As a human resource (HR) professional, you may be responsible for supporting psychological health and safety at the organization, leader, team and employee level. That is a lot of responsibility, and we have free evidence-based resources to help you with all of this.
We have broken down just a few of the most relevant resources for you into each category:
- Organizational level – including policies and programs
- Leader level – resources to help you support skill development for all leaders
- Team level – including an assessment that leads to targeted interventions you can facilitate
- Employee level – to help you deal with a wide variety of employee concerns and issues
Who takes care of the HR professional?
While your role is to help others thrive at work, many human resources professionals have no one who is looking out for their well-being. Check out these resources to help you take care of yourself first.
- Self-doubt and impostor syndrome – address self-doubt to reduce stress.
- Prevent burnout – you do this for others. Do it for yourself as well.
- Setting healthy boundaries at work – you can’t be all things to all people, all of the time.
- Tolerating confrontation – employees will get angry and sometimes even aggressive. Help improve your comfort level so this is less likely to cause you harm.
- Workload stress – you help employees with this, but do you manage it for yourself?
- Dealing with a stressful boss – you work with many different personalities, but some may be more challenging. These tips might help make it easier to interact with those you find difficult.
- Assessing your current situation – Take this quiz to consider your well-being at work.
HR professionals not only are responsible for supporting the success of employees in the organization, many are also leaders of their own team and are individuals who seek work-life balance for themselves. We have highlighted some of the resources most relevant and practical for those in this role.
Organizational level
Policies, programs and prevention strategies
Effectively managing the complexities that come with creating policies, programs, and prevention strategies that are both inclusive and effective can be challenging. The strategies and resources below can help:
- Addressing domestic violence
- Accommodation and return to work policies
- Bereavement leave policy
- Discrimination prevention and inclusion
- Emotional intelligence in organizations
- Employee assistance programs and mental health issues
- Employee stress prevention process
- Harassment and bullying prevention
- Hiring, orientation and termination
- Impairment policy
- Indigenous engagement planning
- Legal duty to accommodate
- Organizational culture
- Peer support programs
- Protecting the mental health of isolated workers
- Psychological health and safety policy recommendations
- Stigma reduction plan
- Suicide prevention
- Termination and layoff planning
- Trauma in organizations
- Union and management cooperation
- Violence prevention
- Wellness awareness program calendar – offers themes and ideas that leverage free resources to foster a healthier and more supportive work environment.
Psychological health and safety
Protecting employees from psychological injury due to negligent, reckless, or intentional acts is the foundation of psychological health and safety. This includes legislated responsibilities to protect against human rights violations, harassment and violence. It goes beyond legal requirements to promoting psychological health and inclusion by removing hazards such as unresolved conflict, bullying and stigma.
Knowing what psychological health and safety is in your unique setting, and how it benefits your employees and organization, allows you to consider steps you can take to prevent harm. Evidence for psychological health and safety and Psychological health and safety cost benefits demonstrate how this can have a positive impact on business goals and objectives.
Deciding to invest in positive change is easy, but sometimes knowing which steps to take to help you achieve this can be overwhelming. Where do we start with psychological health and safety provides insights into how to develop and implement a sustainable plan.
You can leverage a free tool like Guarding Minds at Work to assess psychological health and safety within your organization. Once you review the assessment and decide which areas you’d like to focus on, Evidence-based actions for psychological health and safety offers many low-cost and no-cost ideas for each psychosocial factor.
Leader level
HR professionals may face the challenging task of establishing trust within their organizations. Many individuals assume leadership roles without receiving adequate training on effective leadership. Nevertheless, the crucial aspects of creating, maintaining, and restoring trust, along with fostering an atmosphere of psychological safety, should not be overlooked.
Some of the most practical resources for you to facilitate with leaders are:
- Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment – identify strategies to support the psychological health and safety of employees at work.
- Emotional intelligence for leaders – assess and improve the ability to lead, manage, and support employees.
- Psychologically safe problem-solving and conflict management – strategies to help resolve workplace issues more effectively.
- Building trust for leaders – videos and strategies based on the 11 competencies that build trust.
- Strengthen leadership skills – activities that can be done individually or as part of leader development.
- Courageous leadership – tools, strategies, and resources to help you or anyone else who is looking to develop a team that promotes openness, cohesion and success.
Leadership has a huge impact on the morale and motivation of employees, as well as the success of any organization.
Psychological health and safety is the impact we have on employees as well as the impact employees have on each other. When leaders model the behaviours that support and protect psychological health and safety and hold employees accountable for the same, you will experience the benefits as an organization.
We also have a wide array of resources to help you help leaders deal with many employee concerns that could come up. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, contact us to ask what is available.
Some of our topics for leaders include:
- Accommodation planning
- Burnout response
- Communicating with emotional employees
- Conflict response
- Dementia response
- Employee workload stress
- Getting employee commitment
- Grief response
- Helping employees to manage change
- Identifying employee issues
- Impairment and addiction response
- Implicit bias
- Indigenous teachings
- Leader support for employees who are caregivers
- Leader support for newcomers
- Protecting the mental health of isolated workers
- Psychologically safe orientation strategies
- Responding to lying
- Retiree interview
- Return to work response
- Suicide response
- Supportive task improvement
- Violence response
Team level
The Psychologically Safe Team Assessment helps leaders assess how employees experience being a member of their team and provides a report with helpful strategies to create an action plan based on the results.
Dozens of team building activities and a Team agreement process to increase cohesion, inclusion and effectiveness of teams are also available.
Hybrid teams can help you learn to effectively support the success of employees who work on site and those who work remotely.
Employee level
Performance management
Implicit biases can affect performance evaluations, feedback, and employee development plans. The Performance management page provides insights on proactively addressing these biases and approaching this critical process in a way that is psychologically healthier and safer for all concerned while effectively supporting the success of each employee.
Employee burnout
HR professionals may face the challenge of addressing employee burnout and its negative impacts on workplace well-being and productivity. Burnout can result in decreased job satisfaction, increased turnover rates, and lower employee morale, making it a pressing HR concern.
- Burnout response for leaders offers resources and strategies designed to help HR professionals assess and address employee burnout.
- If you or someone else may be at risk, Prevent burnout has some tips and strategies to help.
Employee mental health issues
In the workplace, HR professionals may encounter situations where employees are struggling with mental illnesses, impacting their productivity and overall well-being.
One common struggle HR professionals face is recognizing their legal obligations in accommodating employees with mental health issues while fostering a psychologically safe environment. The Employee mental health issues page offers valuable tools and resources to help HR professionals:
- Recognize their legal obligations related to employee accommodation.
- Identify when an employee may be struggling with a mental health issue.
- Improve their comfort level when approaching an employee about their mental health. The free workshop materials will allow you to facilitate a training session with your leaders.
- Support employees with mental illness to remain productive.
- Avoid saying the wrong things and making the situation worse.
- Learn more about accommodation practices that support productivity and well-being.
Employee resources
You can provide resources directly to employees who are looking for support in addressing workplace issues such as conflict, bullying, accommodation and stress. The Employees at work page has a wide variety of resources, tools, and strategies including these topics:
- Career review – Gain a better understanding of what type of work you enjoy by reflecting on your work history.
- Constructive criticism – Tips and strategies on how to effectively provide feedback that’s meaningful and clear.
- Coping with change – Accepting and adapting to change is a learned skill. This offers tools and resources to anyone looking to improve their acceptance and adaptability skills.
- Dealing with a stressful boss – Provides employees with approaches to navigate different management styles and behaviours.
- Managing trauma at work – Offers steps, actions, and strategies to help those who experience personal triggers while on the job.
- Mental health at work – Provides resources and tools for employees who live with mental illness.
- Planning for a mentally healthy retirement – a series of questions to help proactively plan for the quality of life you desire in retirement.
- Prevent burnout – Strategies to help identify risks and prevent burnout for yourself.
- Requesting accommodation – Employees can use this information to request a plan or accommodation to address their workplace issues.
- Self-doubt and impostor syndrome – Explore what impostor syndrome is, what triggers it, and how you can take action to address your self-doubt.
- Working from home – Working from home comes with some unique challenges. Learn strategies to support your well-being while balancing your personal and work life.
- Working parents – Resources to support the mental health of working parents and children at all stages of their lives.
- Work-life balance tips – Balancing your work and personal life can be challenging and stressful at times. These tips and strategies can help.
Help those who may be struggling with health or caregiver issues. We searched for credible and practical resources on a wide variety of health concerns.
Support resilience, emotional intelligence and well-being. Free tools and approaches to help employees reduce stress and improve their mental health are provided.
Referring employees to resources provides tactful words to use when referring employees to resources for a variety of reasons. You can adapt these words for any resource.
Additional resources
There are also many free assessments, tools and workshop materials that include slide presentations, facilitator guides and participant handouts.
If you’re also a consultant or trainer in the areas of workplace mental health, leadership or psychological health and safety, please check out the additional resources available to you.