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Stress and burnout have risen across the global workforce, and work invades personal time for many.

Past trauma can surface in the workplace, driving behaviors such as perfectionism.

Trauma-aware leadership helps equip employees with more effective ways to operate at work.

Workplace stress and burnout could be worsening. As results roll in from data collected the previous year, researchers are finding:

Work is invading personal time: Meetings after 8:00 p.m. are up 16 percent since the previous year, 29 percent of employees return to their email inbox by 10 p.m., 40 percent check email before 6:00 a.m., and 20 percent work on weekends (Microsoft, 2025).

Workplace strain is widespread: Globally, 40 percent of employees report having experienced “a lot” of stress the previous day, including 50 percent in the United States and Canada (Gallup, 2025).

Burnout is rising: Surveys of thousands of employees and employers in the U.S. indicate employee burnout is continuing to rise, year after year, and is reaching a seven-year high (with Generation Z already constituting the “most burned-out generation”) (Aflac, 2025).

This trend is bad enough for any employee or workplace leader, but imagine if—on top of just working in this climate—you are doing so as a survivor of past trauma. Considering that 70 percent of people globally will experience a potentially traumatic event during their lifetime (World Health Organization, 2025)—for example, 61 percent of U.S. adults had at least one adverse childhood experience (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021)—it is no wonder that trauma responses show up on the job. Even if the harrowing episodes they lived through were long ago, survivors can experience trauma response cycles in the workplace (National Institute of Mental Health, 2026) via a routine email, tense interaction, criticism, conflict, or perceived loss of control.

To explore how education can help with these troubling stats and scenarios, I spoke to Blake Schofield, a former Fortune 500 executive who founded Impact With Ease™ and has led large-scale business........

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