Did you know there are people experiencing mental health challenges in your workplace? Consider the following:

• One in five Canadians experiences a mental health or addiction problem;
• Mental health is the leading cause of disability in Canada; and
• By the time Canadians reach 40 years of age, 50 per cent have had mental illness.

With close to one million job openings expected in the province by 2025, B.C. is experiencing a labour shortage that can be felt across industries in all sizes of business. This is drawing awareness to the fact that people with disabilities represent a relatively untapped talent pool of 334,000.

The Opportunity for Employers
Disabilities can be physical or mental, visible or invisible. One way to ensure your organization is inclusive of people with disabilities, is to make mental health a priority in the workplace—and look to the benefits of such “disabilities.”

Comprised of leaders across industry in B.C., the Presidents Group has been grounded in the premise that hiring individuals with disabilities is good for business.

Why? In short, people with disabilities make great employees. Consider that the following holds true among people with disabilities:

• Staff retention was 72 per cent higher;
• 86 per cent had average or better attendance; and
• 90 percent performed equal or better than their coworkers without disabilities.

Leaders Leading Change
Originally formed in 2013, the Presidents Group represents a network of change-driven B.C. business leaders who are champions for a more accessible, inclusive workplace. Bringing forward the individual success stories is key to their greater, shared success.

As co-chair of the Presidents Group, Tamara Vrooman, CEO of Vancity, offers one such story in progress.

“The Presidents Group as a group of business leaders is really committed to results and action,” explains Vrooman, “I think our collective commitment is to really move the needle on the number of people that are employed in our province who identify as having diverse abilities.”

A Study in Mental Health
As part of their overall commitment to diversity and inclusion, Vancity is committed to ensuring that mental health awareness is a priority for their organization. In doing do, Vancity has adopted the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the workplace to achieve the following objectives:

• Reducing stigma around mental health in the workplace;
• Reinforcing that mental health can affect anyone—even those who you least expect; and
• Giving employees tools to better understand and cope with mental health conditions

Taking Mental Health to Work
In order to make their objectives and working reality, Vancity undertook a number of approaches to make mental health a priority in the workplace. These included:

1. Mental Health Lunch and Learns: Open to all employees, Vancity created a series of lunch-and-learns on a variety of topics, significant to both work and life. These included sessions on resiliency, stress relaxation and meditation, as well as caring for aging parents, managing finances, enhancing relationships and making healthy lifestyle choices.

2. Mindful Meditation: Vancity trained eight employees to be mindful meditation facilitators. The commitment from the trained employees was to provide weekly, guided meditation experiences for a large percentage of their employee base. Calm Monkey was the organization that provided training.

3. Better Utilizing Employee and Family Assistance Programs: Vancity started leveraging their EFAP in different situations. For example, Morneau Sheppell counsellors were called when there was a disturbing incident (eg. a shooting occurred near a Vancity branch and employees witnessed it), but also proactively when Vancity thought that a learning exercise might serve all well (eg. learning about Indigenous history). Vancity also started using EFAP to facilitate some of their lunch and learns.

4. Employee Mental Health Advisory Group: Vancity has created an employee advisory group on mental health as a subset of their Occupational Health & Safety group. The objective of this group is to gain insights from people with lived experiences with mental health. This group will help advise Vancity on how the organization can support employees with mental health challenges.

5. Mental Health First Aid Provider: Vancity has a few employees trained as Certified Mental Health First Aid Providers through the Mental Health Commission of Canada. The certified provider helps people through mental health crises, including intervention, immediate support and guidance, and having conversations about mental health.

Top of Mind Learnings
Vancity continues to learn from their experiences. As to their greatest learnings regarding mental health in the workplace:

1. Know What Resources You Have Access to: There are mental health initiatives that have a budget associated with them, and other activities that are easier to implement with a very low/no budget. Knowing what resources you have access to can help determine what initiatives you choose to implement.

2. Commit to an Ongoing Commitment: Vancity recognizes that in order for their initiatives and activities to have a lasting impact, they requires an ongoing, organizational commitment. Ensuring the conversation continues, remains relevant, and happens throughout the organization is part of that ongoing commitment.

3. Proactive vs Reactive: There is tremendous value in addressing mental health preventatively—before issues turn into crises. Vancity is increasingly trying to do more in preventing mental health crises by supporting employees early on and proactively.

Vanguarding Positive Change
Vancity is still on the journey of creating increased awareness about mental health and its effect on all employees. Having already seen increased conversation, buy-in and employees sharing their personal stories, they are looking forward to continuing with their initiatives and monitoring progress.

To learn more about what Vancity, and other organizations are doing, to be more accessible, inclusive employers, visit www.accessibleemployers.ca.

Sources:
BC Government. (2016) B.C. Labour Market Outlook shows steady economic growth in 2025
Statistics Canada. (2016) Canadian Survey on Disability 2012
Deloitte. (2017) The road to inclusion: Integrating people with disabilities into the workplace.

Mahin Rashid is a strategic community development leader and dedicates her career to ensuring equal opportunities for everyone in our province. She works currently as an accessibility and inclusion consultant for the Presidents Group, a network of senior business leaders working to improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities in BC.

(PeopleTalk Spring 2018)