It is an employer’s duty to provide a psychologically safe workplace, said Dr. Martin Shain, director and founder of the Neighbour at Work Centre, speaking at the Shepell•fgi Day of Discovery in Toronto on November 5. In law, how we treat mental injury is a relatively new concept, he said.
Mental injury is “significant harm to mental health arising from negligent, reckless or intentional conduct by actors in the workplace,” Shain said.
Shain emphasized that employers need to assess and address the risks to mental health in their workplaces. “We don’t hire the right people to manage and sympathize, people who try to understand the legitimate rights and interests of others—that interpersonal competence,” he said.
“We need to bring more people with those skills into the workplace, promote evaluation and train for that trait.”
Management needs to be more aware of these issues and be prepared to invest in their people, said Dr. Alain Sotto, chief physician at Ontario Power Generation.
Employers need to start treating their employees as patients, Sotto stressed. “Patients are human beings and we need to engage them in this conversation—what is the main barrier for you to return to work?”
CEOs get it
Even though finding the right managers will take work, Dr. Robert Francis, founder and chief medical officer of the Medcan Clinic, said that mental health is on organizations’ radars. “The majority of CEOs are aware of the shift and keen on sponsoring mental health issues,” he said, adding that organizations can help the individual understand the issue. “It’s not just saving a dollar or two; it’s saving the individual.”
Stigma remains
But even if CEOS “get it,” the stigma of mental illness is still there.
Shain said that in the context of mental injury, we’re stigmatizing the wrong people. “People on the wrong end of mental injury are good people,” he said. “They are [simply] rendered incapable as functioning as normal at work and at home.”
Harm arises out of choices in the workplace, he said, which are made to ignore or refuse the rights of others. The duty to provide a psychologically safe workplace, he continued, requires that employers take action to help eliminate the source of harm.