Unit 8 Mental Health

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Overview

Welcome back to LDRS 617 for students in the healthcare stream! The eighth unit of 617 will focus on the impact of COVID-19 on employee mental health in healthcare organizations. We will discuss employee engagement, productivity, and mental health management for healthcare organizations. In this discussion, we will explore what and how healthcare organizations can address the mental health needs of their employees. A healthy workforce is more likely to attract and retain top talent. In the end, it motivates employees to become more engaged at work and become more productive. It is a win-win situation for everyone. So let’s get started.

This unit is divided into the following topics:

  1. What is mental health - Stress and Psychological Safety;
  2. Guarding Minds at Work;
  3. Mental wellness and resilience at work.

Learning Outcomes

When you have completed this unit, you should be able to:

  • Reflect critically on engagement practices and stewardship responsibilities of leaders in relation to their organization’s human resources (people), including addressing both task and people factors in organizational culture.
  • Analyze the effectiveness and shortcomings of an organization’s engagement and stewardship practices.
  • Consider the implementation of best practices to ensure employee loyalty within an organization.
  • Consider the critical roles that leadership, Human Resources, and immediate supervisors play in creating high employee loyalty.
  • Analyze the current practices of recognition and develop a standard of practice to effectively build a culture of loyalty and recognition.
  • Learn how to develop critical thinking skills and how to apply best practices to employee engagement and stewardship from the perspective of an operational leader.

Resources

Online resources will be provided throughout this unit.

8.1 What is Mental Health – Stress and Psychological Safety

Source: Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety.

Why Should Employers Be Concerned About Mental Health?

The overall health of a workplace includes both the physical and psychological well-being of its workers. By treating mental health and its psychological component equally with the physical environment, a workplace can support their workers’ overall well-being. Poor mental health not only hurts the individual, it also reduces corporate profits. It’s important that all levels of the workplace – including the Board of Directors, management, finance, and human resources departments – get involved to incorporate mental health at your workplace. It is also necessary to engage your health and safety committee and workers – we all have a shared responsibility for health and safety, including mental health.

There is no one “right way” to create a mentally healthy workplace because every workplace is different – from the people doing the work, to the work that needs to be done, to the leaders running the organization, the size of the organization, the external environment that influences the community, and the external resources the company draws. All of these factors play a role in employee mental health. There is also a legislative requirement for employers to protect the mental and physical health of their employees. Many provincial occupational health and safety acts have been expanded to include harm to psychological well-being in the definition of harassment. In jurisdictions that do not have explicit legislation dealing with psychological health in the workplace, the general duty clause would apply.

Are There Any Specific Issues in The Workplace That Affect Employee Mental Health?

Research has identified 13 workplace factors – known as psychosocial risk factors (PSR) – that can have an impact on organizational health, the health of individual employees, and the financial bottom line. The 13 PSR are listed in the following. The way work is carried out and the context in which work occurs can have a significant impact on an employee’s mental health – positively or negatively. When employees have a negative exposure to these factors, there is potential for the development of stress, demoralization, depressed mood, anxiety, or burnout.

!!! Based on the Canadian Mental Health Association (2018), Stress is a reaction to a situation – it isn’t about the actual situation. We usually feel stressed when we think that the demands of the situation are greater than our resources to deal with that situation. For example, someone who feels comfortable speaking in public may not worry about giving a presentation, while someone who isn’t confident in their skills may feel a lot of stress about an upcoming presentation. Common sources of stress may include major life events, like moving or changing jobs. Long-term worries, like a long-term illness or parenting, can also feel stressful. Even daily hassles like dealing with traffic can be a source of stress. (Retrieved from https://cmha.ca/brochure/stress/, para. 5)

Organizations need to consider all of these in their efforts to create a mentally healthy workplace. The factors are:

  • Psychological support;
  • Organizational culture;
  • Clear Leadership & expectations;
  • Civility & respect;
  • Psychological competencies & requirements;
  • Growth & development;
  • Recognition & reward;
  • Involvement & influence;
  • Workload management;
  • Engagement;
  • Balance;
  • Psychological protection;
  • Protection of physical safety.

Workplace issues that affect mental health include:

  • stigma and discrimination
  • demand/control and effort/reward relationships
  • presenteeism
  • job burnout
  • harassment, violence, bullying and mobbing
  • substance use, misuse and abuse at work

For more information about these issues, please see the OSH Answers Mental Health - Psychosocial Risk Factors.

What can workplaces do to support mental health?

A psychologically safe and healthy workplace is one that promotes workers’ mental well-being and does not harm employee mental health through negligent, reckless or intentional ways. For example, a psychologically safe workplace would be free of excessive fear or chronic anxiety. An organization’s commitment has to start at the top. One way to achieve a psychologically safe workplace is to create and implement a Comprehensive Workplace Health and Safety (CWHS) Program.

The CWHS has four main components:

  1. Occupational health and safety (the physical work environment);
  2. Psychosocial work environment (organizational culture and the organization of work);
  3. Workplace health promotion (wellness);
  4. Organizational community involvement.

This program is a series of strategies and related activities, initiatives and policies developed by the employer, in consultation with employees, to continually improve or maintain the quality of working life, health, and the well-being of the workforce. These activities are developed as part of a continual improvement process to improve the work environment (physical, psychosocial, organizational, economic), and to increase personal empowerment and personal growth.

How do I conduct a hazard analysis for mental health?

A process to identify, assess and control psychosocial hazards proactively and on an ongoing basis must be established in the workplace. Employees must also be trained to report unhealthy psychosocial situations to their supervisor/manager, who will investigate and take corrective action, if required. The results of the assessments will help to set objectives and targets when developing programs or policies.

Sources of information for hazard and risk evaluation for the psychosocial work environment include:

  • health and safety committee reports, minutes and/or recommendations
  • workplace health/well-being committee reports, minutes and/or recommendations
  • worker concerns and complaints during workplace inspections or other times
  • worker exit interviews
  • previous workplace risk assessments
  • incident investigations (if investigation probes deeply enough into root causes)
  • absenteeism, short- and long-term disability claim data
  • employee surveys such as perception surveys, employee engagement surveys
  • data regarding the nature of health benefit claims and EAP usage if available

Note: Because psychosocial hazards are non-physical, they generally cannot be seen during inspections or audits. It is necessary to ask employees about the stressors they experience at work. The process must be confidential and anonymous whenever possible.

What else can employers do?

Source: Adapted from Workplace Mental Health Promotion, A How-To Guide.

Below are eight strategies that employers can use to encourage positive mental health:

  • Encourage active employee participation and decision making;
  • Clearly define employees’ duties and responsibilities;
  • Promote work-life balance;
  • Encourage respectful and non-derogatory behaviours;
  • Manage workloads;
  • Allow continuous learning;
  • Have conflict resolution practices in place;
  • Recognize employees’ contributions effectively.

Additionally, employers can:

  • When implementing a new process or procedure, always consider the psychological impact of the change.
  • Assess psychological safety in your workplace and develop a plan to address it. See Guarding Minds @ Work (in Activity 8.2) for more information.
  • Develop a policy statement reflecting your organization’s commitment to making workplace mental health a priority. A policy demonstrates leadership and commitment. Alternatively, your health and safety policy should address commitment to addressing psychosocial risk factors as well as physical hazards.
  • Explicitly include mental health and psychological safety in your health and safety committee mandate.
  • Develop policies and practices for workplace harassment, violence and bullying. Review your current policies and procedures and consider how they might be positively or negatively contributing to issues of violence and harassment.
  • Provide education and training that ensures managers and employees know how to recognize hazards such as harassment, bullying, and psychologically unhealthy work conditions. This training provides concrete ways for co-workers to recognize and talk about mental health issues in general. Managers can additionally contribute to a positive work environment if they have the skills and knowledge to identify and respond to issues before they escalate.
  • Educate all health and safety committee members about the importance of mental health in the workplace.
  • Ask the worker representative(s) on the committee to bring forward general workplace mental health issues that affect their workforce rather than any individual’s particular situation. Require that individual privacy and confidentiality be respected at all times.
  • Develop substance abuse policies (i.e., use of illicit drugs at work, alcohol consumption at work, inappropriate Internet use, etc.) and make sure that all employees are aware of them.

Learning Activity: Questions to Consider

  • After completing the reading of the topic, reflect on the statement and respond to the following question:

8.2 Guarding Minds at Work

In order to create a safe work environment, it is crucial to evaluate psychological health and safety. In addition to providing a report that identifies areas for improvement and suggests a process for action planning, Guarding Minds at Work is used for reviewing leadership processes through surveys and stress scans. Furthermore, it serves as a tool for evaluating progress.

To ensure that employees’ mental health is protected, Guarding Minds at Work promotes civility and respect in the workplace. In an effort to ensure employee safety, employers are required to ensure psychologically safe workplaces. Employers wishing to meet these new standards must implement policies and programs that comply with these new legal standards.

Find out more details of this resource at https://www.guardingmindsatwork.ca/ and https://www.guardingmindsatwork.ca/about/about-psychosocial-factor.

Learning Activity: Reflect about mental health

  • After completing the reading of the topic, and exploring the information on Guarding Minds @ work website, respond to the following questions:

8.3 Mental Wellness and Resilience at Work

Resilience: Build Skills to Endure Hardship

source: Mayo Clinic

“Resilience means being able to adapt to life’s misfortunes and setbacks. Test your resilience level and get tips to build your own resilience” Mayo Clinic Staff, para 1.

When something goes wrong at work/at home, do you tend to bounce back or fall apart? When you have resilience, you harness inner strength that helps you rebound from a setback or challenge, such as a job loss, an illness, a demotion at work, disaster or a loved one’s death. If you lack resilience, you might dwell on problems, feel victimized, become overwhelmed or turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as substance abuse.

Resilience won’t make your problems go away — but resilience can give you the ability to see past them, find enjoyment in life and better handle stress. If you aren’t as resilient as you’d like to be, you can develop skills to become more resilient.

Adapting to Adversity Resilience is the ability to adapt to difficult situations (Mayo Clinic, December 14, 2021). When stress, adversity or trauma strikes, you still experience anger, grief and pain, but you’re able to keep functioning — both physically and psychologically. However, resilience isn’t about putting up with something difficult, being stoic or figuring it out on your own. In fact, being able to reach out to others for support is a key part of being resilient.

Resilience and Mental Health Resilience can help protect you from various mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Resilience can also help offset factors that increase the risk of mental health conditions, such as being bullied or previous trauma. If you have an existing mental health condition, being resilient can improve your coping ability.

Tips to Improve Your Resilience If you’d like to become more resilient both professionally and personally, consider these tips:

  • Get connected. Building strong, positive relationships with loved ones, coworkers, and friends can provide you with needed support and acceptance in good and bad times. - Establish other important connections by volunteering or serving other people.

Make every day meaningful. Do something that gives you a sense of accomplishment and purpose every day at work or at home. Set goals to help you look toward the future with meaning.

  • Learn from experience. Think of how you’ve coped with hardships in the past. Consider the skills and strategies that helped you through difficult times. You might even write about past experiences in a journal to help you identify positive and negative behavior patterns — and guide your future behavior.

Remain hopeful. You can’t change the past, but you can always look toward the future. Accepting and even anticipating change makes it easier to adapt and view new challenges with less anxiety.

  • Take care of yourself. Tend to your own needs and feelings. Participate in activities and hobbies you enjoy. Include physical activity in your daily routine. Get plenty of sleep. Eat a healthy diet. Practice stress management and relaxation techniques, such as yoga, meditation, guided imagery, deep breathing or prayer.
  • Be proactive. Don’t ignore your problems. Instead, figure out what needs to be done, make a plan, and take action. Although it can take time to recover from a major setback, traumatic event or loss, know that your situation can improve if you work at it.

When to Seek Professional Advice

Becoming more resilient takes time and practice. In most organizations, there are Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and/or Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP) available for employees. If you don’t feel you’re making progress — or you don’t know where to start — consider talking to a mental health professional through the EAP or EFAP programs. With guidance, you can improve your resiliency and mental well-being. Activity 8.4 Read the following assigned 2 Articles by “Pas et al.” and “Liu et al.”.

Learning Activity: Reflect and Respond - Prevention of high workload

  • Read assigned 2 Articles by “Pas et al.” and “Liu et al.”.
  • In Pas et al. article, use the following Table 2 to guide your reading. It shows for each sector the prevalence of implemented mental health measures (‘continuous or often’) aimed at the prevention of high workload and at the promotion of work engagement (p. 82).

Image source: Pas et al.

In Liu et al. article, use the following model to guide your reading. The three variables in the analysis are: Psychological Safety (PS); Work Engagement (WE); Employee Creativity (p. 4).

What is the relationship between PS, WE, EC? Any take away points from this article?

Learning Activity: Watch and Respond - Secrets of resilient people

To begin this learning activity, watch the following video (Note: this video is 15 minutes in length)

Watch: 3 secrets of resilient people | Lucy Hone

  • After completing the activity above, reflect and include your analysis in this week’s Compendium.

Summary

We examined psychological safety, mental health, and employee engagement in this unit. The Psychological Safety concept and application aim to prevent harm to the mental well-being of employees. In a psychologically safe and healthy workplace, workers’ mental health is protected and no harm is done to their mental well-being through negligence, recklessness, or intentional actions, such as too much workload, no support, or not providing necessary resources for their work.

Employees value small gestures. Make support systems accessible to all employees, such as mental health days in the workplace, physical fitness promotion at work, supervisor check-ins, and more personal and flexible approaches to prevent and promote mental well-being at work. Thus, it may ultimately motivate employees’ work productivity and creativity. Improving employee mental wellbeing at work for everyone’s benefit.

References