What Can Employers Do

For more information on how you can create a safe and inclusive workplace for survivors of IPV-TBI, please visit these resources:

Make It Our Business: http://makeitourbusiness.ca
Addressing Domestic Violence in the Workplace: www.dvatwork.ca

What can Employers Do to Help?

Employment is a crucial aspect of a survivor’s health and well-being and has a significant impact on their quality of life.¹ Having a stable job means survivors have access to basic needs, such as safe accommodations, food security, and disability supports. Employment also promotes survivors’ physical safety, improves their self-esteem and social-connectedness, and provides mental respite and a purpose in life.² The following suggestions have been compiled from statements provided by survivors, support workers, and employers during research interviews.

A proactive approach

There are many things an employer can do to support current and prospective employees who are survivors of IPV-TBI. Many survivors are willing to talk to their employers about their safety and disability related needs but they need to feel supported to do so. It can help if the employer has clear policies and procedures already in place, with key people identified as the appropriate contact to go to. Survivors may often speak to someone they feel safe with, a co-worker or immediate manager, but if that person knows who to contact and what to do ahead of time, it can make the process of accessing supports more successful. Some workplaces take a proactive approach to support options and communication policies, providing an existing framework for employees to rely on when needed.

A flexible and supportive environment

Some survivors say that having a ‘guardian angel’ made all the difference in their success, an individual that they trusted to ask for help, someone who believed them, and offered assistance and support without taking away their autonomy and control. They talked about the value in their employer offering flexible work hours which gave them time to deal with necessary appointments, or an employer’s willingness to support their need for safe housing and access to childcare so they could continue to work and take care of their family. Some survivors discussed their employer’s openness to safety measures such as providing barriers against unwelcome phone calls or visits, escorting employees safely to and from parking areas, and monitoring public access to buildings.

Survivor Perspectives

For employers wanting to create inclusive, supportive hiring practices for survivors, there are other things that can be done. Start by creating an interview process that considers a survivor’s need for safe spaces and a calm, quiet space with minimal external distractions. Prospective employers can provide interview questions ahead of time, allowing someone to feel prepared and at their best, thereby reducing their anxiety.

The impacts of IPV outlive the relationship

Many survivors will experience the effects of IPV-TBI long after they have left their abusive partner. Seemingly unimportant, everyday things can be triggering. A person’s name, smells, or sounds, for example, can all trigger a trauma response. An employer’s willingness to accommodate a survivor’s needs whenever possible can go a long way to creating a safe workspace for everyone.

Survivor Perspectives

I think right off the bat, you have to feel safe with those particular people. My boss… he was very supportive… he was like “you know, this is serious,” he gave me more information, he was like no kidding around kind of thing. But also, very much “no questions asked, take time off… don’t even worry about that, like you just don’t worry about the work”… there was no pressure that way which was incredible.

And because you're dealing with anxiety, most likely anxiety, depression and all of these other things and as well as just the trauma of it, it's going – you have different challenges, right? But it's also that it opens them up to being able to have … employment supports so that means that they're getting assistance with writing their resumes, their cover letters, having job development to help them get into a good job or the right fit for them. It [employment supports] also gives them the opportunity to have interview prep because that is a huge one because if you, if you have been isolated and then you're going to be going into an interview and you're asked the question tell me about yourself, unless you're prepped you're not going to answer that very well. Like you're going to self-disclose in a way that is not going to be seen in a positive way from an employer.

I think that it's important to have training in what domestic violence or intimate partner violence looks like. It would be hard to have just one person because you never know who that, who the victim is going to connect with, right? Because it could be, it could be a colleague that they're going to disclose to. So there should be somebody that you can go to, you know, that they would be the person.

And then the challenge of maintaining this work-life balance is complicated by the traumatic brain injury. So you're at work and you can't separate the worries that’s happening at home, you're at home and you can't separate the stuff that is happening at work. So your work and your home becomes commingled in ways that people who don’t have brain injuries are able to sort of pass off—silo off their work. And so in our work with survivors—again around strangulation is how they struggle to make sense of the new world. And how they struggle to explain to their employer that—well how do you tell somebody that I'm not functioning the way I used to because it was—I think it's because he kicked me in the head. So there's this whole mystery around your new normal, your new life that you as a survivor are finding difficult to articulate, because you no longer have the language.