Episode 11: Workplace Mental Health
Hello, I'm Jessica Samuels. Welcome to A Way Forward presented by Beam Credit Union. I'd like to acknowledge this podcast takes place on the ancestral traditional unceded lands of the Okanagan Selix people. Our topic today is mentally healthy workplaces. And my guest is CMHA Kelowna Director of People and Culture, Candace Giesbricht.
Jessica Samuels:Now we're going to get into what is a mentally healthy workplace, how you can get it and maintain it. And of course, we're going to offer you some resources too. You know, Candace, what's really interesting to me about this topic is, I don't know, I'm going guess, like prior to eight years ago, I thought and maybe other people thought that workplace mental health was about an employer supporting an individual who has a mental health concern or a mental illness. And of course, it is a little bit about that, but it's also about so much more. So please tell us, what does workplace mental health mean?
Candace Giesbrecht:So not a small question, really. But I mean, and when we talk about workplace mental health, it could be like you were describing mental health in the workplace. So in the case of employees, or you know, what's happening between co workers and so on. But it also could be a trying to achieve mentally healthy workplaces, which has within it this whole bucket of strategies,
Jessica Samuels:a bucket of strategies that sounds a little bit daunting for any employer or people who are in a workplace. So like, what are some of these strategies? And how do employers and I guess responsibility for the employees themselves to approach it?
Candace Giesbrecht:Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there there again, so many different forks in this road. So I mean, we can talk about the business case and why mentally healthy workplace strategies are good for business.
Jessica Samuels:Okay, well,
Candace Giesbrecht:yeah, they are.
Jessica Samuels:Okay. Why? I mean, you can't just tease us and walk away.
Candace Giesbrecht:Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, there's there's been plenty of research that looks at the ROI of investments into mental health strategies. And we'll talk, I assume, about what some of those strategies are.
Candace Giesbrecht:But one study just last year that was conducted said that for every $1 invested, I believe it was $1.64 that came back in terms of positive business impact. And that was after one year. And then after three years of businesses implementing mentally healthy workplace strategies, they saw over $2 in ROI for every $1 invested. So what does that mean for a business? Does that mean,
Jessica Samuels:how are they getting back that $2 or $1.64
Candace Giesbrecht:Yeah, so the ways that they're getting it back are in improved productivity. And the people who are really good at measuring these things do a good job of benchmarking current productivity before they implement some strategies and then they continue to measure some of the same things. And so, when we're looking at mentally healthy workplaces or workplace mental health, then there can be both positive and negative aspects of the conversation. And so, when we look at strategies, we can take a focus on what are some of the positive impacts of us looking at this, but also what are some of the negative impacts when we don't? And some of the negative impacts we might be a little more oriented towards or maybe top of mind is absenteeism, or something that we think about called presenteeism, which is where a person is there, but like, not really there,
Jessica Samuels:like on a Friday afternoon in the summer in the Okanagan.
Candace Giesbrecht:Yeah. And there's like happy hours happening all over the place. Yeah. Yeah. So, so presenteeism is actually more costly in some ways than absenteeism because the person's there.
Candace Giesbrecht:And we've all had that experience where we've read the same thing four times over and we still can't quite get it. Or we're sitting in a meeting, but our mind is elsewhere because maybe we're thinking about some of the things that are impacting our mental health negatively. And so when we think about the mentally healthy workplaces, then there are strategies that could include anything that falls into the bucket of HR or compensation or benefits, those kinds of things. But there are also some of the social activities that happen or the training that we invest in our leaders leaders know how and when to have a conversation when maybe somebody seeming like they're not themselves.
Jessica Samuels:So we got into this kind of I took you on a bit of a different path than we were headed because we're talking about that bottom line piece. I wonder if employers or workplaces in general understand that there are really some positive and negative impacts to the bottom line if this isn't addressed. So one of my big pitches is that employers are going to pay either way.
Candace Giesbrecht:So they either pay on the side of investing in some of the prevention or mental health promoting kinds of strategies like training or, social gatherings and things like that. Or they're going to pay on the side of illness. They're going to start losing staff. Staff may go off on a leave related to a diagnosed mental illness. They may be struggling with coping.
Candace Giesbrecht:Or as we also know, mental health has a really big impact on physical health. There have been many, many cases that we've seen where and we understand that if a person shows up with heart disease or with cardiac problems, one of the things that doctors and professionals will look at, care teams will look at is, why is your blood pressure high? What's happening to with how are you managing stress? How are you coping with life? What's going on?
Candace Giesbrecht:How do we get that blood pressure down? You know, if we think about cholesterol levels and bad eating, those have an impact on our cardiac health. But a lot of the times the bad eating happens because we don't have other coping strategies. Those become ways of us medicating almost with food or just finding those things that I just need to feel good for a minute, even if it's this chocolate bar, right? And so people end up missing time from work related to physical illnesses that may have a mental health cause or because they just need to press pause on some part of their life and works the thing that they're most in control of.
Jessica Samuels:When you were talking about that, you were talking about and that makes total sense. And you're talking about why is your heart rate so high? Or why are you kind of doing that? The chocolate, the way you eat or what have you. It led me to this idea as well.
Jessica Samuels:And the question is that, I mean, you're director of people and culture here. So, you know, it's when you're in a workplace and you're addressing workplace conflict. Yeah. This must, are you examining this same kind of idea? I mean, not that, it's kind of weird because I feel like you don't want to kind of be like, oh, you know, they're not mentally well.
Jessica Samuels:Like you don't want
Candace Giesbrecht:to turn mentally well into a bad word or some kind of excuse. But as employers, is that a consideration if you are experiencing some conflict even outside of presenteeism, etc, etc? Yeah, workplace conflict is a huge risk area. And it is so tricky from as an employer to think about like, you know, when are those times and situations where we really want to encourage people to just kind of work it out the way that they want to or feel like they can work it out. Most often, there are so many barriers how people or that prevent people from addressing it in the workplace.
Candace Giesbrecht:Unfortunately, there are so many times when unaddressed workplace conflict results in all these other extra super hard consequences. So I know if I've been having conflict with someone at work, you know, maybe I need to have a conversation with someone that's feeling a little hard, it's feeling stressful. The cortisol is going, the adrenaline's going, my sleep's messed up. I may wake up and I know I need to have this conversation with this person. Finally, see them, but then I'm trying to read the room.
Candace Giesbrecht:There are other people around. Maybe I can't get private. Right? And we come up with those now is not a good time. Oh, they look like they've had a hard day.
Candace Giesbrecht:Actually, they've got a lot going on in their lives. And you know what, Maybe I've got too much of a headache. Today isn't a good day. And so then we leave it. And then it turns into often some escalated situation where the strategies need to be sometimes more formal.
Candace Giesbrecht:They become escalated. And we're not saying it's easy to talk to a person when it's one of those crucial conversations, but the costs are even higher when we don't. And when we're not addressing things, also, you know, I start to think, well, you know, work's not so fun anymore because I've got this conflict going on with my coworker or maybe my boss or, you know, there are these things that are just hard about being at work. And so, you know what, maybe I just don't want to go in today. Or I'm so distracted by this workplace conflict that, you know, I'm not productive at work, or I start to go down a downward spiral, if I'm prone to anxiety or depression already, or if I'm already struggling with it, then on top of it, it's, there can be some other stories that start going on in my head about, great, another place where I don't belong or I don't fit in or this person doesn't like her or respect me.
Candace Giesbrecht:You know, all these stories start going,
Jessica Samuels:which then becomes this giant spiral. You have you to use common language, there's a narrative that's going on in your head that is very real to you, but just might be colored a little bit by some other factors. So it sounds like a very little angsty, even you describing that scenario. And possibly because maybe I can identify and maybe many of us can with being in a workplace that didn't support obviously the mental health of the individual. But let's get back to the talk about what a mentally healthy workplace looks like.
Jessica Samuels:Because there's also, we hope as individuals, everyone is doing well in their mental health, but there's things that go on around in the workplace that need to happen to facilitate that.
Candace Giesbrecht:Yeah, there sure are. And so thank goodness, they're really smart people who've been doing a lot of research for a really long time. And so it's so helpful for a person like me, and I assume many, many others to be able to go, Okay, just give me the list that I can refer to something that at least helps me to guide because by myself, I'm thinking, I'm wondering, I'm Googling, I'm trying to figure what lever can I pull that's going to make a difference here? And how do I know if anything's even making a difference? So there's a group of researchers that's connected to the Mental Health Commission of Canada.
Candace Giesbrecht:Also, there are a number of players, but I'm really proud actually to be a part of a country that has taken this so seriously. We really have, I mean, maybe we weren't the first to be thinking about some of these things, but we really have been working hard as a country at looking at what are the pieces that help to contribute to a mentally healthy workplace. And certainly there are pieces of legislation that have shifted and changed, that have made it very clear to employers that there are responsibilities to ensure psychological safety, not just physical safety. And as well, there's been this research that has come up with a list of 13 different psychosocial factors that contribute to mentally healthy workplaces.
Jessica Samuels:So you just introduced the phrase psychological safety. And that is the language that's being used to describe a mentally healthy. Yeah. Okay, so 13 factors. Everyone get their pens out.
Jessica Samuels:Yeah. But like you say, it's kind of to help you navigate along the way. So what are the factors? Sure, I'm going to look at my list
Candace Giesbrecht:for this one. Don't have them memorized. I could probably do pretty well. But the first one is psychological support. And so when I'm struggling with something, maybe I have a death in the family, maybe I've had some bad news, or I'm just feeling low, then then having psychological support within somebody who cares enough to say you're not yourself.
Candace Giesbrecht:What kind of resources do you need? How can I help? I care. I care about you and this place.
Jessica Samuels:Sounds very reasonable to me.
Candace Giesbrecht:Sounds very reasonable. And also sometimes missing in a lot of workplaces, right? And it doesn't take much to just say I care, I notice, I see. Another one is organizational culture. And a lot of people confuse culture and climate, which would be, I think, another topic for maybe another podcast.
Candace Giesbrecht:But the culture is really those shared values and behaviors that permeate an organization. So the way we do things around here, that you can sort of feel when something doesn't feel like the culture here. And so climate on the other side of that same coin is people's experience of it. So when we look at culture, we're really talking those values and those things about what's reinforced, what's celebrated, what's taught, what's within all of those intros and the things that we always start with. So those inform our organizational culture.
Candace Giesbrecht:Clear leadership and expectations. And this one is one of the ones that I usually lead with the most as we support various workplaces around our community. It's such low hanging fruit. It's not to say for a second that it's easy because it often is not. But if we start with, how do you know what your priorities are?
Candace Giesbrecht:How can we what are the priorities for this week? You know, noticing when there's been some role ambiguity, maybe there's been a business has experienced some growth or something like that, then taking the time to spell out, okay, in this one task, who's responsible? Who's going to be consulted? Who's going to be informed? So it's a version of what's called a RACI matrix.
Candace Giesbrecht:But there are a number of different tools where you can go, this is the direction who's doing what and by when. And so setting those clear leadership and expectations. Many of us have had that experience where it's like, I'm showing up and I don't know what my priorities are. I don't have a clear sense. You've pointed out the window and said we're going out the window.
Candace Giesbrecht:But like, are we going to the street? Are we going to the building behind it? Are we going to the mountain that's way off in the distance? I don't know. And that can be frustrating and hard to landmark and to try and figure out like, where do I fit and where am I going to make an impact?
Candace Giesbrecht:Civility and respect. Psychological competencies and requirements. So do we have the abilities to be resilient? So do we have those skills to bounce back? Do we have the ability to identify and navigate the things that are coming at us?
Candace Giesbrecht:Growth and development. And many businesses, you know, this is one that's maybe a little bit more familiar, but sending someone to a conference can signal to a person, We care about you and in your growth, we see your value. You're worth investing in. And there's also that opportunity to just stretch our brains, and that can have such a positive impact on our mental health and on the broader workplace. Recognition and reward.
Candace Giesbrecht:Often people think about recognition and reward as pay. And that can certainly is part of it, but it's not the only thing. Then within that, we have just different personalities and different people. Like I recall a time when my boss very publicly thanked me for something that I'd done. And I recall feeling like, frustrated that that had happened.
Candace Giesbrecht:So part of it was a little bit of embarrassment. Like I, you know, I wasn't expecting it.
Jessica Samuels:And it was lovely. But I also had this feeling like, like, just realized that a private thank you is far more meaningful to me than a public one. That one is so interesting to me, that recognition. That was one of my biggest learnings at my time here at CMHA Kelowna and around workplace mental health. I have a large personality.
Jessica Samuels:I mean, don't seek out public recognition, but I can take it, right? And I'm like, what? Not everybody likes that? Wow. And oh, yeah.
Jessica Samuels:And oh, yeah, because I can imagine in that instance, everyone stops, all eyes turn to you, you flush, are you expected to say something? What do you say? You got to come across humble, but not boastful.
Candace Giesbrecht:And also, she kind of had to. She kind of had to thank me in front of everyone. So there's this question of was it sincere?
Jessica Samuels:Yes.
Candace Giesbrecht:Right? And so a private thank you. Like, I see all the work that you did, and it really matters. And so I mean, I believed that it was sincere, but I really realized that what was most meaningful and so, rather than getting upset about, like, this person should have known, like that I would prefer a private high five rather than a public kudos. I felt I needed to take responsibility.
Candace Giesbrecht:But those are to say thanks and a private high five is all I need and actually is really important to me. And so being aware of the kinds of recognition and reward, like not everybody's built the same way, but also finding those different ways that we can express that gratitude. And gratitude, I would suggest is probably one of the most powerful ways of recognizing people. And yet having said that, I've also known people that, and this was a mistake on me as a leader, I recall times when I thanked the person privately believing that that was what they wanted and what was going to be most meaningful for them. And yet I completely missed a public opportunity that they expected.
Candace Giesbrecht:And were hurt by the fact that I didn't publicly recognize them. And I'm like, I missed that. Thank you for sharing with me so that I know how to recognize you in a way that's meaningful for you. So recognition and reward, involvement and influence, we want to have a say, don't we? All of us want to have a say.
Candace Giesbrecht:I want to know that my voice matters. I want to know that I have the opportunity to bring my perspectives, bring my strengths, bring my concerns about maybe some risks that I see. And so that involvement and influences is critical. And again, a pretty low cost way to really make a difference in shifting the overall mental health and engagement of your staff. Engagement is the next one.
Candace Giesbrecht:So are people feeling like they're part of it? Are they feeling loyal? Are they feeling connected? Or are they feeling like they matter? And feeling like when they show up here, they're given their version of 100%, whatever that is today.
Candace Giesbrecht:They're bringing their best today and they aren't dreading and thinking about exit strategies every part of the day. They're really thinking like, I'm engaged. I matter here. Sometimes I think about engagement as gears that kind of go together. So, and when they miss, then everything doesn't run properly.
Candace Giesbrecht:You know, if you think about the inside of a watch or a clock with those gears, like it doesn't, it won't work properly unless everything's sort of working together. And to me, when those gears are engaged, that's kind of how it feels when we're engaged within our workplace. I skipped over workload management. I don't want to miss that one. So how much work?
Candace Giesbrecht:Like are we trying to put 50 pounds into a 20 pound bag, right? Like it's those days when we just feel like we're doing so much heavy lifting. We're pushing that boulder up the hill and it just keeps rolling back down. Workload management, super important. Balance.
Candace Giesbrecht:So do I have the opportunity to have the kinds of breaks or pauses, some flexibility maybe within my life and work. And this was another one. I have stories for all these things, but I really remember this one person that I worked with and they were I just envied the extent to which they could set boundaries and that they showed up on time, they left on time, they got all their work done within the allotted time. For me, I'm a little more fluid. If the thing that I need to do is clearest to me at 8PM, then I'm just going to do it then because then I sleep better.
Candace Giesbrecht:But I had to really just understand trying to make myself into someone I'm not also isn't mentally healthy. And we're not all wired the same, figuring out how do each of us manage our workload, find that work life balance, All of these things are intertwined, aren't they? Well, use that
Jessica Samuels:example of the cog and you used it for engagement. But I see that really that those are all part of the cog for that psychosocial factors of a mentally healthy workplace. A lot of these, and you said, are low hanging fruit. They seem fairly obvious. There are barriers, though, and workplaces and employers and employees are finding barriers to this.
Jessica Samuels:Like what would be some of the challenges? I mean, I can imagine of not knowing even how to start. Yeah, but and fair enough. Like, that's a long list. There's I know I have to know
Candace Giesbrecht:there's protection and physical safety.
Jessica Samuels:And then we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then there's pieces to each of that as So I can imagine staff turnover, growth or constriction of a company. So an employer may feel, Okay, we're in this groove or in this mentally healthy workplace group. And then who knows what the socioeconomic, political, whatever financial climate changes, things go awry and they have to start again. Yeah.
Jessica Samuels:That's really, really tough. And I wonder if there's even after a while, I wonder how employers are feeling like, gosh, we're never going to get this right. Do they ever 100% get it right?
Candace Giesbrecht:Well, I guess it depends in the eyes of whom, right? So maybe in the eyes of some of their employees, nope, haven't got it right yet. But maybe in, you know, when we're looking at, like, what are we measuring? Why and how? And, you know, we haven't even talked about measuring and there are some awesome free tools.
Candace Giesbrecht:There's a survey called guarding minds at work, which is completely free.
Jessica Samuels:Well, that actually goes into the measuring because I was wondering earlier, who determines if it's a mentally healthy workplace? Like does the CEO, the president say, that's it. We are mentally healthy. My work here is done. I'm sure that's not the case.
Candace Giesbrecht:It is not the case. What is the
Jessica Samuels:case then?
Candace Giesbrecht:Yeah. So, I mean, the hope is that there is some kind of measurement and there are a ton of different engagement surveys or different versions, but guarding minds at work is evidence based. So that means it's grounded in research. It's been around for quite a long time. And it's solid.
Candace Giesbrecht:And it measures these 13 different factors. What we used to do here at CMHA Kelowna, we used to do guarding mines annually. We switched to every two years just because it's just factoring in it. It does take a little bit of time and work mostly because the first step is measuring. But then we want to report back to staff.
Candace Giesbrecht:We asked you to tell us what you thought and here's what we heard.
Jessica Samuels:And want to do something about it.
Candace Giesbrecht:We want to do something. If we were to do three things within the next six months, what are the things that are going to make the biggest difference? And so hopefully, the investment in this isn't just on HR's plate. Hopefully, the entire senior leadership team has bought in to measuring this and identifying the plan. And then hopefully we also take the opportunity because, well, Mike Golic, our CEO, he often says there's what it is and what it does.
Candace Giesbrecht:And so what it is, is you get a scorecard it's with some traffic light coloring that shows you where you're in the green. Everything's looking great. Here's some cautionary areas. But by asking people, how are we doing in these areas? How are you feeling?
Candace Giesbrecht:How's it going? Then just by asking, we're making an impact. Now that impact is going to be short lived if we don't do anything about it. And if we keep asking people year over year for their input, but they don't really see any real change. But if we say to people, okay, like this happened, I don't mind sharing.
Candace Giesbrecht:When I came here a couple years ago, it was looking like a lot of our staff were at risk for burnout. That's what showed on our Guarding Minds report, lots of risks areas. And so when we dug a little bit further into the results, what we discovered was that there was probably a big opportunity for us that would accomplish both clear leadership and expectations, as well as a little bit of growth and development. And we saw that we could really improve our onboarding processes and just train people better at the start. But we decided which metric we wanted to move.
Candace Giesbrecht:We decided that we wanted to move the ones that were related to burnout. And we wanted to do that by focusing on this one thing, and really shining a light on it, and not just trying to accomplish 10 different things and do a wide and shallow kind of an approach. But we wanted to go deep on it. And I thought we would have got through it within about six months. But you know, I can say it ended up taking us close to two years before we really dug in because what we discovered was that job descriptions actually weren't really reflecting what the actual work was.
Candace Giesbrecht:So we did some work on those. And then that had an impact on our job postings. And when we looked at our job postings, then we realized, oh, hey, if we do a better job of articulating in the postings what the job actually is, then we might do a better job of attracting more of the right kinds of candidates that we want. So we've seen reductions in turnover, and we've seen better improve, like we've seen improvements within these scores. I'm not going to rest if there's even 1% of people who are right.
Candace Giesbrecht:These are the kinds of things I've experienced burnout. It's devastating and hard. So we're going to keep going. We will never be done. Okay.
Candace Giesbrecht:And we can celebrate that two years ago, we identified that this was a growth area and we decided we were going to tackle it. We were going to do what we could to try and shift this. And I mean, we also had fun while we were doing it, which I trust. There's what it is and what it does. I trust that it also made an impact because it was hilarious.
Candace Giesbrecht:We had groups of leaders in rooms looking at the job postings, they were going, Oh, I've been Yeah, no, we need to spend some time. And then what happens when leaders start spending time at the front lines a little bit more and really looking at how things are going then, I mean, we also, we went in to accomplish these one or two things, and we came out with a list of 10 more things that we really want to be following up on, checking in on, appreciating, celebrating, considering, especially as we look at adding different services or growing as an organization too.
Jessica Samuels:What's interesting to me about that is you talked about two years to address one part of one thing that you saw, which led to this, this, this and this in two years. And this is for a mental health organization. So it happens and can happen to anybody. Okay, just you mentioned burnout. We were going to have to have you back to have another conversation because burnout is a really interesting topic to me and obviously shows up in many aspects of our lives, primarily in the workplace.
Jessica Samuels:So we'll have to put a little pin in that and come Yeah, But there's somebody in a workplace whose senior leadership and employer listening now, they've just heard about this two year experience that CMH had. And they're like, oh, great, Yeah. Where do they start?
Candace Giesbrecht:How do they get started with even thinking about implementing or checking to see if they have a mentally healthy workplace? Yeah, I would recommend the Guarding Minds at Work tool, or even just going to the website. You can just Google Guarding Minds at Work and it'll come up, it'll be the top of the page for you. But there are also a lot of big resources that like toolkits and fact sheets and links out on any one of these topics. And I remember this was several years ago.
Candace Giesbrecht:And there was a study that was done somewhere in Europe, and it actually was looking at the mental health of elite athletes. Now, all I did with it was I took it to a person in our community and I said, if we were to replicate this study with your team, do you think we'd find similar findings? And the findings were things like young male athletes were twice as likely to develop eating disorders as a result of being a part of the sport. And young girls, so in this case, I just looked at boys and girls, were four times as likely to develop eating disorders as a result of being at an elite level in this particular sport. And so all I did was I just presented the stats and I said, If we were to run this within your team, what do you think we'd find?
Candace Giesbrecht:And initially, it was like resist, resist, resist. I think we got this. I've done all the things. But then when I just put those stats in front, then the conversation shifted big time. And this person said, We'd probably find very similar results.
Candace Giesbrecht:And then the follow-up is, How can I help? And so I think, to your question around employers, you could pick anything that you find of interest. You're a senior leader. Take one of the stats. I think there's going to be a lot of resources within the show notes.
Candace Giesbrecht:Have a look or take a snippet of something that maybe you've heard in this conversation and ask some folks. What do you think about this in our workplace? Because there's what it is and there is what it does. And so, sometimes just asking and beginning the conversation going first as a senior leader's huge stigma is still alive and well. There are so many people who are not asking for the help that they need because they're afraid of what people are going to think.
Candace Giesbrecht:Maybe they've had bad experiences when they have asked for help. And it's been minimized or shoved aside or maybe they were made fun of. We don't know what people say. There are a lot of reasons why people don't say, I'm not okay. I'm really struggling.
Candace Giesbrecht:And so, if a senior leader is listening, could even be something for them to say, At a meeting, I'm noticing I'm not myself these days. I'm thinking, like, I'm wondering if anybody else is feeling that way too. That would take a lot of courage. When we just begin the conversation, then amazing things can happen.
Jessica Samuels:Candice, thank you so much for being here.
Candace Giesbrecht:Thanks for having me.
Jessica Samuels:Well, we talked about some resources and definitely the 13 psychosocial factors, the guarding minds and a few others we're going to have linked on the show notes and as well as on the way forward podcast presented by Bean Credit Union page on the cmhacolona.org website. United has won. Beam's founding credit unions now serve 190,000 members across BC.
