Have you ever been asked to do something at work that you thought compromised your morals? It could be something big and dramatic like in a movie, where a worker is asked hide a report on safety even though it might mean people die or might be something more mundane. Maybe you were asked to tell your team that their jobs were safe even though you did not know if that was true, or maybe you had to tell a client that their work was going to get the company’s best resources even though you suspected that that was not going to be the case. Or it was a bit different. Maybe you are a nurse and you have pledged to do the best for your patients but you do not think you are doing that because you just do not have the resource and that is stressing you out.It is not unusual for workers to be put in a position where they do not feel morally comfortable with the demands of their jobs, meaning they  end up wounded, not with a physical injury but with something called a ‘moral injury’.

Moral injury is not anything new, but maybe we are at a place right now where workers do not want to put up with anymore. That could be because of the pandemic, which has changed us to some extent, or it could be because there is a shortage of workers and that is encouraging some of those who are unhappy to vote with their feet and leave. To talk about all of it, Linda Nazareth is joined on this episode by  Ludmila Praslova, rofessor in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California. Prof Praslova consults with companies to help them create inclusive and equitable workplaces and part of that process is dealing with moral injury.  She thinks that organizations need stop subjecting workers to trauma and she has some concrete ways that leaders can make sure that it does not show up in their workplaces.

Guest: Ludmila Praslova

Ludmila N. Praslova, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, is organizational culture, inclusion, and future-of-work strategist with extensive experience in diversity and inclusion, belonging, engagement, and employee wellbeing with a focus on neurodiversity. She is a professor and director of Graduate Programs in Industrial-Organizational Psychology at Vanguard University of Southern California. She writes for Fast Company, Harvard Business Review and SHRM blog, serves as the editor of the upcoming book, “Evidence-Based Organizational Practices for Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity” (Cambridge Scholars), and the editor of the upcoming special issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research on Disability inclusion in the workplace: From “accommodation” to inclusive organization design.

Links:

https://hbr.org/2022/02/employees-are-sick-of-being-asked-to-make-moral-compromises