Today is World Mental Health Day, with the focus for this year spotlighting the important role of employers in prioritizing, promoting and protecting employee mental health in the workplace.
Never has the conversation felt more urgent.
The importance of this topic is critical for Corporate Canada: a recent Telus Health survey found that 78 per cent of workers have a high or moderate mental health risk, with mental health scores reaching pandemic-level lows. Faced with realities such as the growing impacts of climate change, a rise in hate, social and geopolitical challenges, constant technological change and more, people are coming to work every day experiencing individual and collective pressures on their mental health and well-being. As employers, it’s our responsibility to support the mental health and well-being of our people.
For us, this topic is also personal. We are leaders who have not only focused on mental health as part our Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (ID&E) strategy for the past decade, but who have also personally experienced mental health challenges.
In this post, we’d like to share our reflections of how employers can practically prioritize, promote and protect mental health at work to create lasting change.
Prioritize
Talking about mental health at work requires leaders and managers to loudly and visibly lead by example in their actions, words and relationships with their teams. Yet 26 per cent of employees in Canada say their manager does not prioritize mental health—and the mental health score of this group is nearly 16 points lower than those with managers who do. This mental health gap brings real costs to business issues like productivity and retention.
To ensure we were setting the tone from the top, in 2014 our firm embedded mental health in our Inclusion, Diversity & Equity (ID&E) strategy and, in 2017, we appointed one of us (Denis) as our Chief Mental Health Officer—a first for our firm and in Corporate Canada. With the goal of advancing a mentally healthy culture, Denis regularly connects with leadership teams across the country to put mental health on the agenda. This has had a positive ripple effect across our culture today, with countless other leaders sharing their own mental health stories with their local teams to promote safety and support.
We see the evidence every day that these efforts are having an impact: over the past five years, we’ve seen a nine per cent lift in our people reporting that they feel comfortable approaching a colleague or leader if they are experiencing a mental health challenge.
Promote
As a firm, we provide our people and their families with a $3,000 annual mental health benefit, fully funded by the firm, and access to a confidential employee and family assistance program. However, even with a great benefits package, we continue to hear that not everyone is aware of it or knows how to access these resources. This important feedback underscores the importance of both consistency and simplicity in communications.
Tactics we have found to be effective in promoting our mental health benefits include creating a curated page on our internal employee portal where people can quickly and easily search and access the resources that work for them.
In everything we do, we have found nothing beats the power of storytelling to create awareness and action. Through our regional Mental Health Networks, our people across the country regularly come together to share their experiences, illustrating in practical ways how these resources benefited their mental health and well-being.
No matter the size of your organization and no matter your budget, you can invest in making resources visible and accessible to all, regularly communicate about your benefits and share stories about how people are using them. Many free mental health resources are available in Canada; we have listed some of them at the end of this post.
Protect
Through the power of education, we can break stigma and enhance the effectiveness of the mental health support leaders and peers can provide each other at work. When it comes to this education, our experience has shown us that integrating mental health education into key groups and moments has generated clearer and more sustained impacts than one-off, blanket events or sessions.
For example, we have embedded mental health education into existing leadership development programs for all newly promoted managers and partners. This education equips them in their new leadership roles with the awareness and skills needed to better support the mental health of themselves and their teams. We also provide mental health education to all new hires, enabling them to experience and contribute to our mentally healthy culture from the beginning of their employment journey.
Through our internal employee resource groups—our People Networks—we also regularly host mental health education. For example, our Pan-Asian and Black Professionals Networks bring culturally competent content, facilitators and role models to ensure their unique experiences and cultures are reflected.
We also are always listening to the unique mental health needs of our People Networks. Some of these needs have resulted in the introduction of new resources. For example, our Indigenous Wellness benefit, which covers the costs for First Nations, Inuit and Métis team members related to cultural and spiritual practices, medicines and materials.
Now more than ever, there is a clear call to action for Corporate Canada to prioritize, protect and promote mental health. Together, we can contribute to a more prosperous country by investing in the mental health of our workforce.
Read more about our Mental Health strategy and initiatives in our 2023 ID&E report.
Resources
World Mental Health Day (https://wmhdofficial.com)
Telus Mental Health Index (https://go.telushealth.com/telus-mental-health-index)
KPMG Canada’s 2024 Black in Corporate Canada Survey
Jack.org (https://jack.org/Home)
BounceBack (https://cmha.ca/bounce-back)
Movember (https://ca.movember.com)
