Key takeaways
- These surveys and tools use employee perspectives to focus on work conditions, not individual employee mental health or wellbeing.
- They help you start based on available resources and capacity and allow you to assess the right level of intervention – organizational, leader, team or individual.
- Results support clear, practical actions leaders can take.
These tools don’t measure levels of individual psychological health. Instead, they focus on how employees experience their work. They help you understand conditions that shape day-to-day work, such as:
- Workload and pace
- Clarity of roles and expectations
- Respect and civility
- Leadership approaches
- Inclusion and belonging
By measuring employee perspectives, you can spot where manageable and practical changes will have the biggest impact.
Comparing surveys and tools
The surveys below generate an automatic report tailored to your organization.
Reports include:
- Plain-language results
- Priority areas for action
- Practical tools, strategies, and resources to help you take action
You don’t need technical expertise to use them. You just need a willingness to listen and improve.
These tools are designed to be practical and usable, even with limited time and resources.
Organizational level
Guarding Minds at Work employee survey
The Guarding Minds at Work employee survey assesses the employees’ perspectives or experiences of psychosocial factors that are within the influence, control, and responsibility of the organization. It does not measure individual employees’ mental health or wellness.
Results can help you target your actions for greatest impact on your employees as it relates to the unique circumstances of your organization.
The assessment measures employees’ perspectives and produces results that include:
- Psychosocial factors named in the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (CSA/BNQ Z1003) developed by the Canadian Standards Association
- Psychosocial hazards named in the International Standards Association’s guidelines (ISO 45003:2021) developed by the International Organization for Standardization
- Indicators of workplace inclusion
- Indicators of workplace stress and trauma
Guarding Minds organizational review
The Guarding Minds at Work organizational review asks similar questions to the Guarding Minds at Work employee survey but is designed for senior leadership and decision-makers. It provides an opportunity for senior leaders to discuss the current state and later compare their perspectives with employee survey results.
This review can be used:
- Before the employee survey, to help set leaders up for success and understanding
- When an employee survey is not possible or practical
Stress satisfaction scan
The Stress satisfaction scan is a 6-item employee questionnaire. You can use this instead of the longer Guarding Minds at Work employee survey when the full results are not necessary or possible. This could be due to survey fatigue or the fact that there are more pressing survey items that must be given priority.
It indicates the extent to which employees report being stressed or satisfied at work.
How to use the results:
- If results show employees are more stressed than satisfied, this can help advocate for more focus on stress management.
- If results show employees are more satisfied than stressed, it may be a good time to focus on other priorities or identify what is supporting satisfaction so it can be maintained.
Organizational scorecard
The Organizational scorecard is a useful tool for people who have decision-making responsibility and authority in medium or large organizations but do not have the resources for a full employee survey.
It helps track and improve:
- Leader impact
- Engagement
- Organizational culture
- Performance
Is your organization at risk for burnout?
Is your organization at risk for burnout? | PDF is a series of questions that helps assess your organization’s response to work-related stress.
It is not diagnostic, but can help flag areas for improvement and suggest actions that may reduce risk and support healthier work practices.
Leader level
Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment
The Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment is an online survey that can be used in two ways:
- As a self-assessment, where a leader reflects on how often they use practices known to support psychological health and safety.
- As a survey sent to employees to assess leaders using the same measures.
Organizations can choose to use this assessment with all leaders or all employees. Individual leaders can also choose to use it for themselves and their teams.
The assessment measures leadership practices that protect psychological health and safety and groups results into five categories:
• Communication and collaboration
• Social intelligence
• Problem-solving and conflict management
• Security and safety
• Fairness and integrity
Leader scorecard
The Leader scorecard is a useful template for:
- Small business owners
- Individual leaders within larger organizations
It helps track and address:
- Team member wellbeing awareness
- Engagement
- Team dynamics
- Employee success
Strengthening leadership skills
The strengthening leadership skills resource provides a variety of activities to help leaders build self-awareness and communication skills.
These activities can be used individually or with groups of leaders as part of ongoing development.
They can help with:
- Dealing with emotions and assumptions
- Communicating more effectively
- Engaging team members
Team level
Psychologically Safe Team Assessment
The Psychologically Safe Team Assessment goes beyond leadership. It measures how team members feel about:
- How they interact with each other
- Their sense of inclusion
It reinforces that everyone on the team has a role in creating a safe and inclusive work environment.
The assessment measures three categories:
- Leader support for team cohesion
- Team interactions
- Inclusion
Individual level
Supporting employee success
Supporting employee success is a tool that helps develop an accommodation or work plan when psychological, emotional, cognitive, or physical challenges may affect work.
The step-by-step process helps to:
- Assess stressors related to psychological, emotional, cognitive, and physical issues at work
- Choose strategies that may best support employee success
- Co-develop a work plan that is practical and specific to the role and situation
Emotional intelligence self-assessment
The Emotional intelligence self-assessment and related activities can be used to support individual growth or as part of a group approach.
They are designed to help participants:
- Enhance awareness of their emotions
- Reduce stress
- Positively impact those around them
Where to start with these surveys and tools
- Select the assessment that best fits your needs.
- Share results with impacted stakeholders in clear, plain language.
- Choose one or two actions and start making small, steady improvements.
What’s next
- If you haven’t already developed a comprehensive and collaborative process for psychosocial hazard mitigation, you may want to take time to review the suggestions, so that you embed this process in existing workflow.
- Once you’ve identified what you’d like to improve upon, Psychological health and safety strategies and solutions offers a wide variety of evidence and practice-based options for you to consider.
- To make the process more effective, Evaluation planning should be part of any solution. Doing this up front means that you’ll be able to assess whether the action you took had the intended outcome.