Committee Chairperson: Harold W. Stubblefield Adult Education and Human Resources (ABSTRACT)Employees who have had a traumatic life experience (TLE) and are returning to the workplace face a difficult road to recovery. The workplace as it exists today is not well equipped to handle such individuals. Managers and co-workers lack knowledge of a recovery framework to facilitate and support the survivor-employee's re-entry.This research addressed the development of a cost-free short-term adult educational intervention called Study Circles to assist both managers and co-workers in understanding the dynamics of recovery for individuals after a traumatic life experience (TLE). Herman's (1992) three stage recovery process is used as a model for the Study Circle intervention: (1) Establishing a safety net, (2) Telling the trauma story and (3) Reconnecting the individual back to the work community. As an educational intervention, this Study Circle is designed to complement any individual or psychotherapeutic intervention for TLE survivors.This research considered these questions: (1) How can Study Circles be designed and used to engage managers in a discussion of the problems of returning TLEs? (2) How can Study Each Study Circle program consisted of three sessions where participants, managers and returning TLEs, engaged in open dialogue and discussed questions pertaining to creating a "safety net", "telling the trauma story" and "reconnecting the employee to the workplace." Each session provided insights to the participants on the issues and concerns managers may have in "welcoming" a returning TLE to the workplace, along with feedback from returning TLEs on the expectations they have of managers and the organization. These sessions provided an opportunity to explore uncharted territory in the organization, that of bringing a sensitive topic to the workplace and openly talking about its effect on management and its employees.Both Study Circle groups were different. Group A was homogeneous and shared more feelings and suggested that the organization needed "guidelines to assist managers" in their task.On the other hand, group B managers did not share their stories or experiences with the group, but encouraged the organization to focus on training its managers to "communicate" better and Both groups created their own group culture engaging not only in the session's topic but other pertinent issues relative to manager/employee concerns such as acknowledging differences (each TLE will be different), communicating more openly, and recognizing performance issues when the TLE returns to the workplace.It was concluded that to appropriately welcome a returning TLE employee, managers did not need to have previous experience in dealing with a returning TLE. Their success in this depended on the individual and his/her career experience, how comfortable they felt in engaging the returning TLE, and the managers own personal experience with trauma.Although the Study Circle format has been extensively used in community meetings, church ...

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