Eight shootings happened recently in various cities throughout the U.S. in the same weekend, with the most devastating one being the mass shooting that happened in a grocery store on May 14 in Buffalo, New York, where a white man with an AR-15-style rifle shot 13 people and killed 10 in an incident targeting Black people. And this week, 19 students and two adults were killed at a K-12 school in Uvalde, Texas in the worst mass school shooting since Sandy Hook.
So far in 2022, there have been 213 mass shootings in the U.S. And over the past few years, there have been several that have targeted marginalized groups. The Buffalo shooting is the most recent example of that.
Of the 13 people who were shot, 11 of the victims were Black and two were white. Another recent shooting targeting marginalized groups was the shootings that occurred in March 2021 at three spas in the Atlanta area. Eight Asian women were killed by a white gunman who went on a rampage as a result of anti-Asian bias brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Effects of Mass Shootings on Communities
When mass shootings targeting marginalized groups happen, trauma moves through the communities of the groups who are affected.
People from these groups are afraid to do daily activities like go to the salon, a grocery store or any other place when these things happen. And if they’re working in person, there could be fear around coming into the workplace, especially since there’s been a spike in workplace shootings over the last year or so.
Workplace Conversations Around Mass Shootings
As an employer, you might be considering addressing mass shootings when they happen with your workforce. Before diving in, be cautious and think through these conversations.
Before engaging with your staff on the topic, first think of how Black employees might feel about the shooting in Buffalo, how Asian employees might feel about the Atlanta spa shootings, and how those of the Jewish faith might feel about the 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh and so on.
Check in with employees from marginalized groups to see how they are feeling. Offer time off or work-from-home hours to allow these employees to process these events and to honor the people who were victims of these tragic events.
On a recent Fair360, formerly DiversityInc webinar titled “Mental Health: Redefining Wellbeing in the Workplace,” panelists were asked how they address the needs of employees of color following the mass shooting in Buffalo.
Lisette Martinez, Executive VP & Chief Diversity Officer at Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University, said the company offers continued opportunities for “brave conversations,” which allows employees to share and talk about how they are feeling.
“If we’ve talked about this a lot, I think we’ll have these safe spaces for employees,” she said. “You can’t say it enough, providing opportunities for folks in a space where they can share anything helps them be able to move along and it also really shares how the organization is connecting with our folks and saying, ‘it’s OK. We understand and we want to be there for you, let’s talk about what we can do to improve.'”
Be Aware of and Educate About Microaggressions
While you as a manager or leader are good at being considerate of others’ feelings, that’s usually not the case for all employees. White employees might feel the need to talk to those from underrepresented groups about mass shootings, but they might not come off as they would hope. Whether they are unintended, microaggressions could come about in conversations around tragic situations. In those cases, it’s important to counteract those microaggressions.
On a Fair360 Enterprise webinar titled “How to Recognize and Respond to Microaggressions,” Annaliece Gargiulo, Project Manager, Legal Operations at Abbott (ranked No. 3 on the Fair360, formerly DiversityInc 2022 Top 50 Companies for Diversity list), said she calls her approach to microaggressions the “you have something in your teeth” approach.
“I think this has probably happened to everybody on this call, at some point in time, you go somewhere, you have a salad or you’re eating something and you end up with some type of food in your teeth and you’re walking around and you go to the bathroom one day and you look in the mirror and you’re like, oh my gosh, I have spinach in my teeth and nobody told me, and that’s kind of how I think about microaggressions,” she said. “It’s not something we want to intentionally happen, but it can and will happen, but we really don’t want to be embarrassed and we want somebody to tell us. So when I see these happen on my projects, that’s the mentality that I have is somebody has some spinach in their teeth, they don’t know, and it’s up to us to tell them.”
- Watch the full webinar for more insight on handling microaggressions
Tips for Helping Employees Cope With Trauma Related to Mass Shootings and Other Events
When approaching feelings around mass shootings with your workforce as a whole, offer resources to your employees to help them cope with the incident. The American Counseling Association lists a few tips that could help:
- Prioritize self-care: Encourage employees to eat, sleep, exercise and maintain a daily routine as much as possible and to take time off as needed.
- Take a break from the media: It’s important to stay on top of current events, but studies have shown that the media’s coverage of shootings and other tragic events can cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress and acute stress in people. If you often have the TV tuned to a news channel in the office, consider switching to something different for a few days.
- Communicate: Encourage employees to talk to people, whether it is with a manager, a friend or family member or someone they feel comfortable talking to at work. Ask if your employees need help and keep lines of communication open.
In summary, mass shootings targeted at certain groups of people affect entire communities from those groups, even if they are located hundreds of miles away from where the tragedy occurred. Be mindful of your employees’ feelings, stop microaggressions in their tracks and offer resources to help people process these events.
