The ESDC Integrated Mental Health Framework

Our goal

A workplace that promotes psychological health and safety and encourages employees and managers to address mental health concerns openly

• To improve our quality of life
• To better meet the challenges of our jobs
• To better serve Canadians

Factors that contribute to a mentally healthy workplace

• Employee engagement and development
• Health and safety in the workplace
• Work content and characteristics
• Clear Leadership direction
• Support and balance
• Organizational Culture: Creating an organizational culture that supports mental health in the workplace is a shared responsibility.

The Framework is based on three pillars

• Promote: Promote understanding, awareness and acceptance.
• Prevent: Equip managers and executives to proactively support employees in maintaining good mental health and addressing mental health issues.
• Resolve: Build supportive mechanisms for employees and managers dealing with mental health challenges.

Our expected outcomes

Employees can identify and recognize their own stress levels and stressors, and know how and where to seek help.

Managers can respond to mental health issues and support employees.

Executives support recovery to keep healthy people at work, and to facilitate return to work.

The stigma of seeking help or discussing mental health issues is reduced among managers and employees.

Our priorities

• Enhanced awareness and increased understanding to remove the stigma and improve dialogue among management, staff and colleagues;
• Tailored training for executives, managers and human resources professionals on how to support and respond to mental health issues in the workplace; and
• Development of tools to improve communication between senior management and staff; to influence prompt and effective responses to mental health issues; and to provide quicker manager access to expert resources.

What can you expect to see?

• An iService site as a single entry point to access tools and resources on mental health.
• Access to self-serve information to help assess individual mental health.
• A suite of learning solutions to better understand mental health and illness.
• A guide to facilitate team-based conversations on mental health.
• An improved approach for promoting a respectful workplace and restoring the health of the workplace in a timely manner, including addressing complaints of harassment.

How will we know if we got it right?

This Framework and action plan are evergreen. Activities will be monitored through regular data collection and feedback from managers and employees and the Framework will be revised to reflect what we learn.