Building a Healthy Workplace

Building a Healthy Workplace

At the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (the Agency), our people are the Agency’s greatest asset. We are committed to ensuring that wellness and well-being are a priority in our workplace and leading initiatives that make our workplace more positive and healthy. As part of our renewal story, we seek to create and promote a culture where we take the time to reflect on our wellness and take action to develop a healthier lifestyle and work habits.

It takes deliberate efforts and actions to have a meaningful and lasting impact on the culture of our workplace. As such, an action plan was developed to guide our progress. The plan requires a collective Team CEAA effort to ensure we reach our goal of creating a culture that enshrines psychological health, safety and well-being in all aspects of the workplace through collaboration, inclusivity and respect.

In line with our plan, a number of important actions have been taken and contribute to wellness in the workplace. For instance, the Mental Health and Wellness Champion hosted a session with all of the Agency’s executive leadership team. The session raised awareness of the impact leadership can have on the culture, and stimulated a discussion on the importance of adopting management strategies that maintain positive mental health. A speaker from the Federal Speakers Bureau for Mental Health also shared her personal experience to raise awareness of mental health symptoms and tools available to managers. A number of other staff sessions have also been organized throughout the Agency. We also created a dedicated page on our intranet site with helpful resources, including videos, to give employees access to all of the mental health and wellness tools and services available to them. The Agency launched a Workplace Wellness Blog that employees regularly write and submit articles to on topics such as leadership, relaxation and positive work practices.

In addition to creating awareness through sessions and open discussions, the Agency established a Joint Committee on Mental Health (JCMH) which consists of management, union, and employee representatives with support from ambassadors. The committee has been in place since January 2017 and plays an important role in providing the Agency’s leadership team with recommendations to continuously improve the workplace. Further, to ensure ongoing oversight and continuous progression against our action plan, Well-Being and Mental Health are standing items on the Agency’s Human Resources Committee and the Labour-Management Consultation Committee agendas.

In addition to these actions, the Agency’s 2017 Public Service Employee Annual Survey results revealed that workplace well-being was generally positive, in-line with or better than the average for the Public Service, and show improvements when compared to the Agency’s 2014 Public Service Employee Survey results.

Work on building a healthy workplace is never complete, but our efforts so far have had a positive impact in creating an open and inclusive environment for employees.

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