For the first time in Canadian history, employers are confronted with a legal duty to maintain not only a physically safe workplace, but also a psychologically safe work environment.
Previously, only egregious management actions that caused catastrophic psychological harm created risk of legal liability. Now, common workplace practices that create foreseeable risks of mental injury can lead to legal liability under certain circumstances.
Five pathways to better workplace mental health
Canadian employers face a "perfect legal storm" for failing to provide or maintain a psychologically safe workplace
• Chronic stress caused by work conditions.
• Excessive demands from supervisors and management.
• Unpaid overtime that can lead to mental harm.
Recent reports prepared by Dr. Martin Shain (University of Toronto) for the Workforce Advisory Committee of the Mental Health Commission of Canada highlight these ongoing legal developments.
Dr. Martin Shain Biography
Shain defines a psychologically safe workplace as "one in which every practical effort is made to avoid reasonably foreseeable injury to the mental health of employees."
The reports explain how Canadian courts and tribunals are:
• Increasingly intolerant of workplace factors that threaten psychological safety.
• Ordering management to change workplace habits that threaten employees.
• Imposing dramatically increased financial punishments for transgressions.
Helpful Workplace Reports:
One Page Overview: The Shain Reports
Psychological Safety in the Workplace: A Summary
Stress at Work, Mental Injury and the Law in Canada: A Discussion Paper for the Mental Health Commission of Canada
Tracking the Perfect Legal Perfect Legal Storm: Converging systems create mounting pressure to create the psychologically safe workplace
The Road to Psychological Safety: Legal, Scientific and Social foundations for a National Standard for Psychological Safety.