Why is it important to support inclusion during difficult times?

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Am I next? Difficult times can lead to a sense of “embodied threat”

Difficult times can lead to employees feeling a sense of embodied threat. This impacts their wellbeing and connection, including their time at work.

Embodied threat is when people who share identity with event victims feel as if they themselves are physically closer to experiencing harm in a similar manner. This brings a host of negative threat-related thoughts and emotions which do not end when employees enter their workplace. 1

A US study examined impacts of Black Lives Matter-related events on employees. Prior to these events, all employees reported similar levels of engagement with colleagues and expressing authentic emotions and thoughts at work. However, after the events of police killings against African American people such as Atatiana Jefferson, Botham Jean and George Floyd, Black employees (compared to white employees) reported experiencing greater embodied threat, actively hiding or suppressing their feelings of this threat in the workplace, and having higher avoidance of team members (such avoiding interacting with co-workers). 2

Asian employees have reported experiencing greater embodied threat, actively hiding or supressing their feelings about this threat and higher avoidance of their team members in 2021 after the Atlanta area spa shootings in the US where 6 women of Asian descent were fatally shot. 3

Difficult times impact employee wellbeing

Difficult events targeting a marginalised community disproportionately affect employees from that community.

Employees often suppress or hide their authentic reactions to these events at work – this can become exhausting and consequently, employees can avoid or withdraw from their work tasks and their team in the days during or after the event.4

When negative events target an employee’s identity and/or lived experience and they are confronted with ongoing media stories about it, employees may:

Below are examples of how an event can be linked to an employee’s identity and/or lived experience.

  • For Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander employees. Ongoing high numbers of First Nations deaths in custody, particularly since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, can create feelings of distress, grief and a further distrust of systems.
  • For employees with a migrant background (living safely in Australia). If there is a massacre or genocide against their race, ethnicity and/or religion, this could cause heightened distress.  This is more profound if there are ties with family, friends and community based in the country where the violence is taking place.
  • For employees from an asylum seeker and refugee background. An event may be connected to their experience as a refugee or as someone living in war and therefore, watching the news around similar events elsewhere can trigger their trauma. 6
  • For women employees. Gender-based violence against women can create feelings of distress. This is more profound for culturally and racially marginalised women, when the violence is both gender and racially motivated.
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Support services

This webpage discusses events and systemic discrimination which have harmed or continue to harm communities.

If you or someone close to you is in distress or immediate danger, call 000 as soon as possible.

Should you need support, please contact mental health support agencies, such as:  

 
  1. Taken from Leigh, A. & Melwani, S., "Supporting employees after violence against their communities", Harvard Business Review, 5 October 2022
  2. Leigh, A. & Melwani, S., "Supporting employees after violence against their communities"
  3. Ibid.
  4. Leigh, A. & Melwani, S., "Supporting employees after violence against their communities"
  5. Leigh, A. & Melwani, S., "Supporting employees after violence against their communities"; Leigh, A. and Melwani, S., “‘Am I next?’ The spillover effects of Mega-Threats on Avoidant Behaviours at Work,” Academy of Management Journal, 2022, Vol. 65, No. 3 
  6. Rees, S and Moussa, B. "Invisible wounds of the Israel Gaza War in Australia," Medical Journal Australia, 2024, Vol. 220, no. 1, p. 4- 6