Canadian Safety Reporter - sample

4 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2017 CSR | June 2017 | News nizations and HR professionals over the past several years, deci- phering the numbers and chart- ing a course to address them is becoming a prime concern. Behind the numbers When it comes to the statistics about women and depression, not everyone interprets the data in the same way. "Women are more likely to report and be di- agnosed," says Mary Ann Bayn- ton, principal with Mary Ann Baynton and Associates, and co- chair of the Technical Commit- tee for the National Standard of Canada on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. "It's not necessarily that they have more mental health challenges." Baynton points to work by Dr. Daniel Freeman of Oxford Uni- versity, an expert in the field. In a 2015 article in Bustle maga- zine, Freeman was paraphrased: "Women are proportionally more likely to seek help than men because of men's reluctance to admit to 'unmasculine' feelings or experience." Freeman added, "We can never know exactly how many men are not reporting psy- chological problems." On the other hand, women could be at greater risk for de- pression. "There are three main areas that contribute to whether or not someone develops a men- tal health issue," says Paula Allen, vice president of research, inte- grative solutions, with Morneau Shepell, "Those are biology, stress and social support, and in all of those three areas there's some evidence that women have more challenges than men." Biological factors can in- clude anything from genetics, hormone shifts, and even brain trauma. "Women have a differ- ent physiology: puberty starts earlier, there is a risk of postpar- tum depression. These aren't major factors individually, but they start showing a trajectory toward higher risk," says Allen. "When it comes to stress, what matters is how much stress the person has, the persistence of that stress and whether or not they have traumatic stress," says Allen. She points out that typi- cally, women have stress from multiple sources, including work, family and elder care. The third point, she says, is quality of an individual's social support and coping skills. "Very often in relationships women take on the role of accountability in terms of the support provider, not the support recipient," says Allen. "So they're not really get- ting the same support in return." When it comes to millenni- als and higher reported rates of anxiety, Allen points to social support as a significant problem area. "In studies, the younger cohort tends to have a high vol- ume of friends, but when they're asked if there's one person in particular they can go to for sup- port in a crisis, a higher propor- tion say no than in any previous generation," says Allen. "A lot of people take that fact that we are seeing higher preva- lence among younger cohorts and believe it's because they're more open to speaking about mental health challenges," says Allen. "That may be so but it's not significant enough to ac- count for what we see." She adds, "It's not just help-seeking behav- iour that might be increasing, we're seeing changes that don't relate to that." In particular, she points to statistics suggesting that the proportions of students in universities having psychotic breaks and suicidal ideations has been increasing over time. Allen also points to many younger workers' compromised coping skills reinforcing depres- sive symptoms. "We're finding the younger generation is more likely, if they're under stress, to isolate," says Allen. "They'll put on headphones, listen to music, use social media to shield them- selves from face-to-face contact with people." An APA study found 39 per cent of millennials reported an increase in stress in the past year, with another 52 per cent saying stress kept them awake at night in the past month. "Anecdotally, when you talk to people who are younger, the opinion is that the expectation on them to succeed, to achieve and to win is greater than on past generations, and yet the op- portunities to do so in the work world are fewer," says Baynton. Employers can help Being proactive is a key part of tackling the problem. "Protecting psychological safety rather than waiting to address mental illness is really how workplace health has evolved," says Baynton. "Wheth- er you're younger or older or male or female, protecting psychologi- cal safety should be a responsibility of the workplace in the same way we protect physical safety." Specifically, Allen says em- ployers should address the bio- logical, stress and support con- ditions that can impact mental health — such as sleep depriva- tion and health and wellness. "Wellness programs and a corporate culture that supports healthy living can have a very big impact on mental health," says Allen. Unearthing and addressing the causes of unnecessary stress can make a difference, too. "The National Standard for Psycho- logical Health and Safety is re- ally a roadmap for employers to understand different stressors inside the employers' control, and how to mitigate them," says Allen. "Stressors might include communication that's not re- spectful, work overload, a lack of growth opportunities — all things that employers can ad- dress." She adds, "Every job has stress, and some stress is actu- ally good and motivating, but what we're talking about is get- ting rid of the stress that's harm- ful and negative." When it comes to impacting employees' coping skills, Allen points out this is an area where employers can offer training — and managers can model good coping skills. Allen also points out the im- portance of effective work teams to promote a sense of psycholog- ical safety. "Do people feel they can ask for help, if they need it, if they feel overwhelmed? And do you have support mechanisms like EAP, outside of the work- place, to help people get the re- sources they need to effectively manage problems?" To help organizations address several of these points, Baynton recently assembled a group of experts, including researchers in the fields of emotional intelli- gence, compassion fatigue, trau- ma and resilience—to design a guide called Building Stronger Teams. "The goal was to create activities for the workplace that will build employees' and lead- ers' resilience," says Baynton. Undifferentiated support "Steps to support psychological safety in the workplace are de- signed to help everyone — wom- en, men, millennials, GenXers, everyone," says Baynton. "Each person who takes part will ex- perience it a bit differently, but an employer takes the same ap- proach with every employee and allows each person to gain from it what they will." Allen, too, sees merit in of- fering undifferentiated support to employees. "Overall, I think the strategies to address key factors for mental health chal- lenges make sense for everyone," she says. "There may be a higher prevalence of depression among women or millennials, but there's also a fairly high preva- lence for men, as well." It's smart business Steps taken to improve psycho- logical safety in the workplace have other benefits. "If you think of an organiza- tion that does well in any of these areas — productive problem solving, getting rid of unneces- sary stress, and so on — those are the things that help increase pro- ductivity," says Allen. "Those are things people respond to when they think of engagement and a positive work experience." Psychological safety < pg. 1 Women more likely to report stress problems FURTHER READING National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/ English/national-standard Guarding Minds @ Work www.guardingmindsatwork.ca/ Building Stronger Teams www.workplacestrategiesformentalhealth. com/pdf/Building_Stronger_Teams_ Oct_2016_EN.pdf

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