What is Project Corporate TRAUMA?
Project Corporate Trauma is both a research initiative and intervention dedicated to creating awareness about the long term adverse impacts to mental health and organizational effectiveness stemming from physical or psychological harm sustained at the workplace.
Our goal is to put a name to this harm, and sound the alarm about the detrimental long term effects on people, families, and society as a whole.
Our vision with this work is to be able to support people, teams and organizations in acknowledging their adverse work experiences and trauma, and intentionally move towards healthier work environments.
Associated terms and definitions
*You might have heard what we are calling Corporate Trauma referred to as Workplace Trauma, or Organizational Trauma, though certain definitions refer to the collective workplace, as opposed to the individuals within it.
Our definition is more aligned with the impact to the individual within the organization.
The word corporate in this sense is expansive to include any group organized around a common goal - including commercial entities, non profit entities, as well as governmental entities. We specifically exclude healthcare and first responders as the trauma associated with those roles are well established.
How to engage with us
We’re conducting a research study on corporate trauma and are looking for voluntary participants.
If you believe you have faced lasting negative effects from toxic work environments, we would love to hear about your experiences, and the perspective they have formed.
All information will be anonymized, and your insights will help inform efforts to build healthier, more humane workplaces.
We want to hear your story.
We are not certified professional therapists or counsellors, and the content, guidance, and discussions provided are not a substitute for professional mental health care. If you are experiencing personal trauma responses or mental health challenges attributed to a workplace setting, we strongly recommend seeking support from a licensed therapist or mental health professional.
DISCLAIMER
Prevalence of Psychosocial Harm in Organizational Environments
A survey by the American Psychological Association (APA) revealed that 15% of respondents described their workplace as somewhat or very toxic. This figure rises to 24% among individuals with cognitive, emotional, learning, or mental disabilities.
All of our sources indicate this is a vast under-representation of what is really happening. Toxic workplaces are real, damaging, and all too often, simply accepted as the cost of doing business.
Thus far our research is showing that workplace trauma often stems not from a single event, but from prolonged, unaddressed psychosocial risks. The good news however, is that when we are intentional about it, we can design for mitigation of these risks, and address the harm.
Unaddressed psychological harm in the workplace is a leading to a public safety crisis.
The criteria of what constitutes a public safety crisis are:
It is widespread, affecting individuals across industries and sectors. Statistics show that approximately 75% of people experience have or will experience bullying or abuse at their workplace.
It is systemic, often enabled by organizational culture and leadership practices, even if it's not intentional.
It is preventable, yet persists due to lack of awareness, resources, or courage (inadequate safety) to intervene.
It has measurable long-term effects on mental health, family stability, community trust, and economic participation. For some the psychological harm from workplace experiences long after the event(s).
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We often think of trauma as catastrophic events, but trauma isn't always dramatic or immediately obvious.
Big T Trauma refers to severe, life-threatening incidents like assault, war, or natural disasters. These experiences commonly lead to diagnoses such as PTSD and are widely recognized in clinical psychology, thanks to foundational researchers like Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
Big T trauma and PTSD in the workplace are most commonly associated with emergency services, first responders and military, but this doesn't mean that Big T trauma doesn't also sometimes in the corporate world.
Corporate trauma will more often fit the bill of little t trauma, recently recategorized as Adverse Life Experiences (Shapiro, 2018). Little t trauma / adverse life experiences describe chronic, cumulative experiences that repeatedly undermine an individual's sense of safety, autonomy, or worth. Examples include workplace bullying, harassment, shaming, gaslighting, and systemic silencing.
Researchers Peter Levine and Gabor Maté suggest that trauma is defined not just by the event itself but by how the body and nervous system respond over time.
Corporate trauma emerges gradually within organizational cultures that normalize harm, even when they don't know they're doing it.
Naming corporate trauma clearly helps validate experiences that are often missed or sometimes minimized. It creates the necessary urgency for leaders and organizations to proactively address these issues, protecting people and culture before harm escalates.
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Corporate trauma (little t / adverse life experiences) can be defined as the psychological and emotional harm that individuals or groups experience as a result of toxic, high-pressure, or dehumanizing work environments. It’s not a clinical diagnosis, and the use of the word trauma in this context is sometimes challenging as a) it does not meet the definition in the DSM and b) does not want to minimize the magnitude of Big T trauma events. We persist however, as this word without the capitalization captures the real, pervasive, cumulative and normalized impact of harmful organizational systems, practices or behaviours.
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Through our work as change consultants we have seen a lot. We have worked with some workplaces where they described the tenure of a certain leader as "reign of terror", and others where individuals in leadership roles had been arrested as a result of their actions towards others in the workplace.
Not all of the workplaces we have experience have been left with the same level of trauma, but we have also experienced some very difficult corporate contexts ourselves to know that long lasting effects that continue to surface after we have left the workplaces.
This is why we are undertaking this work. We want to raise awareness, and on the individual level give people voices if they have felt silenced. On the organizational level, we hope to be able to create enough visibility around the issue that we can one day start to make change to it.
Frequently Asked Questions
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