Creating change workshops

We put together the On the agenda workshop series to help you develop evidence-based psychological health and safety policies and strategies with your team. This series will help you consider psychosocial factors and existing approaches to improvement and employee input. With this information, your organization will be able to make thoughtful and effective policy and process changes.

There is a workshop for each of the psychosocial factors and each workshop is broken into 2 parts, Creating awareness and Creating change. In Creating awareness, you will engage your team in reviewing how your workplace performs in the given psychosocial factor and collaboratively drafting low-cost or no-cost solutions for improvement. In Creating change, you will walk decision makers through reviewing the solutions proposed in Creating awareness and writing or updating organizational policies to reflect the most effective employee-drafted solutions.

If you have not yet done the Creating awareness workshop, see On the agenda workshop series.

The workshops for each factor follow the same outline for ease of facilitation. Creating change is optional, however it must follow a Creating awareness session.

Creating change outline

1. Before you begin, review the Facilitating this topic section in the facilitator guide for suggestions on how to prepare for the workshop.
2. Review the entire facilitator guide before you begin. You’ll get tips to help you lead decision-makers through developing policies and processes to improve psychological health and safety in your organization. You can customize the approach for your audience.
3. Book a minimum of 2.5 hours with your decision-makers to go through the presentation and facilitate the Creating change process. The facilitator guide will explain how to choose who should be present in the meeting. Each facilitator guide also includes sample invitation wording.
4. Agree on how you’ll engage in a psychologically safe discussion.
5. Review the psychosocial definitions and statements from Guarding Minds at Work.
6. Review the input from employees who participated in the relevant Creating awareness workshops and the list of suggested evidence-based actions. 
7. Share the process to establish the following criteria in your policies and processes:
   
   • Appropriateness
   • Acceptability
   • Accessibility
   • Efficiency 
   • Effectiveness
   • Safety
8. Apply the Creating change process to the ideas you generated through using the worksheets provided.
9. Vote to prioritize the various ideas generated.
10. Refine the ideas. 
11. Implement the ideas by integrating them with existing policies or processes.

You’ll find a complete set of resources for each psychosocial factor. Once you’ve completed one, you may find your policy or process changes have a positive impact on more than one psychosocial factor. At any time, you can choose another factor to focus on using a similar process. We also suggest that you revisit each of the factors every few years to ensure continued psychological health and safety in your policies and processes.

Creating change workshops

Balance

In a work environment with positive balance, employees are supported to manage the demands of work, family and personal life.

Civility and respect

In a work environment with civility and respect, all stakeholders are considerate and fair in their interactions with each other.

Clear leadership and expectations

In a work environment with clear leadership and expectations, employees know what they need to do, have confidence in their leaders and understand impending changes.

Engagement

In a work environment with positive engagement, employees are motivated to do their job well and feel connected to their work, co-workers, and organization.

Growth and development

In a work environment with positive growth and development, employees receive ongoing encouragement and support to enhance interpersonal, emotional and job-related skills.

Involvement and influence

In a work environment with positive involvement and influence, employees are included in discussions and have input into decisions that impact their respective jobs.

Organizational culture

In a work environment with positive organizational culture, there are shared values of trust, honesty, fairness and accountability.

Protection of physical safety

In a work environment with positive protection of physical safety, management takes appropriate action to protect all employees against injury and illness and ensures they have what they need to do their jobs safely.

Psychological and social support

In a work environment with positive psychological and social support, all employees feel a sense of belonging and contribution.

Psychological competencies and demands

In a work environment where psychological competencies and demands are not a health risk, employees are continually supported to meet the psychological demands of their position.

Psychological protection

In a work environment with adequate psychological protection, employees are free from bullying, harassment, stigma and discrimination.

Recognition and reward

In a work environment with positive recognition and reward, there is appropriate acknowledgement and appreciation of employees’ efforts in a fair and timely manner.

Workload management

In a work environment where there is positive workload management, employees feel supported to complete their assigned tasks and responsibilities successfully.

Other chronic stressors as identified by employees.

The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace lists “other chronic stressors as identified by employees” as one of the psychosocial factors that employers need to assess and address. The best way to find out what these chronic stressors are is to directly ask your employees, as every work situation is unique. This can be as simple as sending out an email or survey with the following questions with room for employees to fill in whatever response makes sense to them:

• What are the stressors at work that you are experiencing? Please include both significant stressors and more minor, but chronic stressors.
• What changes could we make that would have a positive or protective effect on your level of workplace stress?

You can also read more about Sector specific stressors for psychological health and safety which includes potential approaches for first responders, human services professionals, call centre workers, educators, dangerous industry workers, high-tech workers, shift workers and remote workers.