What does it take to create a workplace where people feel truly seen, supported, and inspired to grow? In this powerful episode of Epic Begins With One Step Forward, host Zander Sprague sits down with Traci Austin—HR strategist, leadership expert, and founder of Elevated Talent Consulting—to explore the intersection of people strategy and compassionate leadership.
With over 20 years in HR, Traci shares transformative insights on building fulfilling work environments, developing talent pathways, and the often-overlooked impact of life’s hardest seasons—like grief—on performance. From redefining bereavement policies to demystifying Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), this conversation goes beyond the handbook into the heart of what really matters in business: people.
You’ll hear candid stories, practical tools, and a refreshing take on how managers and organizations can create epic workplaces by showing up, listening deeply, and meeting employees where they are. Whether you lead a team or want to build a more human-centered culture, this episode delivers the guidance you didn’t know you needed.
Apply to be a Guest on My TV show
#EPICBeginswith1StepForward, #ZanderSprague, #HRStrategy, #EmployeeEngagement, #TalentDevelopment
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Beyond The Handbook: Real Talk About Leadership, Loss, And Listening With Traci Austin
I am so honored to welcome Traci Austin to the show. Traci, tell us who you are and what you do.
Absolutely. My name is Traci Austin and I work with trade organizations on setting up human resources and talent pathways through the organization.
That is awesome. How long have you been associated with human resources, personnel hiring, all the different names it’s had?
It has changed over time. HR has so many facets to it. My undergrad is in HR, so twenty-plus years. I’ve been running my business, Elevated Talent Consulting, since 2018. It’s all about people. It really is all about how do we create fulfilling work for folks and as leaders, we have an obligation to create that container because if you’re not happy at work, a lot of times, you’re not happy at home. There are some insights into that.
I know, having worked in the corporate world for many years, some of them great, some of them you’re like, “This is not as fun a place to show up to,” how important that is to create that epic workspace for people. We hope that most days, people are somewhat excited to go to work. You can’t be excited every day, but if most days you’re like, “I’ve got a good path, I know what’s going on.”
It is so much up to the leader to create that environment. We all know how to complain. Zander, do you know how to complain? I sure do.
I’ve been known to say, “I’m displeased with this.”
Turning Complaints Into Talent Pathways: From Issues To Opportunities
One of the things we love to do when we’re working with leaders is have them really list out all their complaints, and then we’re working with them on listening into those complaints because we believe that every complaint is just a poorly worded request.
Every complaint is just a poorly worded request.
One of the things when I reflect on my time in the corporate world is I remember some great managers, and I remember managers that weren’t as great. When I reflect on that, the great managers were the ones who were actively helping me to acquire the skills that I needed, but that they needed me to have. The manager that I think of and go, “Okay, that was a that was my best manager,” I was at the time doing highly technical things.
I was doing software development and quality assurance which by the way, I was highly unqualified to do, but that’s not the point here. He came to me and said, “I need you to learn this skill.” It was nine months before the intersection of where he needed me to be, so that I had enough time to acquire the skill and be competent versus going, “Zander, I’m going to need you to do this next week,” and I’m like, “I have no idea how to do it.”
That is a brilliant talent pathway plan of, “I see you, Zander, bigger than you see yourself, and here’s where I see an outcome that I believe you can be very successful at. We’ve got a runway. What do you say?”
I manage some people in my company and I look and say, “What do I know is coming down the pipe? Where do I need someone to be? I’m giving you time. Go learn this skill because I’m going to need you to use it. I realize you don’t have that skill right now, and I want you not only to learn it, but have time to practice it so you feel confident to go do it.” Ultimately, as an entrepreneur, my time is valuable. My money is valuable. The people I’ve hired to do certain jobs, I want to make sure that they’re successful.
Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like what they did there is they were brilliant at creating a people strategy, meaning they knew what they needed to get a business result, so they knew where folks had to be. You’ve got the talent pathway strategy, which is for the individual personally. The people strategy is for the organization. So many of the clients that we start to work with have no idea how to create that people strategy to get to that point where they have success with their people because they’ve planned for it. That’s brilliant. The fact that you experienced that is amazing.
It really is. That was when I was much younger, but as I was working my way through the corporate world and stuff, I spent a lot of time doing technical instruction. I taught people how to use software for various companies. I learned a lot in that position about self-advocacy, which I think is a really important skill for individual employees. Understand what you are good at. Advocate for the jobs that you are good at.
Also, hard as it is, make sure that you tell your manager stuff that is not going to be like, that’s not going to work out for the company. We’re not going to win no matter how much you want to do it. Specifically, I remember I was working for a company. I was literally doing an around the world training trip of three weeks going to all these different countries to deliver training. They wanted me, they’re like, there’s seven days of highly technical training. We need you to do it in five days. I’m like, “That’s not possible.” I can deliver the material, but it won’t meet the educational objective.
I was frustrated because they’re like, “Can’t you teach for twelve hours?” I was like, “I can, but again, people can only take in so much information at once.” I could say I deliver the information, but they’re not going to remember it and they’re going to complain. You think me advocating going, “I’m trying not to say no, but I’m telling you, you’ve hired me and I know my job. I know the skills. I know what’s possible. I know the outcome that we need, and that’s not going to happen.” That self-advocacy is important. How do you help managers hear when employees might know more than they do?
Yeah, I think there’s two pieces here. I want to highlight something you said because it was brilliant, and I just want to make sure it comes up to the top of the surface. You talked about the outcomes and there is a key distinction between the outputs put on a training and the outcome that the individual walks away and can be proficient at what they’re doing. A key part of advocacy is being able to present the information in a way that your boss, your employer, your spouse, your kid, whoever it is, can truly hear it.
That kind of distinction between an output, “We’re going to do a podcast today,” and the outcome that we create one epic thing that an individual can start with to move themselves forward, those are two very different things. We can do outputs all day long and never get to an outcome. Within that advocacy, I do think it’s really important that we can speak in terms of those outcomes to move that forward.
Navigating Grief in the Workplace: Beyond Bereavement Policies
To shift a little, but still talking about HR because one of these things that I’m fascinated to hear your take on this, which is lots of companies have EAP programs, Employee Assistance Programs, and yet a specific experience I had back in 1996 when I was actually working for hat manager I love so much, I lost my sister. I had five days of bereavement leave. That five days was spent helping my parents arrange. My sister was living in Chicago at the time. I was in Boston. They were in Boston. We had to get her from Chicago to Boston. We had a funeral for her. I went back to work because I didn’t want to sit in my apartment, but I certainly was not a productive employee for a while. Although there was an EAP program, no one actually helped me access it.
It’s been a bugaboo of mine for the last quarter century because someone’s like, “Why didn’t you use the EAP program?” I’m like, “It’s because that requires so much work on my half, and it’s all I can do to make it to work.” I guess it’s twofold. What do you think about the bereavement policies for that that are currently standard? If someone needs bereavement leave, they’re not ready to be back to work in five days.
There’s a couple of different things on this. I think one thing with policy is when we write an employee handbook, or we’re writing policy, we’re looking to create the black and white box, which we have to have. It allows us to align with what the laws are. There are some insurance type things we need to align with. You want to write that in a way that you can still dance in the gray. Not every situation is the same. There are circumstances that make each situation very different. I want to name that on policy first within that. What you named is standard, those five days, yet how they’re used, when they’re used, what other things go along with it.
Now, are we doing some sort of different items within that? There’s so much that goes into this, but none of it starts until there’s a conversation. Management and HR, when we get down to it, it’s really about the relationships and the trust that we’re building with the folks that we’re working with. I think that that’s something really important within that. Do you have more on that before I jump into EAP?
Aside from the Epic, I do a lot of work with sibling survivors. I talk to companies about grief in the workplace. I actually just did a virtual conference, but I talked about grief in the workplace and how advocating for supporting people and understanding where they are, what’s realistic. Ultimately, an organization wants an employee to be able to come back and be productive. By supporting them during this difficult time, you actually get your employee back much sooner.
There are five levers of engagement that we work with clients on, and we see over and over again. One of those levers we call seasons of life. Losing a sibling, losing a parent, a divorce, all of those things are seasons of life. It’s all a loss in a death in one way or another. Looking at those seasons of life, it’s working directly with that individual, which really is outside of a policy. You can’t really create a seasons of life policy.
Some of these things are about the relationship and what works and what doesn’t within that. Connecting that then into what does that individual need? What kind of support is that? There wasn’t necessarily remote work at that point in time when you had that situation that you faced. There definitely is now. Really working with the individuals in order to provide them, sometimes it’s structure. Sometimes it’s saying, “We know you had these really high reaching stretch assignments that we are going to pull back on if you would like to.”
The key here is always asking the individual what they want versus making the decision for them. “Zander, I know that you have this project right now that you’re working on, that’s a stretch assignment and there’s been a significant life change in your family. What would you like to focus on for the next three months that allow us to hit X, which is a minimum outcome that’s needed, that allows you to be able to work on autopilot versus in a stretch assignment that takes a lot more brainpower.” You may say, “I want that stretch assignment because I don’t have to think about these things. I can get an impact,” but you have to be able to answer that question versus me making a decision for you not knowing what’s happening in your world and there’s no way I could.
I don’t want to walk away from the EAP part of it.
Overcoming EAP Bias: A Personal Story And The Power Of Accessibility
I want to talk about this, too. I’d love to tell a story about EAP. Early in my career, it was my first HR manager job, I had introduced an EAP program. This wasn’t just a dial in number EAP program, it actually had in-person counseling. It was five counseling sessions with an LPCC or one of them, maybe it was a family, I don’t know. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
A mental health professional of some sort.
Exactly. Within that, it had these five, and I’m responsible for rolling it out, and we were, I want to say, like three months in. We’re three months into this. We brought the individual in to introduce them to the staff. She came in and we did lunch and learns. The key with any program is we need to remove the bias and the stigma from the programs for folks to actually want to use it. That’s happening. I come home from a networking event one night, it’s about 8:00 at night. My husband at the time worked at night. It was me and my two kids, a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old. I’m walking up to the front door of my house and I hear something behind me. I turn around and there’s a gun to my head.
The key with any program is we need to remove the bias and the stigma from the programs for folks to actually want to use it.
I do what any normal person does, and I swing my purse at his head. I don’t think that’s what you’re supposed to do, but that’s what I did. I had my keys and my phone in my hands. He takes off running. I don’t know what happened next. Anyway, long story short, I go into work the next day and I work for a nonprofit. My executive director looks at me and she’s like, “Why are you here?” I’m like, I have to.” I’m like hot mess city. I’m like, “I have to be.” She’s like, “No, you need to go home, but you need to go to EAP.” What flowed out of my mouth was, “I’m not going to EAP. It’s not for me.” She’s like, “What?”
You were just advocating for people to access it.
This unconscious bias that EAP isn’t for me as an HR manager, as a manager, she’s like, “No. Before you come back, you have to have an appointment with her. I need to see it.” The most amazing executive director. I’m like, “Okay.” I didn’t realize that as HR, I had this bias towards EAP that I’m advocating for others, but I didn’t buy into it for myself first.
I have to say, sadly, very common. It’s easy for easy for us to say to someone else, “How are you staying at that job where they’re taking advantage of you or a bad relationship,” or, “Sandra, I think you’d benefit from some counseling.” Yet if I said, “No, that’s not for me. I don’t need that.” I see that in my work, a lot of the stigma around mental health, which luckily, we’re getting a little less of it. With telehealth, it’s becoming a little more accessible and people can sit in their home. They don’t have to show up and say, “My neighbor saw me coming out of the office building that houses therapists.”
With this story, and part of the reason why I tell it is we all have our unconscious biases in multiple areas. That was such an eye-opener for me of something that I didn’t even realize was a bias towards EAP. I went. Quite honestly, it was phenomenal in multiple different levels. I also took that story back and our EAP utilization numbers skyrocketed. You know once we started looking at those quarterly, she’s like, “This is the best EAP numbers we have.” It was because when I was ready to share that story, don’t ever share a story before you’re ready for it. That’s a really important piece to it. Once that was shared, all of a sudden it became, “This is okay to do.” There were times where I said to staff that were squabbling with each other or whatever else, “It is mandatory for you to go to EAP for X number of sessions.”
That’s something that you don’t always see. It’s not meant as a punishment. It’s really meant, “I see you bigger than you see yourself. These are things that are outside of what my training expertise is, and we have some resources here to support you.” Ensuring at that point in time, we did have mental health as a part of the health insurance plan, which now most of them are, at that time, there wasn’t. That is something that’s important, ensuring that employees do know what is the coverage that they have under their insurance beyond EAP.
I just advocate so hard for company. “You’ve got this EAP program that you’ve put in place. There are absolutely times where your employee needs to be able to access it, but they need help doing it.” For me, I found out afterwards, I’m like, “What would I need to do?” I went to HR and said, “How would I have accessed it?” I would’ve had to ask for the list of therapists. I would’ve had to then go find a therapist who could see who had room to see me. I just want to put out, you need to interview the therapist. Just because someone’s available doesn’t mean they’re the right person. Therapy is an intimate relationship in terms of I’m going and I need to share some deeply personal things.
I need to know that I can trust the therapist that I feel safe. Tell that to all my new clients. I’m like, “I may not be the right person. You will not hurt my feelings if you go, ‘Zander, your style just isn’t working for me.’” The same way that if we want to take something, we all have to wear a jacket. No matter how cool a jacket looks, you put it on it, if it doesn’t fit right, you’re not going to buy it or at least you shouldn’t buy it.
Now, so many organizations offer coaching and there’s internal coaches.
It’s a much different world. It really is.
Coaching Vs. Therapy: Understanding The Key Differences In Workplace Support
I want to just chat a second for the distinction between a coach and a therapist. They’re trained so incredibly differently. I’m a coach with ICF. I have the ICF certification and there are certain things where I can go through with a client, but guess what? The second it gets into a therapy piece, I need to make that referral out. It’s so important, that distinction. I don’t know how you describe the distinction between a coach and a therapist, but I have a favorite one.
I used to be a coach. Now I’m a therapist and I was really clear about both personally, but also in my contract about personally what I could or couldn’t do. As a coach, I had times where I was working with someone, and all of a sudden, just in that coaching relationship, they reveal something that beyond what I’m able to do. I might have known how to help them just because I studied psychology and I like it. I was always studying it.
I was very clear about where that line is. I’ve had people who, now I’m a therapist, go, “Can I get some coaching?” I have to say it’s hard because I have so much knowledge that how do I not do therapy? I’m clear about what that is and what coaching looks like. Because I’ve done it. I’ve studied it and stuff. You’re right. What is your story?
The way I like to describe it is coaching is about knowing that there’s a pothole in front of you and being able to identify the pothole and learn how to drive around it so you don’t drive into the pothole and then screw up your entire car because you ruined your axle because the tire’s now in the pothole, depending upon how big that pothole is. Some can be huge.
Therapy is more like we see there’s a pothole, we’re going to get in it and we’re going to excavate it to fill in the pothole so we can drive over it going forward. That’s how I have learned to describe it. It’s very different going past versus going forward. There’s a time and a place for both. There are times you have to go backwards in order to go forwards. There are times you can learn to drive around it.
I think coaching is great because, sometimes, you don’t need to sledgehammer to fix it. Not that therapy’s a sledgehammer, but therapy can be a much deeper emotional dive. Traci, let’s talk about some of that negative self-talk. Why are you always putting down your skillset versus you sharing, “I had a gun to my head.” As a coach, I’d be like, “That’s a much bigger thing. I can’t get you around that pothole.”
I name that in the EAP conversation because EAP does not typically provide coaching. Yet a lot of organizations now are providing coaching to staff. I just want to name that distinction because it’s such a gift and how we work that is really important as well.
It’s always baffling. I’m like, company went out as a contract for EAP program. It’s supposed to be assisting me, and hopefully HR is like, “Let us help you access. Here’s how to do it.” Years ago, that was not the case. It was all on me. I had to be incredibly proactive, and as I said, it took all my energy to get out of bed. Never mind like, “Hold on now, let me go find this. Let me go call people.” Seriously, it was hard.
I think that goes back to that season of life where we meet employees where they’re at. There are certain seasons that come up where we do need to meet them where they’re at. I’ll say too, a lot of HR professionals that I work with, the EAP program is not the top thing that’s on their list.
I totally get that. It is one of those things that’s available. I think a lot of employees, they may see that there’s EAP, but they don’t know what it is. Some education of here’s what the EAP program is, here’s what you can get from it. Here’s how to access it.
A lot of times, we come up with our benefit broker on lunch and learns, of bringing in a lunch and learn once a month that really goes through the different benefits that are available, why someone would use it, the impact for them. EAP is one of them. The educational reimbursement can be one. The different parts of the insurance, whether it’s prescription or whether it’s mental health, all of those things that are being paid for but so often overlooked is an amazing best practice to have within offerings.
We build that into lunch and learns that really do elevate the value that is available to employees so that they feel like, “I know exactly where to go with this now, and I’ve met somebody, looked them in the whites of their eyes. I know and feel comfortable to have a conversation with this,” or at least a video or something like that, so that there can be that personal connection.
I’m trying to think of where to go next here, Traci. What would your advice for managers be around helping to create that epic workspace? That place where people feel valued, they understand that there is a path for them.
An Epic Workspace: Empowering Managers To Value And Develop Employees
I want to actually take something that I’ve heard you say and put it into a format. Will that work you?
Absolutely.
The complaint that I heard is that HR is not sharing EAP programs effectively with employees to know how to use it.
I would say that’s my complaint. Yes.
For managers, I’m going to walk through kind of, “If you’ve got a complaint that comes to you, how do you figure out what’s underneath it so that you can come up with a solution that moves that person forward and moves the organization forward to hit an outcome?” I’m the HR person. You’re coming to me and you’re saying, “We’re six months after this incident, I never knew it was there. I couldn’t get out of bed. What’s going on with it?”
I’m going to come into that conversation and really set an intention for how can I support you within this, but also how can I learn where there’s gaps in our system where I can best serve our employees going forward? I’m going to start that conversation with an intention. Guess what? We hear complaints all day long. If we hear them as complaints, we’re more likely to brush them off and roll our eyes than hearing them as poorly worded requests. What I hear you saying, Zander, is your request is how do we get this information in front of people so that they can get the help they need when they need it?
I have this intention to figure out where the gaps are in our system when I meet with you. I may say, “Zander, I just heard you talk about this frustration with the EAP program, and I really want to know more about it so that I can understand exactly what you’re asking for.” I’m going to repeat that. I’m going to listen in and then I’m going to repeat it back listening to the facts.
“I know that you informed us that your sister passed away on this date. I’m so sorry for that. I know we followed our policies, which was the five days bereavement. That does not feel like enough. When you came back to work, we had a couple conversations that said this in this. I’m hearing you say now that you wish we would’ve shared EAP with you, and you know what, I wish we would’ve too. Is there anything else within this that is important for me to know so that we can come up with some sort of a resolution?”
Absolutely. I would feel good about that, Traci.
This is a coaching tool. We’re creating the presence. Zander, you are the only person in front of me right now, and I’m creating the space to really hear what you have to say and allow you to take all the things in your head and lay it out. I’m not a therapist but we’re using that tool for you to feel heard and to truly be heard so that we can get to an outcome, which is that we have productive employees.
I’m going to notice what isn’t being said. So often it’s in between the lines and the repeating back allows us to start to fill in the gaps of what’s not being said, which was essentially, “It would’ve been really nice for you to provide that tool to me and exactly where to go, and a name or two of therapists that I could have talked to during those five days when I was on bereavement leave.” Is that correct?
So often it’s in between the lines and the repeating back allows us to start to fill in the gaps of what’s not being said.
Yeah, or when I got back to work, I need help accessing this, even though yes, I’m supposed to do it, but I’m unable to do that. I want to access it, but I need some help right now because it’s overwhelming for me.
Now I might say, “Zander, do you still want some support accessing EAP?”
Yeah. That would’ve great.
Let’s go through and do that.
I think it’s important for managers and HR to have a good understanding of grief and how grief works. I wrote some books on sibling loss, and people will call me up and go, “My friend’s sister just passed away yesterday. Where can I get the book?” I’m delighted that you want the book but now is not the time. They’re not ready for my book. They need like three months at a minimum. Usually, 3 to 6 months is when they’ll be ready to read the book. One day after is not the time.
Accessing EAP is awesome, but it may not be the moment they get back from bereavement leave because they may still be processing the loss themself and they’re not ready to talk about it. Understanding how grief works is so important to give the support that your employees need. Ultimately, my goal is help companies to get their employees back to being the productive person that they are and that the company wants and needs.
The Power Of Follow-Up: Ensuring Ongoing Support And Employee Well-being
Yeah. For sure. I’d love to add something in here and get your perspective on it. That is offering things and letting the employee make the decision on when to use it. It may be we’re going to offer it the first day you come back from bereavement leave to ensure that you’re aware of it because someone may want it right then. For me, I needed it. Granted, a completely different situation, yet I do think it’s important that we ask the questions and let employees make their own decisions, and then there is a cadence of bringing things up and not a one and done.
It’s important that we ask the questions and let employees make their own decisions.
I was going to say, not a one and done. I might say, “Not today, but hopefully you, as HR, you as a manager, maybe you put something on your calendar that a month from now, ask Zande. A follow up is really important because I may have totally been so subsumed in whatever my personal trauma is that I forgot that I can access this, but you coming back and going, “Can we support you now?” That would’ve been awesome.
This is also where it comes into, we’re making agreements on what those next steps are. There’s an and both here and the and both is while you’re working, do you still need to be somewhat productive? Yes. However, can we determine what that is? We’re in a season of life that’s probably going to produce a lower level of productivity than other seasons. Guess what? We’re going to have that, but it does not negate or make it so you just don’t have to perform, or you can just be there but not at all present and not performing.
That’s a really important line that comes with some great definitions and boundaries in collaboration. I just want to name that because it’s something that comes up quite frequently and there is a way to hold someone while still having clear expectations about the outcomes that need to happen because they are still at work.
Traci, this has been an awesome conversation. I appreciate all the knowledge that you’ve shared, and if people want to find you, get ahold of you, their company needs your help, how can they find you?
Yeah, absolutely. I also have a podcast called the People Strategy Podcast. You can find us on all of the podcast platforms. We’re also on LinkedIn, so Traci Austin on LinkedIn with Elevated Talent Consulting.
Awesome. Traci, thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you, Zander.
As always, I want to remind people that if you are ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. Remember, epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
About Traci Austin
Traci Austin, MPA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, ACC, is a transformational leadership strategist and the Founder and Chief Talent Officer of Elevated Talent Consulting. She is the authority on HR and leadership for the trades, helping construction and skilled trades businesses build high-performing teams and develop the next generation of trade leaders.
With over 20 years of experience in HR leadership and workforce development, Traci has made it her mission to fix the leadership gap in the trades. She partners with business owners, project managers, and field leaders to tackle their biggest hiring, retention, and training challenges – equipping them with the tools to lead with confidence, build engaged teams, and create workplaces where people want to stay.