Introducing one missing competency gap for facilitating psychologically safe workplaces

A growing movement sees employers creating psychologically safe workplaces, much like the modern-day universal corporate initiatives of inclusion, diversity, and employee engagement. Many employers would never want to be viewed by their current and future workforce as not caring about such issues.

A critical objective for creating a psychologically safe workplace is driving accountability and learning for all workers and leaders to reduce mental harm and promote mental health. Flourishing workers are more likely to show up each day because they want to work with a sense of belonging and purpose than languishing workers.

If your employer cares about psychological health and safety and workers’ mental health, they must know how to create a culture where all employees feel welcomed, have a sense of belonging and purpose, and feel safe to speak up without fear of retaliation or retribution.

The CSA Z1003 Psychological Health and Safety Standard promotes the north star for what employers can do to create psychologically healthy and safe workplaces by leveraging a Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) approach.

Both ISO 4503 Occupational Health and Safety Management — Psychological Health and Safety at Work — Guidelines for Managing Psychosocial Risks and U.S. Surgeon General Releases New Framework for Mental Health & Well-Being in the Workplace provide recommendations for employers.

Many employers wanting to adopt or adapt any of the Standard’s guidelines, ISO or Surgeon General recommendations need to be clear on how to proceed. Individuals who have been designated or volunteer typically facilitate workplace mental health. Many do not have credentials or formal educational backgrounds; they are self-taught. The risk is individuals making decisions without the knowledge and skills required to maximize the available budget and resources.

How prepared are your psychologically safe facilitators?

Psychologically safe facilitators (PSFs) are persons assigned or volunteer to spend 5% to 100% of their time on workplace mental health. A PSF can be an HR or OHS professional, union member, worker, leader from any level, an external subject matter expert, or consultant supporting the organization.

PSFs’ primary role is facilitating workplace mental health strategies, programs, policies, and initiatives that the employer supports to mitigate mental harm and promote mental health. They typically do this through implementing and facilitating programs and policies to offer resiliency training or support an EFAP.

Missing competency gap for creating psychologically safe workplaces

The level of knowledge and skills in those assigned to facilitate psychologically safe workplaces and mental health (i.e., PSFs) is a core competency gap in creating psychologically safe workplaces. Information on what employers can do is available. However, training and guidance are lacking. Work Safe Prevention Services (WSPS) of Ontario invested resources to create a framework to help PSFs to take proactive action to protect and promote workers’ mental health, regardless of their size, sector, budget, or resources.

One lesson observed in the development of the WSPS Roadmap over the past two years is the benefit of providing PSFs with knowledge and skills to develop their confidence and core competency in facilitating psychological safety.

This observation was strengthened upon reviewing the results of our recent CSA study that showed more employers are addressing workplace mental health with planning and doing. However, there are gaps in measuring or checking what is and is not working. This may be partially explained by a lack of awareness of the benefits of implementing a PDCA approach.

The workplace environment impacts employees’ experience and mental health. This suggests having PSFs trained and prepared to lead effectively and facilitate the resources available is good for business, protects workers, and helps them flourish.

Self-reflection quiz

The following self-reflection quiz will allow you to evaluate your confidence in facilitating psychological safety in your workplace.

For each item, rate your confidence on a scale of 1 (low) to 7 (high) in your PSFs’ knowledge, skills, and competency. The higher the score, the more confidence you have in their ability to facilitate psychological safety and workplace mental initiatives.

How did they do?

Many PSFs have not been developed or trained and are unaware of what they do not know. Employers can use training, knowledge, and skills to help move their PSFs along a learning continuum. Employers and PSFs should seek training to help them mature and move psychological safety along as a profession through a credentialing process.

Through training and mentoring, PSFs can obtain the knowledge and skills to improve their ability to facilitate and move workplace mental health toward an evidence-based, continuous improvement versus a check-the-box approach.

Employers are encouraged to budget dollars for internal capacity building to help their PSFs obtain knowledge and skills to make evidence-based decisions. For workplace mental health to have an impact, employers must move from information sharing to habit creation, which is at the core of OHS management systems that promote ongoing learning, continuous improvement, and corrective action.

Dr. Bill Howatt is the Ottawa-based president of Howatt HR Consulting.