Scheduled maintenance - Thursday, July 12 at 5:00 PM
EDT
We expect this update to take about an hour. Access to this website
will be unavailable during this time.
Search
Healthy Workplaces (Transcript)
CCOHS YouTube video transcript
Speaker 1
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us as we discuss healthy workplaces – the first 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. We do this by collaborating and engaging stakeholders and providing information, education, tools and solutions that will help prevent work-related injury and illness to improve the lives 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 for Occupational Health and Safety and a Canadian Mental Health Association certified psychological health and safety advisor.
She has created many educational and reference materials on workplace mental health and is excited to share and learn with everyone. Welcome and thank you for joining us today, Lin.
Speaker 2
Thank you, Sue. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1
Lin, as we discuss healthy workplaces in the context of mental health at work, what does this mean?
Speaker 2
Well, first, I'd like to zoom out to the title of this series, Beyond the Assessment. Now, we know that there are many assessment tools available right now looking at how the workplace is doing in terms of its psychological health and safety. For example, as part of the partnership work that we do, CCOHS hosts, promotes and provides client and technical support for several such tools, including Guarding Minds at Work, Psychologically Safe Leader and Team Assessments, as well as Stress Assess.
And we will talk about and highlight these assessments and other resources later on in our discussion. Now, coming back to that assessment aspect and keeping that in mind in this four-part series, we want to branch out and discuss other aspects of maintaining and creating a healthy workplace.
Today we will step back and consider why are we assessing? The answer to that question may differ from workplace to workplace, but there are also a lot of commonalities. We are assessing because we want to make sure that workers and workplaces are safe from all hazards, both physical and psychosocial. Essentially, we want to prevent all hazards wherever possible and ensure the overall well-being of our workforce.
Speaker 1
Thank you, Lin. Those are great goals. However, workplaces could find these goals a bit overwhelming to address. How can we approach these goals in such a way that can lead to practical actions?
Speaker 2
We can think about the building blocks of a healthy workplace as divided into four quadrants or four channels of influence in the workplace. So, looking at the diagram that we have on the screen here. One of the quadrants is occupational health and safety where we protect the physical work environment. Another one is the psychosocial health and safety quadrant where we support the psychosocial work environment.
The third one we have is the workplace health promotion quadrant where access is provided to personal health resources. And the fourth is the organizational community involvement, where we encourage organizations to engage with their local community. Now it's important to note that these four quadrants are not distinct or separate areas. They overlap with each other and should be addressed as integrating parts of the whole.
Speaker 1
So Lin, what can protecting the physical work environments look like?
Speaker 2
Well, in terms of occupational health and safety, this means we're focusing on addressing the hazards and risks that exist in the physical in order to prevent or minimize illnesses and injuries. For example, we can make sure that tools and equipment are regularly maintained and well inspected in order to prevent any incidents and injuries. This could also look like creating an appropriate work-rest schedule for working in extreme heat environments to prevent heat-related illnesses such as heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
Now, we mentioned earlier that the quadrants overlap. Reducing physical hazards in the work environment helps to reduce the mental load that all workers experience, because they don't have to think about whether their physical safety will be compromised. So that dovetails with reducing mental stress in the workplace.
Speaker 1
So Lin, what can supporting the psychosocial aspects of work now look like?
Speaker 2
Well, the psychosocial aspect of the work environment can be thought of in two broad areas. One is the organizational culture and the other is how work is organized. Organizational culture can be defined as the attitudes, values, and beliefs that guide workplace behaviours and influence the work environment every day. Organizational culture generally focuses on the interactions between people, the work, and the organization.
For example, some of the factors in organizational culture can be respect, honesty, and trust between colleagues, fairness in how everyone is treated, appreciation and recognition of work, and support for work life balance. Then you have organization of work which covers the way work is designed and managed. For example, work demand, or quality and quantity of communication about work, control and influence over how the work is to be performed.
Clarity of role and expectations, as well as whether there are any opportunities for growth. When these factors are absent or poorly managed within the workplace, they can become a source of stress for everyone. For example, workplaces should consider the impact on people when they are going through workplace change and put in strategies and initiatives to try to mitigate any negative effects.
And when managers are assigning work or tasks, it's very good to clearly communicate their expectations and priorities and make sure that the worker has the information, resources and support that they need in order to complete their task. Returning to that idea of the overlapping quadrants, stress experienced from workplace psychosocial hazards can also increase the risk of experiencing a physical injury.
So that goes back to the previous quadrant that we just talked about.
Speaker 1
Now what can accessing personal health resources look like?
Speaker 2
This quadrant can also be called health and wellness promotion, which might be a term that we are more familiar with. Health promotion programs generally provide a proactive approach to healthy living and cover a broad range of topics like active living, healthy eating, or individual mental health support. To clarify a little bit more, the previous quadrant that we talked about, where psychosocial factors cover the aspects of the workplace that influence everyone's mental health, this quadrant, the health promotion aspect, focuses on individual strategies for maintaining good health and building resiliency.
So, for example, your health promotion program can include providing access to individual mental health support, such as through an employee assistance program or EAP. This program can also include making educational materials available for everyone to improve their interpersonal communication skills, or to improve their conflict management skills.
And going back to that overlapping quadrants idea, as I alluded to earlier, individual health and resiliency and a positive psychosocial environment work together to create the well-being of the overall organization.
Speaker 1
Now we move on to what can involving communities and enterprises look like?
Speaker 2
Well, when we're thinking about involving communities and enterprises that can look a variety of ways. For example, volunteering or fundraising or even creating a collection drive for essential goods and items such as food and clothing. Corporate involvement in the community helps organizations engage with their workforce on a different level that's outside the traditional workplace structure.
Not only do these provide an opportunity for folks to connect with their community, they can also improve worker engagement as well as workforce morale. What leaders or designated teams can do is find out what causes are important to their workers, and this can be done through an informal consultation or a formal survey. And once their interests are gathered, then you can start planning the activities in order to engage the community.
For example, the workplace can either find or create volunteering opportunities for your team or your organization to share their expertise with a local charity, such as helping them build their website or helping them with their financial reporting. You can also create a collection drive for a local cause that's either relevant to the organization's line of work or that's relevant to your workforce.
And coming back to the overlapping quadrants, a healthier workforce has more capacity to help their community. And a better community also ripples back into the workplace to create a better organization.
Speaker 1
Thanks, Lin. And let's reflect again on healthy workplaces and, overall, what are some steps that organizations can take to build or improve on their healthy workplace programs?
Speaker 2
That's a great question. So, one way we can address the four quadrants that we just talked about is by creating a comprehensive workplace health and safety program. What does this mean? This program is generally a coordinated strategy with relevant activities as well as workplace policies. And it's generally developed by the employer, but in consultation with employees. And the program is meant to help workplaces continually improve and maintain the quality of their working life, as well as the well-being of the workforce.
Steps for creating such a program should be tailored to each workforce. A larger program might be, more appropriate for a big organization with multiple branches, whereas a less complex program might be better for a smaller organization. Some of the general steps that you can take to create such a program include, first, obtaining leadership support for your program, then getting the staff involved, whether that's through a formal committee or through informal consultation.
Then you can find out or revisit where the risks and hazards are, as well as where the community involvement interests are. Then create a plan to address these issues that you've identified, as well as the interests on how to involve the community. It's really important to include in your plan the aspect of evaluating how you are doing.
And once you have the plan in place, you should then confirm management support for your plan again. Then once you’ve got the green light, go ahead and implement your plan with its strategies, control measures or initiatives. And it's always important to evaluate how your plan is doing and continuously improve your plan as you go based on your evaluation results.
Speaker 1
Now we're going to discuss some practical approaches to healthy workplaces, including roles and responsibilities. Lin, can you describe for us who is involved in creating a healthy workplace?
Speaker 2
Sue, this is my favourite question because the answer is everyone. Everyone plays a role. For example, employers are responsible for identifying potential workplace psychosocial hazards and addressing them through improving management practices, communication systems, and participation structures. At the same time, workers also have a responsibility to follow their organizations policies and participate in hazard identification activities and provide feedback as well as communicate any difficulties that they are experiencing.
It's also necessary and beneficial to engage your workplace health and safety committee or your health and safety representative, as we all have a shared responsibility for comprehensive workplace health and safety. Now, there is no one right way to create a healthy workplace, because every workplace is different from the people doing the work to the work that needs to be done, to the leaders that are running the organization, to the size of the organization, as well as the external environments that influence the community, as well as the external resources that are available to the organization.
All of these factors have a role to play in influencing workplace mental health and well-being. It's okay not to be able to do everything all at once when time and resources are limited. Workplaces can start small and build towards overall prevention and promotion.
Starting small could look like adding your organization's commitment to psychological health and safety to your overall health and safety policy, or training leaders on how to lead in a psychologically healthy and safe way. Starting small can also look like gathering feedback from everyone, through your regular meetings and gatherings, on what the leader can do to better support their team or what information or what resources the team needs in order to complete their work.
More on that topic will be discussed in our third event in February.
Speaker 1
Thanks for that future state, Lin. Let's also take a look at things that ensure a psychologically safe and healthy work environment, so, here are some examples where you might be encouraging everyone to share and receive different opinions and suggestions to help create a psychologically safe workplace and foster teamwork.
So, these resources can be found in our Healthy Minds portal. They're promotional devices that you can use in your workplace. And also the other example we have here, you might already be encouraging everyone to be respectful and considerate when interacting with each other to help build stability and respect and kindness and empathy. And these are cornerstones of trusting, functional team member interactions. And you can see here a couple of other examples we've provided.
I feel comfortable to speak up. We take action against violence and harassment. So, these are whether it's work-related, interpersonal, whatever the type of issue it is, it's a safe space that you're signaling to people to discuss these matters with their management, health and safety committee representation or, where applicable, union representation as well. So, consider how that consistent application of harassment and violence prevention would impact your organization.
Just one of the factors that will be discussed, as Lin was saying, in future webinars that we'll be hosting.
Speaker 2
Now, I know that sometimes it can feel like there's not enough time or resources to transform our enthusiasm into action, but protecting psychological health and safety and promoting workplace psychosocial wellbeing is a continuous process, and starting small is OK. The key is to be persistent with your journey towards a goal and to persevere. Persevere through the process and, what I really like is, have patience because this change will not happen in a day, in a week, or a month, but if we keep at it, we will see improvements.
So, as we mentioned earlier, if you do want to have more information about psychological health and safety assessment tools, please take a look on our screen right now. These are some of the tools that CCOHS offers through our Mental Health at Work portal. And each of these tools measure health and safety psychological health and safety at work, but at different levels.
And there are also educational resources and information available that's outside or beyond the assessment, in case your workplace is not at the stage of conducting an assessment right now. And all of the assessment tools and resources are all available free of charge. So, we see on the screen here that we have the Psychologically Safe Team Assessments.
This is a new tool for leaders to gather team perspectives on belonging, team interactions and leadership support, which are all factors that can impact workplace psychological health and safety. Leaders will receive a report with suggested actions to help them start the conversation to improve the cohesion within their teams, as well as team effectiveness. The Psychologically Safe Leader assessment has been recently updated, and this assessment is intended for leaders to perform a self-evaluation, with the option of also gathering feedback from their team based on their leadership strategies.
And it provides 360-degree feedback for workplace leaders and helps them identify opportunities for growth. The Guarding Minds at Work web tool has also been recently updated, and this tool is intended to assess at the organizational level, by asking for employee perceptions on all the factors that might affect their mental health at work. There is also Stress Assess, which measures personal and organizational psychosocial factors on a variety of dimensions.
And of course, we have web tools tailored to specific communities, as you can see here, with caring for health-care workers and caring for the paramedic community.
Speaker 1
Thank you again, Lin, for an overview of healthy workplaces and examples of what practical steps we can take to ensure mental health is a part of overall health, safety, and well-being programs, activities and practices.
