“Asking questions is the way to make informed decisions.”
Contents
What is Psychological Health?
The World Health Organization defines Mental Health as follows: “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.”
Is psychological health the opposite of mental illness?
No. it is possible for someone with a diagnosed mental illness to be psychologically healthy in the sense that they enjoy life, realize their potential contribute to their community, cope with normal stresses and work productively and fruitfully. Vice versa it is possible that someone who has no diagnosed mental illness is in poor psychological health due to for instance, a family crisis, workplace stressors or limited coping skills.
What is a psychologically healthy and safe workplace?
A psychologically healthy and safe workplace is one that prevents harm, promotes health and resolves incidents that affect health.
Will implementing a psychologically safe system of work make individual programs redundant?
A health promoting workplace will increase the R.O.I. of individual employee support programs. The R.O.I. on most individual health and wellness programs is zero sum: they keep the healthy healthy and are used by people who are ready for change. Often those in greatest need are not reached. By embedding a focus on physical and psychological health into the workplace culture and creating a supportive environment, employees are moved along in their readiness for change and help seeking behavior.
Additionally, services and expertise of individual program providers (e.g. training) can be leveraged as part of the implementation phase.
What is the Canadian Psychological Health and Safety (PHS) Occupational Standard?
In 2013 the Canadian Standards Association introduced a ground breaking and globally unique psychological occupational health and safety standard. While it is voluntary, it is the first to describe the ideal nature of a psychologically safe system of work and provides criteria to assess and develop the workplace.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO29) is considering the Canadian PHS as a model for the first international standard for psychological health in the workplace.
The PHS standard, provides guidelines, tools and resources to facilitate organizational promotion of mental health and prevention of psychological harm at work.
According to the standard the following areas are indicators of a psychologically safe system of work.
- psychological support;
- organizational culture;
- clear leadership and expectations;
- civility and respect;
- psychological job demands;
- growth and development;
- recognition and reward;
- involvement and influence;
- workload management;
- engagement;
- work/life balance;
- psychological protection from violence, bullying, and harassment;
- protection of physical safety; and
- other chronic stressors as identified by workers.
Similar to physical health and safety occupational standards organizations are encouraged to apply
- hazard identification;
- elimination of those hazards that can be eliminated;
- assessment for level of risk for hazards that cannot be eliminated;
- preventive and protective measures used to eliminate identified hazards and control risks; and
- priority process reflecting the size, nature, and complexity of the hazard and risk, and, where possible, respecting the traditional hierarchy of risk control
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There is great similarity and overlap between these different ideas. They all take a systems perspective and look at the impact of the workplace itself on health and well being of the employees. This approach leverages organizational policies and practices to foster psychological and physical health of employees.
While the wording differs, each of these concepts includes the need for organizations to respond to their employees as people who bring their humanness to work: including the need for community, positive relationships and support, the need for recognition, purpose and meaning, the need for sufficient autonomy and opportunities for control and growth.
Equally important: all of these ideas have established research supporting the business case and financial benefits for organizations to pursue a culture of workplace psychological health and safety.
What is Sustainable employability?
Sustainable employability is the extent to which employees are able to work, either with or for the organisation, in a productive, motivated and healthy way. Sustainable employability is a movement prompted among others by a predicted future skill shortages. It will become increasingly important to attract and retain new talent as well as keep older employees healty and engaged. The OECD stresses the need to “assess and anticipate rapidly changing skill needs so they can be addressed….” .
A second factor which has given rise to the concept of sustainable employability is the unprecedented mix of generations in the workplace. Many organizations are managing 5 generations working side by side: from Gen Z (18 years and under) to Baby Boomers(51 to 70 years) as well as employees over 70. Each generation has different expectations of the employer, different priorities and different health needs. At the same time each generation brings valuable different talents and contributions to the organization.
Actions to support sustainable employability include fostering long term health and wellness in employees and ongoing development and skills training to meet the needs of the future.
What is integrated organizational health?
The concept and importance of integrated organizational health has been researched and promoted by Harvard Center for Work, Health and Wellbeing and promotes: “Weaving Employee Health, Safety, and Well-Being into the Fabric of Your Organization”
What are psycho-social risk factors?
Identification of psycho-social risk factors in the workplace and the need to mitigate such risk factors has been promoted by EU-OSHA (The European Union Information Agency For Occupational Safety And Health) and adopted in the European Social Directive. This includes identifying stressors in the workplace which may cause harm or undue levels of stress on individual workers. Examples of a psycho-social risk factors identified by EU-OSHA are excessive workloads, ineffective communication, lack of support from management or colleagues, psychological and sexual harassment, third party violence . A psychologically healthy and safe workplace works to promote health and prevent harm from psycho-social risk factors.
What is a systems approach?
Systems based thinking is a line of thought in the management field which stresses the interactive nature and interdependence of external and internal factors in an organization.
Consider a high performance football team. The foundation of the team is talented players. Additionally, for top performance, they need to be in the right positions, coordinated, well equipped, trained, coached and their playing field needs to be in mint condition. If only one of these components, let a lone multiple are neglected, the team as a whole and the players individually suffer in their ability to perform.
A systems approach to workplace health and safety looks at workplace factors that can support (or undermine) the health and productivity of the individual employees and their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. Optimizing these factors ultimately will have a financial benefit for the organization.
What about individual responsibility of employees?
Health & wellbeing is at all times a shared responsibility between the organization and the individual. Individuals will differ in their needs, their skills and their circumstances at work and at home.
Each individual remains equally responsible for their health and wellbeing.
Will the introduction of a psychological health and safety strategy mean an overhaul and disruption of everything that is already in place?
The short answer is NO it will not. Many organizations already have access to data and have health and wellness strategies in place. The customer sets their integral vision and goals for psychological health and wellness throughout the organization. Our systems approach builds on this and incorporates it into an integral strategy throughout the organization with stakeholder buy in at all levels.