Our approach
Many well-intentioned initiatives aimed at improving workplace mental health fall short of creating lasting, meaningful change. Our approach is designed to overcome the common pitfalls that prevent many cultural programs from having a positive impact.
Using the Canadian Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace as a framework, our approach addresses the 13 critical factors that influence mental health at work. Additionally, our relational, strengths-based approach leverages your existing skills to tackle the specific challenges your workplace is facing.
Problems and Solutions
Is your workplace experiencing any of these challenges? In our work we have found that these are most common reasons that initiatives do not have their intended impact.
The Problem: Organizations and leaders often lack confidence in addressing mental health in the workplace, relying on superficial solutions that merely 'check the box.' As a result, employees continue to struggle with poor mental health, and the organization experiences negative outcomes.
The Solution: Understanding the environmental and systemic factors that influence employees' daily stress levels provides leaders and staff with actionable strategies to create a healthier, more successful organization.
The Problem: When addressing issues, organizations often base action plans solely on leadership’s perspective. Without considering multiple viewpoints, efforts are wasted, leading to worsened mental health and higher staff turnover.
The Solution: Gaining an understanding of the staff perspective provides a more comprehensive view of the issues. Additionally, when introducing new initiatives, it's essential to ensure they will effectively address problems across the organization.
The Problem: Organizations often attribute successes and failures to individuals and their efforts. As a result, they focus on "fixing" or removing the person, hoping the issue is resolved, while ineffective systems continue to perpetuate recurring problems.
The Solution: Exploring issues through a systemic lens allows for a deeper understanding of their complexities and helps drive real solutions. This fosters a sustainable, high-performing culture supported by effective workplace systems.
The Problem: Employees often feel uncomfortable addressing underlying tension and disagreements in the workplace. When unresolved, this tension festers, leading to passive-aggressive communication or aggressive conflict. This false harmony is a culture killer.
The Solution: Developing conflict resolution skills and fostering a psychologically safe culture enables staff to use tension productively, promoting collaboration, innovation, and growth. Embracing differing perspectives helps solve problems and drives innovation.
The Problem: Poor communication structures and a lack of deeper meaning in conversations limit effective connection in the workplace. Employees feel unheard, misunderstood, and frustrated by meaningless exchanges. As a result, critical tasks go uncompleted or are not done to the required standard, despite efforts to convey information.
The Solution: Developing communication systems that balance task-oriented discussions with a deeper understanding of why tasks matter. Fostering a meaningful culture by effectively communicating values, needs, and goals.
The Problem: Most programs fail to recognize and address the impact of power dynamics on culture and leadership, leading to unintentional relational harm and significantly reduced effectiveness of leadership directives and initiatives.
The Solution: Understanding power dynamics and learning how to leverage power ethically and effectively fosters trusting relationships with leadership and boosts productivity.
The Problem: Employees and leaders often feel disconnected from their teams and the organization as a whole. Without genuine connection, fostering engagement and commitment becomes difficult, leading to lower productivity and higher turnover.
The Solution: Prioritizing connection to self, the team, personal values, and the organization's vision and values creates the engagement necessary to retain resilient long-term employees who are committed to the organization’s outcomes.
All Thrive prioritizes relationships and communication, and we use a strength based lens to best capitalize on the skills of your team. We centre team-based learning so everyone can grow together, continually practice skills, and hold each other accountable to new outcomes. Within this team focus, we also ensure that leaders are given additional support and training to have the impact that aligns with their goals. We are working to build a world where workplaces foster resilience and contribute to the overall mental health of individuals.
Curious about how these issues impact the workplace? Tune into our podcast, Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink, to understand how your team may be affected and learn how to apply key skills to drive success.