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What else can employers do?

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

1. Encourage active employee participation and decision making
2. Clearly define employees' duties and responsibilities
3. Promote work-life balance
4. Encourage respectful and non-derogatory behaviours
5. Manage workloads
6. Allow continuous learning
7. Have conflict resolution practices in place
8. Recognize employees' contributions effectively

(Adapted from Workplace Mental Health Promotion, A How-To Guide.)

Additionally, employers can:

• Assess psychological safety in your workplace and develop a plan to address it. See Guarding Minds @ Work (http://www.guardingmindsatwork.ca/ ) 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.
• Explicitly include mental health and psychological safety in your occupational health and safety (H&S) 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 (H&S) committee members about the importance of mental health in the workplace.
• Ask the worker representative(s) on the H&S 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.