Employers can’t close their eyes to staff mental illness
It’s part of an employer’s responsibility to safeguard their staff’s mental health, though many are ill-equipped to do so.
We spoke to Mary Ann Baynton, program director at the Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace, who talked us through the importance of recognizing mental health struggles at work.
“Safeguarding staff mental health starts with looking at it from the perspective of protecting employee’s psychological safety and ensuring that leaders do no harm,” she told us.
“Employers need to help every worker in the organization to recognize and except personal responsibility for any impact on their own psychological health, as well as any impact they have on others.
“This goes beyond a human rights issue – which is only about approximately eight per cent of your employee population on average – to affecting 100%,” continued Baynton.
“Essentially, this takes it from an individual focus to a focus on maximizing the potential and the energy of every employee for the benefit of the organization.”
So, in this new age of transparency and openness, are employees still nervous about opening up over mental health issues?
“It depends on the stigma in their individual workplace,” explained Baynton. “To be able to talk about mental health is to be able to talk about how we feel in the moment. We’re all dealing with our own mental health on a moment by moment basis. Some of us may have a diagnosis, some don’t; but there’ll be days when we’re distracted and our thinking is impaired.”
And this doesn’t just relate to substance abuse, she tells us. An employee’s thinking could be impaired because they’ve been up all night with a baby, or they’re being bullied by a colleague, or they’re worried about being fired.
But where does the buck stop? Are HRDs the sole custodians of employee mental health, or do we need guidance from the top?
“When we created the National Standard of Canada on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, we said it’s ideal for it to come from the very top down in a strategic direction,” added Baynton.
“However, the ideal is not always the reality. It can start anywhere – from a frontline employee to middle management to a director. Ultimately it has to come from every person, because if you as the HR leader are a champion for mental health, but still have employees treating each other disrespectfully, then you’re never going to have a psychologically safe workplace.”
