emotional regulation.

This financial stress is compounded by the lingering effects of the pandemic, which has fundamentally altered how we interact. Extended periods of isolation have eroded social skills and tolerance levels, whilst the collective trauma of recent years has depleted our ‘surge capacity’ – that is our ability to adapt to stressful situations. Meanwhile, our modern digital lives have reshaped expectations, with social media normalising confrontational behaviour and instant gratification creating unrealistic service expectations.

These challenges are further exacerbated by broader societal shifts and structural changes within the service industry itself. Increasing polarisation in society, declining trust in institutions, and constant exposure to negative news have created a heightened state of anxiety and shorter emotional fuses. The service industry, already grappling with these external pressures, faces its own perfect storm of staff shortages, reduced training time, and high turnover rates. This combination of fewer experienced staff handling increasingly complex situations, alongside longer wait times and service inconsistencies, creates a volatile environment where customer frustrations can quickly escalate.

Understanding Trauma in Customer Service

Many organisations fail to recognise that repeated exposure to customer aggression can constitute trauma. As highlighted by SAMHSA (2014), trauma results from “an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful… and has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning.”

This definition is particularly relevant when considering that the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2022) reports 75% of Australian adults have already experienced a traumatic event in their life. Customer service workers may therefore be managing both previous trauma and ongoing exposure to aggressive interactions.

How can organisations create a supportive environment for traumatised employees and leaders? 

“Recognise that trauma is unique to the individual who experiences it,” says Transitioning Well organisational psychologist Vanessa Miles. “Two people can experience the same traumatic event – one might experience what we could call ‘appropriate distress’ while the other might develop a traumatic response. There are factors that influence different responses.  One important consideration to be aware of is that social support is protective when people have these experiences.”

It can also be helpful to do a risk assessment says Vanessa. Think about where in your workplace is there the potential for trauma to occur. This may be obvious in some settings – eg. ambulance. But for example a vet , one might assume it’s euthanasia that is distressing. This can be true, but human interactions, for example when a person can’t afford lifesaving treatment for their pet – that’s another source of distress.  

So organisations can ensure they are well equipped to link their people to appropriate support when a distressing event occurs.

A Three-Tiered Approach to Protection

1. The Leadership Layer

Leaders must be educated about trauma-informed practices to:

• Recognise signs of trauma exposure in their teams
• Understand that trauma affects people differently
• Create psychologically safe environments where employees feel supported
• Implement proper reporting and response protocols for aggressive incidents

2. The Customer Interface Layer

Organisations need robust systems to:

• Set clear boundaries with customers about acceptable behaviour
• Empower employees to disengage from threatening situations
• Provide de-escalation training
• Create physical environments that prioritise employee safety

3. The Self-Care Layer

Employees need support to:

• Recognise their own stress reactions
• Understand that stress responses (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) are normal reactions to abnormal situations
• Access appropriate mental health resources
• Develop personal resilience strategies

Implementing Trauma-Informed Practices

A trauma-informed workplace acknowledges that:

• Each person is doing the best they can with the resources they have
• Stress reactions manifest across emotional, physical, and cognitive domains
• Support needs to be stepped up when distress persists beyond a month
• Re-traumatisation must be limited wherever possible

Moving Forward

The rise in customer aggression is a significant workplace health and safety concern that requires a trauma-informed response. By understanding that trauma affects people differently and implementing comprehensive support systems, organisations can better protect their employees’ mental health and wellbeing.

It’s important to note that whilst experiences of traumatic events are common, with proper support and protective factors in place, most people don’t develop ongoing mental health conditions. The role of organisational leaders is to ensure those protective factors are robust and accessible.

The investment in trauma-informed practices isn’t just about meeting duty of care obligations or, in other words, ticking a box. Mentally healthy workplaces allow people to bring their whole selves and be valued for who they are, even in the face of increasing customer aggression.

To find out more about how Transitioning Well can help your organisation, see our Learning Catalogue.