Creating mentally healthy workplaces requires an investment of time, resources and leadership, but the outcomes are worth it for businesses and employees. The human capital impacted by mental health and psychological safety in your workplace is significant. Stigma and discrimination can make employees hesitant to disclose their mental illness at work and can prevent them from getting the help that they need.
Building a Mental Health and Addiction (MHA) plan with well-articulated design elements and clear goals and deliverables promotes your organizational health. Indirect advantages include increased performance, improved wellbeing, increased retention, and reduction in resignations within the employee group. It is critical to create a roadmap informed by best practices and further develop it after a full needs assessment of your workplace. We will customize your plan to meet the needs of your organization. Research demonstrates that the next generation of workers values their mental health and so should you. By demonstrating your value of MHA through strategies and program development, employees feel valued and respected by employers which translates to employee retention, engagement and loyalty.
Focusing on tailoring our work to your needs, we can build systems of care to support the following recommendations from the Centre for Mental Health and Addictions:
- Create an organization-wide mental health strategy
- Institute mandatory mental health leadership training
- Develop customized mental health supports
- Prioritize the return-to-work process
- Measure outcomes and build accountability across the tiers of the workplace
By aligning the vision within the leadership team and the operational plan, longer term deliverables and outcomes can be realized sooner. With the engagement of key stakeholders, within and external to the operational team, we can use curiosity and iterative processing along with design-thinking strategies to build plans that are more customized and flexible to your needs.
Using strategy to build policy and processes, leaders will be equipped with the tools to increase the key drivers and indicators within the organization. The planning and implementation of strategic initiatives include ensuring that there are clear markers for recognizing success through measurable outcomes established within clear roles and responsibilities.
Mental Illness is a leading cause of disability in Canada.
Every week, at least 500,000 Canadians miss work due to mental illness and the resulting personal, workplace and economic impacts can be devastating.
The economic burden of mental illness in Canada is estimated to be approximately $51 billion each year, with $6.3 billion resulting from lost productivity.
By 2041, it is estimated that the cumulative cost of poor mental health to the Canadian economy will exceed $2.5 trillion.
There are also indirect costs related to poor mental health in the workplace such as absenteeism, presenteeism and challenges with recruitment and retention.
If you could get all the people in an organization to row in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market against any competition, at any time.
– Patrick Lencioni
CONTACT USLet’s design and co-create an MHA strategy that meets your needs for employees today and for their future.
Clinical expertise combined with business knowledge to guide clients through our new and everchanging work environments.