‘How to’: general tools and guides
The WorkWell ToolKit by WorkSafe is a voluntary online tool. It uses a step by step approach to help employers promote mental health and prevent mental injury in the workplace through access to tailored tools and information. After answering around 25 questions about your organisation and setting up an account, the toolkit generates clear and tailored steps via videos, templates and case studies that have helped organisations like yours. You can track your progress by ticking off what you’ve achieved and come back for new ideas and actions over time.
In this Beyond Blue webinar Mental Health in the workplace Toolbox Talk training package, Catherine Doherty (from the Workplace Engagement team at Beyond Blue) and Mardi Webber (from ReturnToWorkSA) gives how this training package works and what’s involved. They give a run down of the free resources in the package that help you run sessions to equip team leaders, or anyone managing staff, with the skills and confidence to encourage conversations about mental health in the workplace, reduce stigma and support staff experiencing a mental health condition
The Blue Light Champion Activities Guide was developed to support the Blue Light Champion’s program run by Mind UK. This booklet gives ideas and tips to decide if you want to be a champion, and if so how to be one. Mind UK have also developed a website with information and resources to develop mental health champions. A workplace mental health champion is an employee or volunteer who takes action in the workplace to raise awareness of mental health problems and reduce stigma.
Ottowa Public Health has partnered with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to develop short whiteboard animation videos that define and describe the impacts of workplace factors. At the end of each video, the viewer is encouraged to come up with an action plan to address specific factors in their workplace. A video facilitator guide is also available. This guide provides a worksheet for each video and tips to help facilitator’s stimulate discussion among employee and employer groups with an eye to developing unique and practical solutions to address each workplace factors.
Innovation to implementation helps you close the gap between evidence and action. Produced by the Mental Health Commission of Canada, it is a practical guide to doing knowledge translation in healthcare but is applicable to emergency service settings. The guide illustrates how to move from innovation to implementation in a thoughtful manner to achieve the desired outcomes of a project or initiative. It explains the purpose of each step to achieving successful Knowledge Translation, walks participants through a series of guided questions, and provides helpful tips.
Tools to identify and respond to wellbeing gaps
How Positive is your Workplace? is an evidence-based toolkit created by the Victorian Public Sector Commission to help you do a quick check of your workplace from three perspectives: organisational, management and individual. It also gives practical tips on how to improve your workplace by changing ten strategic and operational aspects of work – from leadership to performance management.
To accompany their Recommended Practices BC First Responders Mental Health have developed a Gap Analysis Tool for Mental Health interventions in agencies. This tool enables you to see what parts of the practices your organisation already has in place and to track progress as you implement these. It also helps you to communicate to senior management where your organisation is at currently and to show your progress to them.
Stories from organisations on the journey to improve workplace mental health
In this Beyond Blue webinar Workplace Mental Health Strategies in Action you can hear the experiences of two different organisations at varying points of their journey to improve mental health in their workplace. Panelists include Gareth Gammon (Chief Operating Officer Jirsch Sutherland Insolvency Solutions) and Sarah Potts (General Manager Northern NSW / Sydney Operations Manager Southern Cross Austereo). Facilitated by Michael O’Hanlon (Workplace Engagement Manager, Beyond Blue).
Wellbeing on Call is a project funded by the WorkSafe’s WorkWell Mental Health Improvement Fund that looks to make a difference to the mental health and wellbeing of contact centre workers, could be of relevance to ESTA.
Consult Australia’s Striving for Mentally Healthy Workplaces gives contextual information, recommendations, and case studies of initiatives at member firms that involve creating strategies, designing polices, and implementing actions to support mental health in the workplace.
