In his report Tracking the Perfect Legal Storm | PDF, Dr. Martin Shain suggests that changes in labour law, occupational health and safety, employment standards, workers compensation, the contract of employment, tort law, and human rights decisions are all pointing to the need for employers to provide a psychologically safe workplace. In addition, human rights legislation requires a duty to accommodate certain mental health conditions. These questions help review possible exposures to risk or potential for improvement.
- Is employee psychological health and safety part of our organization’s policies?
- Do our workers contribute to psychological health and safety at work?
- Is our management team aware of the legal requirements, regulations, and expectations related to workplace mental health and psychological safety including the National Standard on Psychological Health and Safety (Canadian Standards Association, CSA:Z1003)?
- What is the cost of stress-related illnesses – both physical and mental – to our organization?
- Is there a system in place to measure the rates of absenteeism and presenteeism in our organization? What percentage of these may be related to psychological health and safety issues?
- What percentage of our disability claims do we believe are related to mental health issues or workplace conflict issues?
- Do our policies meet the standards of occupational health and safety, labour law, tort law, contract law? Do they support the psychological health and safety of our workers?
- Are there performance indicators and measurements in place to evaluate how frontline managers impact psychological health and safety of their direct reports?
- Are those whose position includes managing, supervising or supporting employees, sufficiently trained to protect psychological health and safety at work?
- Do our leaders and management identify and respond to conflict in a timely and effective manner?
- Are our leaders and management trained to know the difference between a mental health problem and a performance issue?
- Does our organization have policies and procedures that support work-life balance?
- Do we take action to prevent physical, relational or emotional harassment, bullying or aggression?
- Do we help prevent discrimination by providing employees a basic level of knowledge about inclusion and mental health issues?
- Do we have crisis response policies and processes in place for issues such as suicide, violence, threats of violence or emotional breakdowns at work?
- Do we have a process for open communication between managers, supervisors and employees to help address the needs of co-workers traumatized by personal or work issues?
- Do we have a return-to-work policy that covers emotional, psychological and interpersonal challenges? Does it give union and employee representatives the opportunity to provide input on the return-to-work process?
- Do we know how to reasonably accommodate those with a mental health disability at work?
- What resources in our organization and community exist for employees with mental health issues?
- Are we at risk for complaints about our ability to reasonably accommodate persons with mental or physical disabilities? This includes depression or anxiety-related disorders.
With appreciation to the Workforce Advisory Committee of the Mental Health Commission of Canada for their review of this document.
Additional resources
Legal duty to accommodate. Compare your accommodation policies and procedures to relevant human rights legislation. Links to provincial and territorial human rights requirements and relevant laws in Canada are included.