Description: In a work environment with adequate psychological protection, employees are free from bullying, harassment, stigma and discrimination.
You can access our free workshop materials to start a discussion on any risks to psychological safety at work and how to address them.
Create effective policies to protect psychological safety.
- Improve psychological health and safety with these Psychological health and safety policy recommendations to see where you can improve the protection of psychological safety. In particular, ensure that you have effective policies related to:
- The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace offers guidelines for continual improvement of psychological protection.
- Regular risk assessments and reviews can help you identify and address factors that may affect employees’ psychological health and safety.
- Offer programs and services for those working in vulnerable situations, such as:
- Debriefing
- Peer support
- Safe-walk programs
- Secure parking access
- Give employees enough rest, breaks or job rotations for tiring mental or physical tasks.
- Prevent discrimination and promote inclusion.
- Use the Employee stress prevention process to understand how:
- Chronic mental stress might be defined
- To recognize the hazards and reduce risk
- To protect both the employer and employees
- To make sure everyone understands their role in protecting psychological safety at work.
Ensuring psychological safety is more than the policy.
- It involves ongoing education, implementation and evaluation. Train employees and leaders on your organization’s policies and programs involving:
- Harassment (verbal, physical, or sexual) at work
- Discrimination at work
- Trauma
- Violence at work
- Supporting employees with personal or health issues
- Accommodation
- Conflict resolution
- Complaints or grievances
- Train leadership on how to create a psychologically healthy and safe workplace. A great place to start is by exploring Building trust for leaders.
- Check out the Psychologically safe leader assessment for leadership strategies that can help. Assign it to leaders or encourage them to use it for their personal and confidential development.
- Encourage Psychologically safe interactions and identify which behaviours may come across negatively.
- Help your team to Choose their words. It can help them understand how their words could make a conversation more difficult.
Resolve any threats to psychological safety effectively.
- Provide safe opportunities for employees to identify and remedy psychological safety concerns.
- Provide internal or external support to employees who’ve experienced psychological distress.
- See the helpful process tips found in Violence prevention.
Additional actions and resources
- See how psychological health and safety can have a positive impact on business objectives through this in Evidence for psychological health and safety.
Putting psychological protection on the agenda provides you with materials to discuss and support policy review and development.
Adapted from Guarding Minds at Work™
Guarding Minds at Work was commissioned by Canada Life and additional resources are supported by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health.