A critical incident can be any situation that threatens the life or safety of a person or they are witness to a traumatic or abnormal event, such as an accident, threats of violence, death of a person, industrial or natural disasters or organisational changes such as restricting or reducing the workforce. These incidents could affect a few people or the whole organisation.
If this happens in the workplace, it is important that you know how to support your staff, both immediately after the incident and over the following weeks.
If you work with an existing employee assistance programme (EAP) provider, you should check whether they offer critical incident support. They will be your first call (after emergency services) to provide rapid response support to you and your employees.
Everyone will respond and act differently to trauma, CIC, who are specialists in workplace counselling have some useful information on how to support employees following an incident.
Having a plan in place to provide an immediate response to trauma in the workplace, will enable you to lessen the effects, identify individuals that may need extra support and help people to resume their normal work and home lives.
