Creating Psychosocially Healthy, Safe and Productive Workplaces:
Addressing Motivation, Productivity, and Stress-Related Absenteeism and Disability – by Working with Their Brains in Mind

We know that there’s a solid business case for developing healthy workplaces – doing so makes good business sense. With growing numbers of employees experiencing higher levels of stress-related absenteeism and disability, we know that doing so also makes good people sense. What’s less well known is how to do it.

For nearly ten years, the challenging state of many Canadian workplaces has been extensively surveyed and studied. Watson Wyatt, Linda Duxbury, the Conference Board, Bill Wilkerson, Graham Lowe, many employee assistance providers, Martin Shain, Joan Burton, and many of their fellow workplace health pioneers have been consistent and clear. These researchers continue to tell us that psychological conditions (including stress, anxiety, and depression) – brought on by unhealthy workplace cultures and workloads beyond the control of many workers – are the leading causes of both short-term and long term disability in Canadian workplaces.

Poor organizational health and its symptoms – low motivation, lost productivity, and high levels of stress-related absenteeism and disability – reflect poor brain health. This workshop provides you with a detailed where-to-focus model that will help you to identify and work with those aspects of your workplace culture most in need of attention.

Program Topics

What is a healthy workplace?

• What are psychosocial hazards?
• What are the effects of the psychosocial environment on employee health?
• What contribution do psychosocial hazards make to workplace injuries?
• What indicators would you use to assess the psychosocial health of your workplace?
• What is the business case for healthy workplaces?
• What is the changing nature of success in your workplace?

Why do psychosocial issues seem difficult and expensive to address?

• Are your costs of stress-related absenteeism and disability part of the estimated $33 billion lost to Canadian businesses annually because of mental health issues?
• Are your workers among the 20% of Canadian workers who experience a stress-related illness each year?
• Are the results of your last employee survey on employee motivation satisfactory?
• Are your employees productive or do you suspect a level of presenteeism?

How can psychosocial issues be easy and cheap to address?

• Acquire 4 no-cost/low-cost strategies to build individual capacity.
• Take home 5 no-cost/low-cost strategies to increase team capacity and productivity.
• Discover 6 low-cost strategies to improve organizational capacity and health.
• Learn how you can focus on prevention and save on treatment.

How can you renew your strategic framework – with the brain in mind?

• Obtain a model that you can use to develop or renew your team’s or organization’s statement of Mission, Vision, and Values or Guiding Principles.
• Realize the hidden costs of not being aligned.
• Discover what else you need to do to improve productivity and to manage progress.
• Learn what critical path element will make or break your renewal efforts.

At the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Focus clearly on how to develop and maintain your personal psychosocial health.
• Focus clearly as a leader, manager or supervisor on how to address team psychosocial health issues in your workplace.
• Focus clearly as an executive on how to address organizational psychosocial health issues in your workplaces.
• Make more informed day-to-day decisions to effectively address issues related to motivation, productivity, and stress-related absenteeism and disability.
• Help your colleagues to do the same.
• Implement your personal and team healthy-workplace-improvement action plans.
• Take home your personal copy of Magnificent Mind at Any Age by Dr. Daniel Amen, one of the world’s foremost authorities on brain health and wellbeing, to build further on your learning in this workshop.

Who Should Attend?