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Lessons from the Psychologically Safe Workplaces Summit

Canada’s human resources and occupational health and safety communities want to create more psychologically safe workplaces, but they need information and support to move the needle.

That much was clear during the Psychologically Safe Workplaces Summit, hosted by OHS Canada and Talent Canada on June 25. The event captured the attention of more than 1,500 registrants from across the country, all eager for open dialogue and information to help them promote mental health and prevent psychological harm in their workplaces.

Defining psychological safety

“A psychologically safe workplace is one where employees feel comfortable taking risks, expressing their ideas and concerns, and, frankly, being able to admit their mistakes without fear of negative consequences or judgment,” explained Coren Waines, manager of the mental health and well-being department at Medcor Canada. “It’s that shared belief that co-workers are not going to embarrass, reject or even punish us for speaking up.”

Waines notes that a psychologically safe workplace may result in increased employee engagement, motivation and innovation, as well as improved team performance.

However, there are two barriers that, in her experience, typically prevent employees from speaking up at work.

“First of all, many people aren’t sure who to talk to about their challenges or their struggles they’re facing, and they keep it bottled up inside. They keep going through the motions and never truly address the cause of the stress,” Waines noted. “Then, fear… Fear can stop us dead in our tracks and totally prevent us from showing up the way we want to, not just in our work environment, but at home as well.”

Making the concept accessible

During the opening keynote, Troy Winters, national health and safety co-ordinator for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, shared a powerful metaphorical framework that distilled complex psychological safety concepts into easy-to-understand, actionable insights.

Through The Fish Tank Tale, Winters drew comparisons between a fish tank and the workplace. Like a fish tank, he noted, the workplace requires special care to maintain a healthy environment. If either place starts to become unhealthy, there will be warning signs. In a fish tank, Winters said, those warning signs may be dirty water and, ultimately, fish deaths; in workplaces, the signs may be less obvious unless you’re watching for them.

“In workplaces, this is the stage where you start to see people taking more sick days,” he said. “People are disengaged at meetings. There’s higher turnover – maybe in a certain department or maybe it’s the whole organization. You may have a feeling that something’s off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it.”

At this stage, some organizations will choose to press on, doing what they’ve always done, while others may opt for what Winters calls “random acts of wellness” – one-off actions or initiatives that have noble goals, but don’t achieve any meaningful, lasting change.

Think of it like losing one fish in an unhealthy tank, then immediately introducing a new fish. Unless you correct the conditions that made the first fish sick, it will just be a matter of time until the new fish dies too.

“I think a lot of organizations are in this place right now,” said Winters. “Maybe they’ve lost good employees… Maybe there’s been a harassment complaint or maybe they’re looking at engagement scores and seeing some terrible numbers right now, so they’re ready to learn what psychological health and safety actually is.”

Just like in a fish tank, it’s critical to address problems promptly when they show up in the workplace. Specificity and consistency are key.

“It’s not enough to say, ‘treat people with respect.’ We need clear expectations. We need clear procedures on how we handle conflicts,” said Winters. “We need organizations to maintain the commitment – not just do the daily work, not just respond reactively, not wait till things get bad.”

Winters said most successful psychological health and safety programs include formal and informal feedback mechanisms, behavioural indicators, diversity and inclusion, and input from external workplace health experts.

When implemented purposefully and maintained diligently, these elements can contribute to a psychologically safe workplace, just as routine filter maintenance and water testing can contribute to a healthy fish tank.

Facilitating psychological health and safety

Bill Howatt, founder of Howatt HR, stressed that most organizations need psychological safety facilitators with a host of knowledge and skills to sustain a workplace psychological health and safety program over the long run.

In Howatt’s opinion, a psychological safety facilitator requires the following basic competencies: foundational mental health literacy; the ability to differentiate between mental health, mental illness and mental disorders; and a basic understanding of neurodivergence.

“They don’t have to be experts,” noted Howatt. “What they need to do is have clarity so they can start to get the tools they need.”

“Our psychological safety facilitators need to understand that you can launch a program and hit a wall pretty quickly,” Howatt added. When this happens, many organizations have an instinct to overreact, adding more elements to their programs without taking the time to understand what’s not working, and why.”

Psychological safety facilitators, on the other hand, will have training, mentoring and experience in fields such as occupational health and safety or human resources that empower them to view challenges strategically, and employ deductive reasoning and problem-solving skills to address those challenges.

“They’re going to understand what a psychosocial factor is, what a psychosocial hazard is, understand what a protective factor is. They’ll understand what controls are,” Howatt said. “There are a lot of nuances, and this is a new vocation in my mind – a new set of skills that people can be learning and mastering.”

However, he warned, “We have to be careful because there’s a lot of snake oil out there right now.”

Making a business case for prevention

“… Psychological health and safety can remain a hard sell, and this is despite a mental health crisis right now,” noted Olga Morawczynski, founder of Heal-3. “We really need to acknowledge that work plays a significant role in our mental health and a significant role, I would say, in the mental health crisis.”

While she observed that the workplace can exacerbate mental health challenges, it also provides opportunities for recovery, as well as preventative mental health supports.

Morawczynski pointed to a Deloitte study that found every dollar an organization spends on mental health programming delivers a $4 return on investment (ROI).

“We’re seeing other literature that shows there’s a reduction in disability claims, which is a huge cost driver for organizations. There’s a drop in absenteeism rates,” she said. However, she cautioned that more research is needed to determine exactly what it is that delivers this positive impact.

Morawczynski’s research estimates that mental health costs organizations approximately $10,000 per employee per year. That figure includes: prevention efforts (i.e., employee benefits, leadership training), which represent 22 per cent of current employer costs; early intervention (i.e., costs tied to stress, burnout and disengagement, such as more sick days, presenteeism and overtime), which amounts to 37 per cent of current employer costs; and costs associated with crisis and exits (i.e., disability leave, complex accommodations and employee turnover), which represent 41 per cent of current employer costs.

“The smallest investment today is in the prevention side, and the largest costing today is in the crisis and exit,” Morawczynski said. “What’s that telling me as a data monger and geek is that we are spending way too little on the upfront early side and most of our money is going to crisis management when people are too sick to show up for work.

“It really pays off to take a long-term view.”

Looking to the future

When it comes to ways individuals and organizations can move the needle on psychological health and safety, all of the presenters agreed talking about it is key.

“We have to put it on the table. We have to talk about it,” said Carmen Bellows, a registered psychologist and contributor to the mental health strategy at Sun Life. She reiterated the need to recognize the value in early interventions and stressed the importance of offering benefit packages that include a variety of regulated health professionals, psychological supports, and pharmacological supports for employees.

“There is no health without psychological health,” Bellows said.

The Psychologically Safe Workplaces Summit was made possible through the generous support of Platinum Sponsors Sun Life and Medcor Canada.

Missed the Psychologically Safe Workplaces Summit? Catch the sessions on demand at https://www.talentcanada.ca/virtual-events/psychologically-safe-workplaces-summit/.