This is the eleventh blog in a series written by Mary Ann Baynton, Director of Collaboration and Strategy for Workplace Strategies for Mental Health.
Rethinking mental health
One undeniably good thing about the global pandemic is that it made mental health issues more visible. While mental illness received attention at work as a result of the duty to accommodate, mental health – something everyone manages every day – may have been taken for granted. Everyone was stressed during the pandemic. Burnout levels were high. As a result, topics like resilience and good mental health strategies got more attention. Many employees and leaders prioritized employee well-being, self-care, workload management, social connections and quality of life – all things that contribute to positive workplace mental health. For some, it was the first time these topics were seen as critical to performance and productivity.
Rachel Lewis is an Occupational Psychologist. She focuses on work, health, and well-being at the University of London (England). She notes that the data shows a 25% rise in depression and anxiety during the pandemic. However, there were also positive changes in worker well-being.
“Organizations are now seeing mental health as a strategic imperative. The pandemic helped many workers rethink their mental health and self-care. They also took more responsibility for their well-being. These are all positive drivers for change.”
Michael Cooper, Vice-President of Development & Strategic Partnerships at Mental Health Research Canada, says, “The pandemic clearly affected psychological stress. It really taught employers about the importance of mental health.”
Dr. Dayna Lee-Baggley is founder and CEO of Dr. Lee-Baggley and Associates, Registered Psychologist, and creator of the “Dr. Dayna Method”. She credits the pandemic for making it more socially acceptable to talk about mental health. She cautions workplaces against thinking that the crisis has truly passed. “We know that psychological impacts will continue to show up. We’re still seeing more burnout, languishing, disability claims, and fallout from the pandemic. The pandemic raised awareness and highlighted that many people were struggling and will be for a long time.”
She adds this about expectations during times of crisis: “There’s a significant shift in how uncertain our world is. We’re not fine, the world is not the same, and we shouldn’t expect to perform at pre-pandemic levels.”
But there is hope, she says. “We need to believe in all the possibilities. Maybe there are things we haven’t thought about that we could do. The pandemic was a huge disruptor, but it could help us see how things could be better.”
Prioritizing people
We asked experts in psychological health and safety for their thoughts on the pandemic’s impact on work.
44% said that organizations need to prioritize their people. This includes making systemic changes to prevent burnout, and to stop relying on “willpower” to elicit change.
Dr. Lee-Baggley put it this way: “Our willpower battery is what gets drained the fastest. We instruct people to change their behaviours to get better when they don’t have the capacity.” Dr. Lee-Baggley says this is a model doomed for failure. “The traditional model is power over people, where we’re forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. Women and diverse people don’t want that model. They want to be empowered. Let’s use that power to help everyone function and flourish.”
To reduce stress and burnout, 50% of the experts we spoke to pointed to the need to better educate leaders on what psychological health and safety means. This includes setting expectations and holding space for leaders to unlearn old habits and learn new ones. It also means giving leaders the support they need to create these spaces and be healthy while doing so.
“We didn’t have the language 10 years ago but recognized there was a problem,” said Amanda Muhammad, a stress management consultant in Dallas, Texas. “People felt they couldn’t speak up, especially for stress management.”
Muhammad credits the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace for helping to improve this and has seen positive change over the past five years.
“There’s now an understanding and a vocabulary to describe what was lacking.” She continues, “A stressed mind isn’t a safe mind. How we are personally is how we are professionally.”
Additional resources
- Managing stress. Learn how to manage your reactions to stress and protect your well-being.
- Employee stress prevention process. Understand how to address chronic mental stress and how to recognize hazards. This tool provides strategies for reducing risk to protect both employers and employees.
- Name, claim and reframe: Personal stress tools. These workshop materials and personal stress tools can help develop skills to identify and manage responses to everyday stressors.
- Working while stressed or ill. Information on how to work successfully while being neurodivergent or living with attention deficit disorder (ADHD), anxiety, autism, depression, dyslexia, menopause, or stress.
Burnout response for leaders. How to identify employee burnout, recognize workplace factors and take pro-active steps for prevention. These strategies can help protect overachievers and those recovering from burnout. - Prevent burnout. Try these strategies to help identify risks and to prevent burning out.
- Someone you care about may be experiencing burnout. Questions and strategies to help you have a supportive conversation when someone you care about appears to be struggling with burnout.
- Supporting employee Success – A tool to plan accommodations. This tool can help develop an accommodation or work plan when psychological, emotional, cognitive or physical challenges may be impacting an employee.
In the next blog my colleague and co-author of The Evolution of Workplace Mental Health in Canada, Leanne Fournier, interviews an award-winning CEO who used psychological health and safety to reduce turnover. 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.