It’s a concept large companies are now familiar with: employees’ mental health has a direct impact on morale and productivity. While at least some large Canadian employers have started adopting mental health strategies in recent years, small and mid-size companies are lagging behind.
This needs to change, Ontario Minister of Labour Kevin Daniel Flynn said in an interview on Thursday ahead of a roundtable in Toronto about mental health for small and medium-size businesses.
Read: Hire staff with interpersonal skills to boost your bottom line
“Quite similar to occupational health and safety, investments in the mental wellness of employees actually pays off,” Flynn explained. “It’s not only the right thing to do; it makes good business sense as well in terms of productivity, presenteeism and absenteeism.”
Flynn’s mandate includes encouraging small and mid-size firms to invest in mental health, but he said his ministry is currently figuring out how exactly to do that.
“Small and medium-size businesses always have a problem with coming up to speed with issues like this simply for lack of resources or lack of knowing where to go next,” Flynn added. “In the business community […] it’s something we should have addressed in the past but we haven’t.”
Stigma is the main reason why smaller companies aren’t paying much attention to mental health, Bill Morneau, executive chair of Morneau Shepell, said in an interview ahead of the same roundtable. “There hasn’t been [enough of] a dialogue in our society. It’s purely the stigma attached with discussing mental health.”
At the same time, Morneau added, while working with employer clients, his company has observed an increase in stress and mental health challenges.
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Twenty percent of Canadians experience a mental illness in their lifetime, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Train staff
One step smaller businesses can take is to train managers so they can recognize early signs of mental health challenges and point employees to resources, Morneau advised.
“When we did a study a couple of years ago with Queen’s University and looked at where the greatest stress was happening in organizations, we were able to identity that it was often within parts of organizations where the managers were not well trained or effective at dealing with people management challenges,” Morneau explained.
Some larger organizations have started training their staff. A couple of years ago, Bell Canada introduced mandatory mental health training, which has three modules.
Read: How Bell trains its managers in mental health
Module 1 explains mental health basics. It also deals with recognition of early signs and provides tips about how to react when somebody takes a leave for mental health reasons.
Module 2 is more practical, offering staff recommendations about what to say when interacting with employees who may be experiencing mental health challenges.
Modules 1 and 2 are mandatory for all Bell employees. Module 3, the most practical one, is optional.