Addressing Workplace Factors ()

Speaker 1
- Welcome, and thank you for joining us as we discuss Addressing Workplace Factors, the second in a four-part series of Going Beyond the Assessment for workplace mental health programs. I am Sue Freeman, your moderator for today. A few words about CCOHS. We are Canada's national resource for the advancement of workplace health and safety.
- For more than 40 years, CCOHS has promoted the physical and psychological health, safety and total well-being of workers. And now to introduce you to Lin Yu here to speak with us today. Lin is a health and safety specialist at the Canadian Centre and is a Canadian Mental Health Association certified psychological health and safety advisor. Welcome, Lin.
Speaker 2
- Thank you, Sue It's great to be here today.
- So let us begin.
- So today we are going to discuss workplace psychosocial factors and related hazards and risks, what they are and how you can address them to help support your healthy workplace. If you attended our first event in this series of webinars back in November 2023, you may recall that one of the four quadrants of a healthy workplace is supporting the psychosocial aspects of work. And on screen, we can see that at the bottom left quadrant of the diagram. What this means is paying attention to organizational culture and how work is organized. Now, as a reminder, each quadrant of a healthy workplace is not a distinct or separate area. They overlap with each other and should be addressed as integrating parts of a whole.
- So today we will delve deeper into this quadrant to talk about the psychosocial factors that help us conceptualize the many areas within a psychologically healthy and safe workplace. We'll also discuss how to approach addressing any psychosocial hazards using control measures. Well, first talk about the factors and controls in a more general sense, and then examine a few examples diving more deeply into both.
- So, let's first talk about psychosocial factors. What are they? What do they describe? And why do we use them? Psychosocial factors describe how an organization manages work, how they communicate decisions and expectations, as well as how they provide space for workers to provide feedback or input. Psychosocial factors are in themselves neutral, but depending on how they are in the workplace, they can exert a positive or negative influence on everyone's mental health.
- When a psychosocial factor is negatively affecting worker mental health, we can call that a psychosocial hazard. Now there isn't an exhaustive list of psychosocial factors, so every psychosocial factor that can affect mental health in the workplace, but there are national and international standards that can provide guidance. For example, in Canada we have the CSA standard Z1003 which is called Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace.
- This standard names 13 psychosocial factors, or psychosocial risk factors, that can affect mental health at work. We have balance at the very top describing the need for healthy work-life balance as well as civility and respect when we interact with each other, as well as clear leadership and expectations, worker engagement with the organization, as well as with their work, and growth and development of each individual within their workplace and in their career, involvement and influence of individuals over decisions that can affect how they do their work, as well as organizational culture – whether we have a culture of trust and support. There's also the protection of physical safety, such as against hazards like musculoskeletal stresses or hazardous chemicals or machines that could be hazardous if improperly guarded. We also have psychological competencies and demands, and whether our competencies match up with the demands of our roles.
- There's psychological protection and psychological and social support, recognition and reward of a job well done, and whether we have healthy strategies to manage our workload.
- There are similar approaches from other areas of the world as well, like the European Union, the United Kingdom or Australia, just to name a few. For example, there is the international ISO standard 45003, which is called Psychological Health and Safety at Work Guidelines for Managing Psychosocial Risks. This standard contains 21 psychosocial factors organized into three categories.
- The first category is aspects of how work is organized, second category social factors at work, and the third category is work environments, equipment and hazardous tasks. Many factors in the ISO standard are similar to ones in the Canadian CSA standard, such as leadership recognition and reward. There are also a few that I found very interesting, such as remote and isolated work, job security and precarious work, and unstable environments such as conflict zones.
- All the factors will affect every workplace to a greater or lesser degree. And workplaces can consult either or both standards to help structure their own psychosocial risk management program. So now that we've talked about the psychosocial factors, let's go into how do we assess the factors in order to identify psychosocial hazards.
- Assessing the state of psychosocial factors can take many forms. And let's discuss some of those options.
- Common methods for identifying psychosocial hazards can include reviewing internal data. For example, you can look at your collection of incident reports, your complaints, absenteeism, records, as well as turnover rates. And if applicable, you can also look at any mental health injury compensation claims that have happened in the past.
- You can also audit existing structures within your organization.
- For example, are there any available cognitive demands analyses for different roles or different departments within your organization? Do you have policies related to the psychosocial area of health and safety? What about looking at your management practices and training programs – are there any relevant areas in those structures?
- You can also gather feedback. And feedback can be gathered in many different ways, like through group discussions, whether that's a specific time set aside to discuss how everyone's perception of psychological health and safety is going in their workplace, or generating discussion in regularly scheduled meetings like departmental meetings, tailgate talks, or team meetings.
- You can also use anonymous feedback forms to encourage more feedback because everyone feels more protected when they are anonymous. You can use surveys as well as just through everyday individual conversation.
- There are pros and cons to every assessment method, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach. What you should do is take a look at your organization and use the best method that makes sense for you. It's also a great idea to ask for your health and safety committee’s help. The committee has a great ability and duty to inspect the workplace and listen to concerns that are reported to them from the staff members.
- Because of these duties, they might have heard of concerns regarding psychological health and safety in the recent past that could be useful for your assessment. It's also a good idea to use more than one assessment method. This not only can help survey fatigue but can also encourage more participation in the assessment activities.
- And we can see today's handout for more resources and tools that can be used for assessing and addressing workplace psychosocial hazards. There are many great tools and resources in there. Now that we've talked more generally about assessing psychosocial factors in order to identify psychosocial hazards, let's talk about once we have identified what areas could use improvement, what can we do to approach addressing those areas or what control measures can we consider.
- So, determining effective and practical controls may be challenging and require some creativity, especially when it comes to psychosocial hazards. But the goal of control measures at the end of the day is to address workplace factors that might be negatively influencing individual mental health and well-being. Now, when we think about control measures, we should always keep in mind the hierarchy of controls.
- Control measures should always follow the same hierarchy, where interventions addressing the source of the hazard are prioritized over individual protections for specific workers. And this is also true of psychosocial hazards or psychological control measures. This approach means prioritizing control measures that can affect the whole organization, instead of only targeting individuals. Now, most of the controls for psychosocial hazards will likely be administrative in nature, and these can include policies, procedures, programs, training, etc.
- The administrative control category can then be further divided into organizational controls at the source. For example, changing organizational culture, updating our programs and policies or training programs. And there's also individual administrative controls at the worker level, such as well-being activities or personal stress management training, personal resiliency training.
- We can also think about prevention as layers. The layers of prevention can and should be used together. The primary prevention focuses on preventing mental health issues before they occur. Secondary prevention focuses on early detection of issues and prompt intervention to prevent harm. Tertiary prevention focuses on recovery after the harm has happened and preventing any further complications. Organizations should prioritize primary prevention strategies such as training psychologically safe leaders, coaching employees on navigating conflicting opinions, or, ensuring that psychosocial hazard prevention is integrated into work planning and work management.
- Then we can consider secondary preventions, which can include mental health first-aid training or modified work to accommodate individuals. And there is also tertiary prevention training, for example, that could be provided through your employee assistance program or other forms of short-term counseling.
- When we're thinking about controlling psychosocial hazards, our health and safety committee is also an important asset. And they should be consulted through the throughout the implementation of any health and safety related programs, including any that addresses psychosocial hazards. Their ability to bring forward recommendations to the employer can really help you move your control measures forward, or any strategies or initiatives.
- The committee should also be trained to identify risk factors or psychosocial risk factors and participate in reporting and monitor monitoring psychosocial risks. When you're thinking about creating and implementing control measures, it's also very important to designate responsibility. Whichever type of control your organization chooses, make sure to be specific in how it's going to be executed. Choose the person or group that will be responsible for the design, as well as the implementation of the control measure and create a timeline outlining all the due dates for each component of your initiative.
- It's also important to make sure that everyone understands the purpose of your initiative, how it will be implemented, and how it will be monitored and evaluated. And this is why communication is so important. Everyone is more likely to participate in initiatives that they understand. So, talk about the control measures and provide updates during worker orientations or events like staff or team meetings.
- Make sure everyone knows what you want to do, why you want to do it, and how it's going. That way, you can get everyone on board with your improvement process.
- When we've determined what control we want to put out and we are starting to do it, when we're designing that control, it's very important to also determine how we are going to evaluate the effectiveness of our initiative. A successful evaluation includes deciding what are we going to measure, how and when will we measure them, as well as analyzing and sharing your results with everyone and celebrating any successes, and then making decisions about what you're going to do next.
- Patience and consistency are key to an effective psychological health and safety strategy. It's a long-term process. It's a marathon, not a sprint. You can address all the hazards that you identified or focus on one or a few of them at a time, and then focus on more when you are able. Sometimes actions to address one psychosocial hazard can also improve other psychosocial factors because they all relate to each other.
- As with implementing any health and safety controls, be very careful that the control measures do not create any new hazards. So, what you can do is take a critical lens and scrutinize every part of your initiative and determine if there's anywhere where there could be potentially new hazards.
- So, now that we've talked about identifying psychosocial hazards and controlling psychosocial hazards in a more general sense, let's dive into a few examples looking at a few specific psychosocial factors, and talk about actionable strategies that can be used to address them.
- So, the first psychosocial factor we have is balance. Work-life balance is a state of well-being that allows a person to effectively manage multiple responsibilities at work, at home, and in their community. Everyone has multiple roles. For example, we are employees. We can also be parents or partners or children to our parents, etc. These multiple roles can be enriching and fulfilling, but when work and other responsibilities outside of work conflict with each other, we can start to feel stressed and overwhelmed.
- Recognizing the need for a healthy work life balance can help employees feel more valued and happy, both at home and at work. And this can also reduce stress and the possibility that home issues could spill over into work or the other way around. Having work-life balance also allows everyone to maintain their concentration, confidence, responsibility, and a sense of control at work.
- When the roles within the workplace and outside of it are overwhelming to a person, or if they are interfering with one another, then health and well-being are undermined by accumulating stress at work and at home. Now, not all employees will have the same work-life balance issues. Many factors come into this like our age, our culture, our gender, our family and marital status, any caregiving demands that we might have, our socioeconomic status and many other factors. These can all affect how and what we need in order to achieve healthy work-life balance.
- So, what can we do to move towards supporting work, healthy work-life balance? What leaders can do is make sure their message about work-life balance is consistent with the behaviours and expectations that they demonstrate, such as taking entitled breaks and earned vacation time. You know, if the leader is encouraging everyone to do that, then are they also taking their entitled breaks and vacation time as well? Because what you do can signal louder than what you say. And whether, you know, there is encouragement to have a clear break between work time and off time. For example, let's look at that legislation in Ontario where it legislates the right to disconnect outside of work time.
- Another good strategy is to make sure there is enough coverage. Know who is going to be away and when, and prioritize addressing staffing and scheduling challenges. These can really help to support healthy work-life balance.
- It's also a good strategy to tackle any entrenched workplace culture that might be negatively impacting work-life balance. For example, in industries where it's the expectation where the worker will basically live for work, or they are expected to work long hours or be called in for shifts without thinking about work-life balance. We can also make sure that our managers and supervisors have the necessary communication and interpersonal skills in order to foster trust within their team, so that everyone feels safe to bring forward challenges that they are feeling in their work-life balance. Because only if the concerns are brought forward then can we move forward towards creating, strategies to resolve them.
- Organizations would also benefit from having flexible arrangements to address any work-life balance issues. Of course, that flexibility would have to depend on what is possible within that workplace or within that industry.
- Now let's look at a specific example, supporting our working caregivers. We want to support working caregivers so they can stay productive while also meeting the needs of the individuals that they're caring for. Statistics Canada's November 2023 report called Canada's Care Economy: A conceptual Framework noted that there are many working individuals in our country that are currently supporting one or more individuals outside of work in a caring capacity, and that number is just going to increase as we keep going.
- And what is caregiver in this context mean? An individual can be considered a carer if they provide unpaid care or assistance to a child, a relative, a close friend or a partner. And these individuals might need help because of physical, mental or cognitive conditions. So, if you if there is someone at work who is also providing care outside of work to someone else, what workplaces can do is offer flexible scheduling when it's possible, and if it's possible also offer remote work arrangements if it makes sense for the work that is being done, as well as the industry that it’s in.
- You can also plan for situations where employees need to suddenly leave or not be able to attend work. For example, make sure that the work this employee is doing, they are not the only one that knows how to do this work. So, someone else can cover for them when there is an emergency. It's also very important to manage co-worker concerns and reactions, but also balance this with respecting this working caregiver's privacy.
- So what you can do is provide as much information as this employee is comfortable with, and let their co-workers know that because of situations outside of work, they might need to suddenly leave, or they might need to work outside of regular work hours -- to let them know that the leader supports this working caregiver can help their co-workers also support them and get on board.
- You can tell the person who is also a caregiver themselves about any available resources, such as through your organization's employee assistance program, your benefits, or any health healthy workplace programs. And have regular check-ins with this individual to have a discussion on how well is your current arrangement going and where can it be adjusted to improve – to make this arrangement even better.
- So, let's talk about another psychosocial factor. Clear leadership and expectations. So, in a workplace where there is effective leadership and expectations, employees are supported to know what they need to do, how their work contributes to the organization, and whether there are upcoming changes that might affect their role or their work. Effective leadership increases employee morale, resiliency, and trust, and decreases frustration and conflict.
- And good leadership can also result in employees with higher engagement with their work and pride in their work and their organization.
- Effective leadership maintains a broader strategic view. What this means is focusing not only on producing outcomes, but also paying attention to interpersonal dynamics within their team, between their team and other areas of the organization, and prioritizing getting to know their team members.
- When we're talking about leadership and expectations we do have to mention middle managers. They are in a unique position where they must be leaders and be led at the same time. These two different roles can lead to the feeling of powerlessness and stress, if not managed well. So, it's very important for leaders who lead middle managers to clearly communicate expectations and invite the middle managers to ask questions in order to gain clarification that's needed for them to effectively lead their own team.
- When we're thinking about actionable strategies to help build clear leadership and expectations, we can encourage or equip leaders with the skills to communicate clearly expectations for different tasks and assignments, including the amount of effort that is expected, and the amount of time that it should take. Leaders can also help employees prioritize tasks, especially when there are multiple things on their table with competing deadlines.
- Leaders should also be coached to provide timely and detailed feedback on performance of their team members, and engage their team members in creating solutions to any problem areas that are identified. And then we come back to this idea of fostering trust and building relationships again. What this means is we need to equip our leaders with the skills to foster trust so that their team members feel safe to bring forward questions and concerns about what they are assigned to do.
- If the relationship is not there, and if the trust is not there, if someone is assigned a task where there are parts that are a little bit unclear, they might not feel as comfortable bringing it up to their direct manager.
- At the same time, a leader who demonstrates a commitment to maintaining their own physical and psychosocial health can also positively influence their team. This is kind of the idea of walking the talk. So, not only encouraging your team’s to develop these habits, but also demonstrate them through your own commitment to adopting these habits.
- Now let’s look at an example of improving leadership in education. So, when we think about educational institutions, leaders within these workplaces have to juggle multiple responsibilities from building connections with their students and the community beyond, to implementing decisions from their school boards or their provincial or territorial government. Teachers within educational institutions might also not have a lot of time between teaching, building relationships with their students, and creating lesson plans and grading tests and papers.
- So, what this means is that staff members and leaders might not get to spend a lot of time with each other, so it's even more important to communicate effectively and build trusting relationships.
- In situations like this, it's important to make sure instructions and expectations are communicated clearly and concisely. Build those lines of communication, whether through email, instant messaging or other workplace software, or even in person if you can get it, where teachers can ask for clarification. They are encouraged to ask for clarification and, when they do, respond with support and the information that they need.
- Building these supportive relationships will encourage everyone to ask questions without fearing humiliation or punishment. At the end of the day, that is better for everyone because with clear communication and clear information, work can be done in a timely fashion when they need to be done. Workplaces can help leaders gain these skills by creating peer networks to share strategies, or even encourage peer coaching.
- So, the next psychosocial factor we will talk about is civility and respect. So, in a civil and respectful workplace, everyone is respectful and considerate in their interactions with one another and with customers, clients and the public. Civility and respect is based on showing esteem, care and consideration for others and acknowledging everyone's dignity. A civil and respectful workplace is related to greater job satisfaction, greater perceptions of fairness, improved morale, better teamwork, and greater engagement in problem resolution.
- A respectful workplace also allows people to enjoy the environment that they are in, whether they are staff, clients or customers.
- Disrespectful behaviour and incivility, on the other hand, can lead to conflict, emotional exhaustion, decreased engagement, and decreased job satisfaction, as well as open the organization to the possibility of grievances and legal risks. One example of disrespectful behaviour is bullying. Bullying not only affects those directly involved, but also can affect bystanders because they also experience higher stress levels.
- A number of provinces and territories currently have legislation to address this type of behaviour. They can be found under headings of bullying and harassment prevention or harassment and violence prevention. So, what can we do to ensure a civil and respectful work environment? One thing you can do is clearly state your zero-tolerance policy on unacceptable behaviours.
- In this policy, list out the unaccepted behaviours within your organization and list out clearly the consequences for those who exhibit these behaviours. You can also equip everyone with their skills for resolving conflicts while also maintaining everyone's dignity. This skill is great for everyone to have, but also especially great for leaders, because not only will they need to manage conflicts between themselves and others, they might have to manage conflict between their direct reports.
- Along a similar idea, you can also equip everyone with skills on how to discuss different opinions in a respectful way, or how to voice your concerns without offending others or compromising your own value. Developing team agreement is a great strategy because it gives you an opportunity to discuss what does civility and respect look like in our workplace.
- Different industries or different workplaces could have different cultures just based on the type of work that is performed. So, what makes sense for, let's say, an office environment might not make sense for a customer facing environment. So, developing what your workplace or all the people that make up your workplace agree to mean acceptable behaviour is an important foundation for building up a civil and respectful workplace.
- You can also encourage everyone to back each other up and speak up, and also put in the structures to support them in backing each other up and speaking up. For example, putting in your civility and respect policy that if individuals witnessed disrespectful behavior and reported it, they will not be penalized. And making sure that every time someone reports an incident that they are supported and not punished for reporting.
- We can also once again equip leaders with the necessary skills to foster trust because if their team members feel safe to report disrespectful behaviours that they experienced or witnessed, then we have more information to help us build, to improve how respectful our workplace is. And all of these skills not only can be provided through training, but also through other forms, such as coaching or mentoring, because sometimes information coming from your peer is more powerful than information coming from someone that you are not familiar with.
- Now let's take a look at an example to do with civility and respect, handling disrespectful clients. I'm sure we've all heard of at least one story when workers in a customer-facing role are confronted with disrespectful behaviour. Organizations that work with members of the public like customers, clients, patients, students, or parents, often have limited control over their clients’ behaviour.
- However, these workplaces can promote civility and respect by establishing and enforcing expectations for interactions at their workplace. For example, a visitor's code of conduct or a standard of respect. Not only should you establish these expectations, but also post them in a visible area where your clients will occupy so that they can clearly see what behaviours are encouraged and what behaviours are not accepted.
- If the posting of a code of conduct is maybe a bit too formal for your workplace, you can try posting a more casual message to remind clients or customers of respectful behaviours like, “help us keep this place respectful and kind” – something simple and straightforward like that. We can also establish a clear protocol for handling rude and disrespect disrespectful behaviour, including when employees should get their manager or supervisor involved – i.e. escalate to their leader.
- And communicate to your employees that their employer and their leader will support them when faced with disrespect for behaviour, not only tell them this, but back up your message with actions. When they are faced with disrespectful behaviour coaching is also very important. We can coach employees on how they can support or back up each other when faced with challenging behaviours from the public.
- Maybe in team-building events, you can play out scenarios of facing disrespectful behaviour and what you can do to de-escalate the situation or escalate it to your direct manager. You can even, more specifically, develop templates that everyone can use. Because sometimes when we are faced with disrespectful behaviour, we might feel like a deer in headlights and have trouble coming up with words that we can use.
- So, for example, you can have a template like if you continue this disrespectful behaviour, I will not be able to provide the service you are seeking. Or if you do not stop this disrespectful behaviour, I will need to end this conversation, this call or this meeting. This way, employees know what they are expected to do when they are dealing with disrespectful behaviour.
- And they know that if they follow the procedure, they will not be penalized or punished, which is so important. We can coach work workplace leaders to recognize and show appreciation for everyone's contributions, including how well they handled uncivil behaviours from clients or customers, and sometimes even just actively recognizing that it's not easy to deal with disrespectful behaviour can help alleviate the harm that is taken in when you are dealing with a disrespectful customer.
- So, as we wrap up today, I want to reflect on healthy workplaces and what key questions we can ask ourselves and our organization. One could be, have we put this decision or these options through the psychological health and safety lens, or the people lens? What does putting those decisions and options through this lens mean? Have I considered how this would affect people's mental health?
- Another question we can ask is do we agree on what a psychologically healthy and safe workplace looks like? What structures does it require? What behaviours can bring us closer to that ideal? And how can we hold each other accountable? And another question is, have we embedded psychosocial safety into the way that business is done every single day?
- For example, is it considered in our recruiting procedures, our promotion policies, or our discipline policies? Because the ultimate goal for psychological health and safety is to consider the people effect in every aspect of how business is done. Thank you everyone.
Speaker 1
- Rejoining you Lin and thank you. I really appreciated you addressing workplace factors and what practical ideas we can use to ensure that our prevention programs include mental health and well-being, content and activities. And we thank everyone for staying with us. We look forward to seeing you again soon. Stay safe and bye for now.

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Addressing Workplace Factors ()

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