The Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace and MyWorkplaceHealth.com founder Joti Samra are launching an online tool aimed at helping employers assess their leaders’ ability to foster psychologically safe workplaces.
The tool can be used by employers to evaluate how they implement and promote communication and collaboration, social intelligence, problem solving and conflict management, safety and security and fairness and equality. They can then compare their self-assessment with feedback on the same metrics from employees.
Read: Specific solutions required to move dial on mental-health treatment, costs
Leaders will also be able to see how their workplace strategies measure up against the national standard of Canada for psychological health and safety in the workplace.
The standard addresses the need for companies to make sure their leaders “have the training and skills to support psychological safety,” said Mary Ann Baynton, the program director for the Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace, in a press release. “We wanted to find a way for employers and leaders to meet this requirement.”
Samra, a Vancouver-based psychologist who was part of the technical committee that created the standard, said the assessment is based on evidence that employees report higher job satisfaction and engagement, stronger relationships in the workplace and overall psychological well-being when working for organizations that are psychologically safe.
Read: MHCC releases guide to adopting the psychological health standard