What is CIR and Do I Need It?
Workplaces are one of the places where most accidents happen. You are more likely to witness or be involved in an accident at work than you are anywhere else.
What is Critical Incident Response?
CIR is in place for workplace tragedies. These can include things like general work accidents, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, homicides, and colleague suicide. CIR counselors at Virtual-Counseling.com are trained professionals whose duty is to assist in such workplace tragedies by providing the appropriate support to help those involved recover.
The reason why CIR is in place is because of the mental impact that it could potentially have on employees – which might be because they witnessed the incident, or they were particularly close to the employee who it happened to.
Do I need Critical Incident Response?
If you are an employer and a distressing situation has occurred you should be checking on all of your employees, ensuring they are getting the emotional support that they need.
Tragedy will affect people differently, some will cope one way and another differently. Despite this, you should always be offering that support no matter the situation.
CIR should be available before, during, and after an incident. This means that you, as the employer, should anticipate that such an incident will occur to ensure employees are prepared.
Signs that someone has been impacted include:
- Low morale
- Social withdrawal
- Tiredness
- Emotional outbursts
- More sick days
As an employee, if you have been in a position that has distressed you, you might feel personally affected by such an incident. Whether it’s causing you to have panic attacks, recurring nightmares, unhappy thoughts, or anything that is negatively impacting your mental health, you should be able to find support from your employer.
Why is CIR so Important?
Workplace mental health is critically important. So when something happens which impacts us, we can navigate to the care and guidance necessary to better manage, cope – and in some cases – grieve properly.
Without proper support, some incidents can leave a negative impact for the foreseeable future unless correctly dealt with. There are events that take place that, when untreated, can linger in minds for generations.