New Angle, Same Mission [Merging Social Responsibility with Psychological Safety]
Targeting health in workplace where humans spend 1/3rd of their waking hours has been a path I have been on over the last few years. After all, we spend 90% of our time indoors (Miller, 2018), and 63% of the Americans participate in the labour force (Goetzel, 2018).
Here’s the thing: “it is very hard to optimize things like workplace wellness if employees are not only physically unsafe [chemicals, hazards, slips/trips/falls, air quality, etc.], but also psychologically unsafe [stress, worry, dissatisfaction, conflict, violence, etc.]”, as Rex Miller mentions in The Healthy Workplace Nudge (Miller, 2018).
We may be familiar with occupational health and safety, and psychological health and safety has had a light being directed over it — prioritizing emotional intelligence, managing conflict, and workplace factors (the 13 Psychosocial Risk Factors highlighted in the Standard); but here comes a new angle. New not as in a substitute angle, but rather, a complementing angle for your psychological health and safety toolbox.
It feels good walking into the vicinity of people who share a common goal with you. Think about it — conversing about your favourite sports teams playoff journey or discussing new techniques for establishing a flourishing summer garden, are examples representing the psychological safety you feel with others regarding the collective pursuit of common goals.
What if as an employee collective, your organization provided the common goal for all employees of giving back to the community and/or the environment. You could feel increased belonging and trust in others when you are able to have common ground with organizational collective goals, and in particular, community and/or the environment goals.
In a report titled “Reporting on Health: A Roadmap for Investors, Companies, and Reporting Platforms” by Vitality Group, three methods for improving the health of employees are mentioned. This article puts attention on the third method which in my humble opinion can include giving back in an environmental-sense, in addition to a community-sense.
1) Support efforts to maintain and improve the health of employees and their families, i.e. wellness programs/initiatives
2) Take steps to ensure the core products and services do no harm to health and ideally enhance the health of consumers. THEREFORE POSITIVELY INFLUENCING CONSUMER PURCHASING BEHAVIOURS.
3) Through investments in the health of their communities, carried out in collaboration with public health agencies
The Ontario Workplace Health Coalition (OWHC) also mentions this new angle through the Organizational Social Responsibility pillar of their Comprehensive Workplace Health Model. Read more about the OWHC’s model here.
So, how can you create collective goals for your employee population to give back to your environment and community and in doing so establish efforts to promote psychological health and safety among employees? The following recommendations from the Global Wellness Institute’s Go Green theme are for you. Thank you for the Global Wellness Institute for creating the following list.
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· “Make it a Meatless Monday. High-meat diets contribute to cancer, heart disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, along with greenhouse gas emissions. Download this toolkit by Johns Hopkins Centre for a Livable Future for ways to launch a Meatless Monday campaign in your organization or practice meat-free eating one day a week with your work team and family.
· Cut out pesticides. Chemical pesticides kill bees, butterflies and other pollinators we rely on to grow food. They are also implicated in numerous health issues related to our dermatological, gastrointestinal, nervous, endocrine, respiratory and reproductive systems. Minimize pesticide exposure by growing your produce (a great activity for building camaraderie at work!); using nontoxic methods, such as diatomaceous earth, to control insects in your home, office or garden; and adopting a shoe-free policy so that people don’t track pesticides into the workplace or home.
· Rethink plastic. Beyond the damage petroleum-based plastics and microplastics do to the environment, they contribute to impaired brain function, early puberty, obesity, cancer, adult-onset diabetes and many human health challenges. Calculate your plastic consumption at this footprint tracker and look for new ways to reduce, refuse, reuse, recycle or remove plastics from your lifestyle, workplace and business processes and products. This useful 2018 Earth Day Plastic Pollution Primer will help.
· Share strategically. From car sharing to co-working to crowdsourcing, the sharing economy means taking advantage of under-utilized assets (e.g., that unused office space or machinery you own) in ways that improve convenience, efficiency, sustainability and community, plus help you and your organization stay relevant responsibly. Identify the resources you and a customer or community partner could genuinely share — and, in return, forge stronger relationships and wellbeing.
· Commit to bold thinking and action! Choose from this impressive list of the 100 most substantive climate-change solutions by scientists, policy makers, and business leaders at Project Drawdown. Use their evidence-based scenarios to identify and implement “no regrets” solutions for going green company-wide. To stretch even further, explore what the circular economy might mean for making your organization truly restorative and regenerative by design.”
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All the best in your journey in leveraging collective employee efforts of giving back to the environmental and community as a means to put attention towards the psychological health and safety of employees. Human beings, not human doings. Collective goals unite.
If you have other recommendations for giving back to the environment and community, please share!!!
Nathan Kolar, www.reachworldwide.ca, nkolar@reachworldwide.ca
