Psychological Safety in the Workplace

Dear friends -

After Cliff died, I was furious at the leaders and managers at his workplace for the role I perceive them to have played in his death. Because I had worked for the same organization and with many of the same people, I had my own experience and perspective of what he was dealing with.

Cliff's experience

The extreme anxiety and major depression that took Cliff's life were precipitated and aggravated by events in his workplace. The anxiety began after he learned that his employer's contract for IT services would not be renewed by BC Hydro, which put his job in jeopardy. Other aspects of the situation added to the stress and pressure:

• Management of Cliff's team had changed frequently, especially in the past two years. The current manager seemed inexperienced, awkward, and unaware of his impact on the team. He was focused on pleasing his superiors rather than taking care of his employees. Some of the decisions he made and the way those were implemented caused Cliff to feel ostracized, scrutinized, or embarrassed, and Cliff did not trust him.
  
• Contract workers from India, paid at a much lower rate, had been brought to B.C. to do work closely related to that of Cliff's team. The employer made no attempt to educate the Canadian team members about working cross-culturally, and there were many communication challenges. The use of contract workers was perceived by Cliff and some of his colleagues as a threat to their employment.
• Some team members were already leaving to work for other employers, meaning the team was losing knowledge, skill, resources, and established relationships. This increased pressure on the remaining team members.
• Cliff's team was responsible for maintaining the integrity of an enterprise IT system, SAP, through which all of BC Hydro's customer, human resources, and financial information is managed. Despite the team being under-resourced and dealing with news about the impending end of the contract, they were still required to take on a project to integrate customer payments into SAP -- further increasing the profile and risk of the system, and the pressure on the team. The suicide attempt that led to Cliff's hospitalization in December occurred immediately after he finished work on this project.

Strategy #3: Psychological safety in the workplace

There were other factors that made Cliff vulnerable to these events -- just as there are factors that heighten people's risk of cancer, broken bones, and other illnesses and injuries. That doesn't negate the effect that workplaces have on people's lives, or the responsibility that we each have as employers, managers, and workers to take reasonable steps to promote the physical and psychological safety of our employees, our colleagues, and ourselves.

Risk stimulates us, challenges us, makes life more interesting. Workplace safety isn't about eliminating risk or not engaging in risky activities; it's about recognizing risk and taking appropriate precautions so that at the end of the day workers return home with their health and safety uncompromised. In North America, we've been protecting worker's physical safety for years. Only now are we recognizing we also need to attend to workers' psychological safety.

Initial steps towards regulating psychological safety

Last June, British Columbia passed Bill 14, legislation that expands eligibility for compensable psychological workplace injuries. (Because mental stress and injury due to management behaviours and decisions are explicitly excluded from coverage, someone in Cliff's position would still not be eligible for compensation.) This legislation paves the way for Workers' Compensation Boards and other provincial health and safety regulators to begin playing a role in developing and enforcing psychological safety regulations.

An important factor in that will be defining the standards which employers are required to meet. This month, the Canadian Standards Association is certifying a new voluntary standard for psychological health and safety in the workplace.

Neither Bill 14 nor the voluntary standard for psychological health and safety are yet enough to prevent deaths like Cliff's, but they are significant changes in how we hold ourselves responsible for workplace mental health. Mental illness and injury are not just individual weaknesses or problems, they are societal, cultural, and economic issues that affect more of us than we may believe; that really do debilitate people and threaten their lives; and that are often caused, triggered, or worsened by outside events.

Where I'm at with this

While I still believe Cliff's workplace conditions played a pivotal role in his death, I haven't found a way to influence significant change in this area. I tried to meet and talk with managers and leaders in Cliffs organization soon after his death, and met with resistance, fearfulness, and stonewalling. The most positive thing I was able to achieve was a brief email exchange with his immediate manager, who refused to meet in person. With the end of the contract with BC Hydro, that area of the organization is folding up shop. Many of the things Cliff was afraid would happen in that process have happened.

On a much more positive side, people like Martin Shain, founder of Neighbour at Work; Great West Life, commissioners of Guarding Minds at Work; and Bill Wilkerson, co-founder and CEO of the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health have already been doing impressive work in this area for many years, work that is paying off in new standards and changes in legislation.

Psychological workplace safety remains a concern for me. For now I am putting my efforts into other areas where change seems possible and much needed.