Awareness means a team-wide acknowledgment that there is an emotional toll on the worker who takes a child’s body from their parent’s arms at 3 a.m. on a Sunday, just as there is an emotional toll involved in compassionately serving a high-conflict family who is struggling to pay their loved one’s funeral costs. It means noticing when your co-worker stops cracking jokes and starts falling behind on their paperwork. Awareness is paying attention to your own increasing irritability, numbing behaviors and strain in your interpersonal relationships and responding to these needs with the same diligence that you apply to your other professional duties. Ideally, awareness includes a reflective process such as therapy, spiritual practice or maybe even just periodically testing yourself with a burnout screener like the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) or the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). Connection is the action stage, and it takes energy, skill and strategy. It can be as simple as acknowledging a co-worker’s efforts on a particularly grueling case around the coffee maker, or as elaborate as a company-wide Christmas party. It means getting to know the human beings behind the teammates and making sure that you’ve got enough left in the tank to care for the families in your waiting room to a standard that you can be proud of. Crucially, connection is about making sure that the people around you know that you have their back. Notably, it’s something that often must be built into the culture deliberately, especially in working environments with unusual hours and stressors. Often, people come into my care when the stress has turned to burnout, and the burnout has turned to a crisis. Awareness has been blunted, the supportive connections have been frayed, and recovery is long and laborious. But the biggest catalyst of both resilience and change is the environment, and honestly, it’s frustrating as a therapist to be attending to helpers on the front line in isolation. So I’ve looked for ways to intervene upstream of a crisis. At my group practice, Redtail Mental Health, our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is designed to offer preventative strategies as well as ongoing mental health support. The program is tailored to each individual business but generally consists of conducting a needs assessment to learn about the unique qualities of the organization, staff training on managing secondary trauma and cultivating resilience, and ongoing availability to support the entire organization in times of crisis, in addition to prompt access to skillful outpatient psychotherapy. This model is well proven, and the Department of Labor notes that EAP models save employers between $5 and $16 per dollar invested by increasing retention and decreasing absenteeism. Every Choice Matters – Choose Federated® DriveSAFESM Federated DriveSAFESM Telematics can help your employees improve their daily driving habits. This combination of mobile app, in-vehicle tag, and online portal allows you to measure, rank, and provide feedback on employee driving behaviors so you can help them become safer drivers. Scan to learn more about Federated DriveSAFESM Telematics and how you can help your employee drivers stay safe behind the wheel. Federated Mutual Insurance Company and its subsidiaries* federatedinsurance.com | *Not licensed in all states. 25.08 Ed. 2/26 © 2026 Federated Mutual Insurance Company The content of this publication is for general information purposes only and should not be considered legal advice or an offer of insurance. Coverage will be determined solely by the terms of your policy, if approved for issue. Consult with a qualified professional to discuss questions specific to your circumstances. Helping Your Employees Stay Safe Behind The Wheel Of course, Redtail also offers individual psychotherapy via Zoom to the entire state of Montana, regardless of EAP participation. We accept all major third-party insurances, and scheduling takes just a few clicks on our website at redtailmentalhealth.com. We’re familiar with grief, trauma, family therapy and crisis counseling as well as burnout, and we collaborate closely with resources local to our clients to ensure that participants receive comprehensive care. Thank you for your difficult and important work and the time you’ve taken to consider this occupational hazard. I’ll look forward to our eventual collaboration, in your office or mine. In his work as a therapist, Sam takes a person-centered approach toward helping his clients manage symptoms of anxiety, depression, addiction, personality disorders, neurodiversity, grief and trauma. He specializes in providing EMDR therapy, a modality that focuses on reprocessing and addressing symptoms related to traumatic experiences. In addition to maintaining a private practice in Missoula and Polson, Sam teaches in the social work department at the University of Montana and is an EMDRIA-approved EMDR consultant. In his personal life, Sam is a musician, a handyman and a father to two young children. He seizes every opportunity to play guitar and get out of cell service. He can be reached at sam@redtailmh.com or (406) 241-1693. 18 | MONTANA FUNERAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION
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