Shared Solutions: Mental Health, Schools and the Workplace

Social media.  Youth.  Proactive engagement.  Safety - and mental health.  In the workplace, even.

 

Here's three projects that can only benefit through collaboration:

 

Ontario's Ministry of Labour is holding a video contest for secondary school students or youth aged 18-24. Use your creativity to develop an original video, up to two minutes long, to stress the importance of working safely on the job or about your rights to be paid fairly for the work that you do. The contest closes on April 5th. To apply, please visit www.labour.gov.on.ca.

 

Children's Mental Health Ontario is holding their annual Change the View video contest, encouraging youth to make a video demonstrating what students' schools can do to create a supportive environment for students experiencing mental health issues and addictions.

 

The Federal Ministry of Labour has created a set of voluntary standards to promote psychologically safe workplaces; a great initiative that needs to be advertised as far and wide as possible.

 

You simply can't ask for better opportunities to develop shared solutions, find efficiency of resources and get best bang for your buck.

 

This has to happen.

 

Getting Ontario Working: A Labour of Love

 

“In tough economic times we all need to work together, especially with our labour partners from the public and private sector,” says Naqvi.

 

“I want to bring that culture of collaboration in finding solutions to some of the tough challenges we are facing today.”

 

 

I know Yasir, so I'm biased, but from what I know of the new Minister of Labour he is absolutely the right person to make this happen.  He's positive, energetic, disciplined, an active listener and someone not afraid to look outside the box in search of shared solutions.

 

Which is important, because that's a concept that isn't universally accepted - that sustainable solutions have to be shared.  I have spoken with union representatives who are convinced employer partners are determined to succeed at the expense of their labour; I've also talked with employers who feel union reps don't care about the sustainability of a business, only that their members get enough financial remuneration to pay their union dues.  We have some political leaders who flatly reject cooperation, taking a "my way or the highway" approach and instead of seeking opportunity are expending their resources attacking their competitors.

 

It's this static, entrenched dichotomy that restricts partners from finding the innovative, sustainable shared solutions that will allow them (and us) to move forward together.  The problem isn't one group or another - they are following the established rules and competing in the traditional methods.  It's the rules and methods themselves that are holding us back from collaborative, innovative success.

 

The model of work most organizations are using today was designed for the Industrial Revolution, when a whole different set of products/services were being created and a different kind of labour was required to produce them.

 

This model is tried, tested, comfortable and completely inadequate to the challenges presented by the Knowledge Economy.  You simply can't motivate cognitive labour using the same tools you do to motivate physical labour.  That's not speculation - that's evidence-based science.

 

It's not the first time we've come across a cognitive dissonance between what people think works versus what actually does work.

 

The Labour Revolution that stemmed from the Industrial Revolution was the exact same sort of economic birthing pain we're going through right now.  Resisted at the onset (and in some quarters, still resisted today), labour accommodation benefited both means-of-production owners and the labour they employed.  From a systems perspective, the labour revolution was about maximizing labour efficiency by providing the right accommodations to workers. 

 

It turned out that when you provide lunch breaks and humane lighting/humidity levels and the opportunity for wage increases/promotion, the aggregate productivity of your organization was higher than if you worked employees like serfs.  Quality-of-life went up for workers, profits and satisfaction went up for employers.  Everyone gave a little, but gained more through developing (wait for it) shared solutions.

 

It wasn't about one group winning at the expense of the other - it was about strategic collaboration.  Growth and efficiency resulted from everyone working smarter.

 

Lo and behold, Canada suffers from a deepening productivity gap - people are working harder and longer, but don't have an equal growth of productivity to show for it.  We also have an unheralded business crisis in Canada that's negatively impacting productivity, job satisfaction and our expanding healthcare bills.  It's the trillion dollar elephant in the our workplaces.

 

Sound familiar?  Cyclical, almost?  

  

The challenge that faces Minister Naqvi and, more broadly, labour in Canada/Ontario is how to get ahead of the curve and proactively develop new work platforms before the old ones have completely burned through.  Innovative companies like Apple and Google have already gotten way out in front by accommodating their cognitive labour, which is why they lead the pack in growth and success.  We're seeing tentatives steps in that direction at the Federal level with Labour Minister Lisa Raitt's Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace guide.  

 

These measures are a good starting place but again, it's reactive.  If we as a society want to remain competitive in the global marketplace for ideas, we have to get out in front.  Unfortunately, we have fallen into a culture of polarized antagonism that has impeded our individual and collective potential for growth.  To break through this impasse, we need to tear down our firewall silos and explore new ideas, collaborate, innovate, dare to dream a little.  At our current conservative pace, Canada and Ontario are falling behind early adapting competitor jurisdictions.  Remember, early adaptation to the Industrial Economy played a huge role in shaping the super powers of the last century.

 

Which brings us back to Yasir and the Premier that tapped him for Labour, Kathleen Wynne.  These are people who fundamentally reject the politics of division; they understand that stoking fear of the other discourages collaboration and encourages stasis.  You have to love your neighbour before you're able to trust them and trust is fundamental to collaboration.  This is the reason the Throne Speech focused on the three pillars of economic growth, individual opportunity and cooperation - the three have to be addressed in tandem for any one of them to be realized.  What we need to succeed today is a culture of collaboration that makes this possible.

 

We have what it takes to go far - but it'll only happen when we are willing to do so together.

Good On Lisa Raitt: Addressing Occupational Mental Health and Safety

"Too often people just suffer in silence. As Minister of Labour, I'm looking at a range of policy and program options to better address mental health challenges in the workplace."

  - Lisa Raitt, Canada's Minister of Labour

It's happening.  Slowly, agonizingly so, but as the idea of cognitive labour and mental fitness starts to gain hold, it's gaining momentum.

I have predicted elsewhere that a broad-based move towards mental fitness promotion, particularly as it relates to work and work performance, is on its way.  It has to be; the nature of labour (not to mention society) is shifting from repetitive, physical and quantity-based to creative, cognitive and innovation-based.  Just as work design at the end of the 19th Century impeded production by fostering sickness and injury, today's work design and motivational tools actually impede the type of production the market is looking for.  We need a proactive mental fitness strategy if we're to keep moving forward.

The Industrial Revolution fostered the labour movement, which in turn sparked the introduction of workplace health and safety and benefits like health care and sick leave.  It was good business, but it also had the advantage of improving productivity and employee satisfaction.  The Knowledge Economy similarly relies on cognitive function in new, demanding ways - to help people realize their full potential (providing greater returns for their employers), we have to start accommodating mental health.  There's a reason why we have a recognized mental health crisis now, when cognitive labour is in demand.

There's only one way forward and that's to break down the stigmatic silos around mental health, which in turn means re-evaluating the way we understand what the mind is and how our biology, environments and accommodations impact mental health/cognitive function.  It will be a challenging process that will make many feel uncomfortable, but it's the right thing to do from a policy, performance and moral perspective.

This goes beyond personal interest, beyond partisan interest, beyond mandate and even the limitations of ability we set for ourselves to this notion of something called the public good.

Lisa Raitt sums it up nicely: "Let's think beyond duty. Each and every one of us has a role to play in creating workplaces where diversity and special needs are accommodated and respected."

Kudos to people like Lisa Raitt, but also Don Drummond, Michael Kirby, Kevin Flynn, Christine Elliot, Gerrard Kennedy and the countless people who work and live with mental health challenges every day. 

Let's move forward together; more importantly, let's make sure we leave no one behind.

Am I hopeful?  Certainly - but that's because I understand the way cognition produces hope.

We're finally connecting the dots between stigma, mental health, health care, social growth, diversity, education, service delivery and innovation.  It's a good time to be alive.

UPDATE:  It should come as no surprise that Lisa Raitt has personal experience with mental illness.  This isn't an ooh-ahh, we must look at her differently thing; if she had diabetes, or developed cancer, or caught a cold, we wouldn't stigmatize her.  Nor should we now.

Sidebar - there's a funny thing where people advocate for causes that they know - I sit on the Board of Directors for an organization that helps children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing and the vast majority of my co-Board Members have deaf family members.  As mental health/mental fitness becomes more normalized, I think we're going to see an increase in proactive advocacy, which is how it should be.