This is the second blog in a series written by Mary Ann Baynton, Director of Collaboration and Strategy for Workplace Strategies for Mental Health.
A doctor, a lawyer and a social worker
The legend is that in 2009, a doctor, a lawyer, and a social worker met to discuss concerns they were seeing in Canadian workplaces. They were worried about the impact of work stress on employees and employers' confusion on how to eliminate that risk.
I can confirm the legend is true. The doctor was Ian Arnold, an occupational health physician and then chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Workforce Advisory Committee. The lawyer was Martin Shain, an academic lawyer with expertise in workplace law. I was the social worker. At the time, I had over 15 years’ experience in the management consulting world.
In that early conversation, we discussed how to help employers avoid harm to worker mental health. Harm could come from things like harassment, discrimination, unclear expectations and workload stress. These things that had the potential to affect worker well-being were called psychosocial factors. We wanted to make it easier for employers to protect employee well-being while achieving business success.
If employers, unions and employees shared the responsibility to protect psychological health and safety at work, they could also prevent some of the worst impacts on employees. We wanted to create a clear guideline that would help employers see that a psychologically safe workplace was both possible and valuable for business.
Our goal was to improve working lives for all. We drafted an outline of our vision to share at a Consensus Conference held later in 2009. Our hope was to examine all sides of the issue with experts from a variety of fields. We knew we would either leave that day with plans to develop a standard or hear why this wasn't worth pursuing.
After much debate, the experts agreed unanimously to develop a standard. Ian, Martin and I did our best to resist doing a happy dance.
We had a big vision. If we created the standard using specific criteria, we knew we could also one day inspire an international standard. We learned what was required and included it from the start.
Spoiler alert. It happened.
The International Standard Organization (ISO) 45003:2021 Occupational health and safety management — Psychological health and safety at work — Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks launched just eight years later. It is an international standard on psychological health and safety and a giant leap towards this vision. We’ll talk more about this in a future blog.
Getting started
We knew we’d need help to get this right. So, we turned to the pros at Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ) to help us write this pan-Canadian standard.
Originally, what is now The Canada Life Assurance Company, offered to pay for the development of the standard, which was originally under-estimated at $250,000. Their generosity was appreciated, however there was some thought that the Standard would have more credibility if it was supported by the federal government rather than a for-profit corporation. The task of seeking this funding from the government fell to The Honourable Michael Kirby, Chair of the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) and a former Senator. He insisted I call him Mike.
The big day arrived. We learned Mike had secured $325,000 in funding from the Government of Canada. With additional funding from Canada Life and Bell Canada to cover the approximately half million cost, we were ready to begin our work.
With this funding in place, we asked: “Could we develop a standard that would fit into the existing framework for addressing health and safety issues at work?”
And this, my friends, would be the driver for everything that followed.
Watch for next month’s blog where I will share the Who, and Why of What came next.
Explore the History of psychological health and safety and read all of the blogs in this series.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Canada Life or Workplace Strategies for Mental Health.
Additional resources
ISO 45003:2021 Occupational health and safety management — Psychological health and safety at work — Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. Canada’s National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety helped inspire the international standard