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Can Workplace Change Be Healthy?

By: Caroline Tapp-McDougall

A healthy workplace is critical to retaining the brightest and best employees and ensuring good performance. Yet, itʼs often easy to forget the profound impact that a fast-paced, rapidly-changing work environment has on the health and well-being of individual workers – both professionally and personally.

In many cases, workers experience change as a threat to their psychological integrity and physical well-being as much as any other significant stress in their lives. The challenge for employers is to create a culture of change that is good for business over the long term and that creates a productive, healthy environment where people enjoy coming to work.

Significant Problem

Poor mental health is, in itself, a significant problem and can contribute to many potentially serious physical illnesses. Recent research reveals the severity of the situation as well as the opportunity to make a difference within your own organization. Studies by the Mensante Corporation, a Toronto-based workplace mental health consultancy, suggest that only one in eight workers will receive effective intervention for mental health issues and 25 out of 1,000 will go on long-term disability because of them. How, then, can employers create positive environments that promote optimum performance, strengthen relationships, and positively affect well-being while simultaneously pursuing efforts toward continuous improvement, re-engineering, and rightsizing?

Can human resource professionals ensure mechanisms are in place to detect mental illness and provide the necessary support?

In a recent paper, ʻQuality and Healthy Workplaces: HR Must Play a Critical Roleʼ, Kathryn Cestnick, vice-president and COO of the National Quality Institute, suggests that HR professionals should ensure their organizations go beyond minimum health and safety standards to foster and support a safe, healthy work environment. They should, she says, “ensure there are mechanisms in place to detect mental illness and provide the support necessary to lower rising statistics.” Cestnick cites Daimler Chrysler and the Canadian Auto Workers Union in Windsor, ON, as examples of situations where healthy workplace programs have been successfully implemented. Their results clearly show improved employee morale and higher employee satisfaction, and prove that staff involvement in designing programs for themselves is a key element to success.

Work Characteristics

Dr. Scott Wallace, a psychologist at Wilson Banwell Human Solutions, says, “What is good for workers is generally good for industry.” He recommends examining the following areas of work characteristics to illuminate potential links to psychological, physical, behavioural, and organizational consequences:

• Workload and work pace
  During times of change, many employees feel overworked, either through increased actual number of hours worked or from working on new, unfamiliar tasks that are physically and mentally taxing.

The solution is to ramp up training and communications. Watch for psychological strain reactions such as disturbances in mood or concentration. Consider temporary assistance to get over the hump of extra work and to ensure that safety and well-being are not compromised.

• Role stressors
  People generally want to maintain the status quo. However, workplace change can create confusion between conflicting (and incompatible) roles and create uncertainty about meeting role expectations.

Guard against resistance and decreases in productivity by providing clear job descriptions, appropriate training, and solid management support. Avoid the temptation to hide uncertainty about roles and outcomes with buzzwords that cause anxiety or negative, unhealthy speculation.

• Career concerns
  Insecurity, fear of obsolescence, and unanswered questions concerning career development weigh heavily during periods of change or re-organization.

Take action to instill confidence, communicate longer-term HR intentions, and offer training and development.

• Effort-reward imbalances
  Increased efforts to meet increased demands are often not recognized when the workplace is in a state of change.

Whether financial, esteem-based, or career-focused, rewards and recognition should be carefully considered as part of change planning. This is the employerʼs best chance to mitigate discontent and negativity that can lead to anger, depression, or unhealthy emotions.

The Way Forward

Dr. Wallace suggests that the way forward for an organization that wants to minimize the health risks of change is to “have a personal and organizational change-management process in place that supports planned, measurable, manageable, and predictable change. This will reduce the negative impact of organizational change efforts and allow companies to capitalize on opportunities.”

Caroline Tapp-McDougall is the publisher of Solutions: Canadaʼs Family Guide to Home Health Care and Wellness and the author of The Complete Canadian Eldercare Guide.

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