Author: Janet Pun, Psychological Health and Safety Advisor at Starling Minds

For the Canadian Mental Health Association’s annual Mental Health Week, this year’s theme is a call to be kind through compassion. Compassion can start with yourself, your employer and peers, and the support you receive. It is important to emphasize the healing power of compassion and kindness, especially when it comes to mental health.
 
Let’s take a look at how we can all create compassion environments in the workplace.
 
Educational workers have an important job within their communities, and as we see with Starling Minds users, it’s essential to safeguard their mental health. Leaders, no matter the industry, have a large role to play in shaping a safe and supportive workplace that fosters positive mental health. But it is also important that all employees have an active and collaborative part in creating compassionate cultures! Whether you lead a team or want to make a positive impact in your workplace, you can take the first step to change with compassion.
 
Building a positive culture
 
Culture can be hard to see but is something educators, and all employees regarding of their industry, can feel. It is the atmosphere of a workplace– the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours.
 
Here are steps you can take to build a more positive workplace culture:

• Vision and mission: Leaders often have many competing priorities. With so many ideas and initiatives thrown at them, it can be hard to determine what problems they should focus on. Therefore, it is important for leaders to come up with a vision and mission to tackle key problems, helping all employees to stay laser-like focused on clear goals and clearly defined problems or opportunities.

• Co-created core values: Does your workplace have core values that all staff can list off by heart? When leaders co-create these values with their staff, they provide alignment and consistency to anchor all other behaviour rules and expectations. Core values can include trust, happiness, curiosity, and care.

• Positive-focused: To create a positive culture within your school or workplace, you need to focus more on positives than negatives. It’s the law of attraction. Many staff believe that when their schools focused on their strengths, they felt more motivated, safer to be themselves, happier and healthier overall. A healthier, happier staff who feel safe and motivated can accomplish so much more with their students, community, and peers.

• Collaborative planning: The level of collaboration among staff in a school or workplace is a major determinant of whether the culture is positive or negative. Workplaces with high levels of collaboration among staff tend to promote higher behavioural and performance standards as it allows employees to update best practices and support impactful change.

 
Building compassionate workplaces
 
The truth is that compassionate cultures create psychological safety. Creating a psychologically safe environment provides staff and leaders with the space and compassion they need to share their perspectives, vulnerabilities, boundaries, and ideas without fear of judgment or retribution.
 
Here are strategies to build psychological health and safety into your workplace or school:

1. Assess the level of psychological safety among staff using the seven questions below.
   
   Note: Endorsing the first four statements would indicate a sense of psychological safety, and the last three indicate the opposite.

• Staff are able to bring up problems and tough issues.

• Staff feel it is safe to take a risk (e.g. trying something new in the classroom).

• No staff would deliberately act in a way that would undermine my work.

• Working with staff, my unique skills and talents are valued and used.
   

• If you make a mistake, it is often held against you.

• My peers sometimes reject others for being different.

• It is difficult to ask other people who work here for help.

2. Identify strategies for increasing psychological safety relevant to staff feedback and ensure leaders and employees model them. Some actions all staff can take to facilitate psychological safety include:

   • Show your humanity and be willing to be vulnerable with honesty when you don’t have the answers or when you feel challenged.

   • Acknowledge the reality of workplace challenges and demonstrate commitment to working through them together. Example: Invite team members to share their perspectives and ideas for navigating common challenges.

   • Talk about mental health and wellbeing regularly in whole groups and one-on-one chats.

3. Show appreciation and gratitude.

   • Have a “human moment” in each of your meetings with leaders and/or employees. Ask what they need or how you can work together to create positive change.

   • Ask your school to organize ongoing celebrations for staff and members. These could include coffee and donuts, but also non-monetary actions like thank you notes.

4. Promote mental health supports: Accessible resources can include counseling services, support groups, educational materials, and online tools like Starling Minds. Knowing that help is available when needed can alleviate stress and promote a sense of security and belonging.