Workforce Wellness: Another name for don't ask, don't tell?
Way back when, before I learned my lesson, and before I came into the knowledge that freelancing was a viable option, I was a corporate shill. But I was a good little shill - I showed up early, and I billed out a staggering amount of hours. What's more, I worked a staggering amount of hours for free, all as a means of keeping on top of the ever-growing pile of capitalistic success. For my clients. I made, like, $30K annually.
It was for two reasons that I sometimes billed 65 hours a week and worked an additional 15: I was asked to do the work, and then, I was relied upon to do the work. Once I had been assigned a new area of responsibility, magically, no one else was able to take it on, and more and more weight was added to my lucky-to-be-employed shoulders.
A few years of that, plus some borderline abusive employers produced anxiety attacks. And now, five years after I've been out of the game, no longer finding myself clutching my chest and gasping for air, Steven Harper's government is rolling out a program to promote 'workforce wellness'? I don't buy it.
The main tenets of the program are to provide workers facing mental health issues with adequate treatment; to reduce stigma toward mental health issues both before and upon a return to work; and to decrease the duration of mental health-related unemployment claims. But no one has any idea yet how they propose to do any of those things.
In a nutshell, the point of the program - which is apparently being 'rolled out' in three stages over three years and has been prematurely announced without a business plan or framework in place - is to save money for the Government. I'm thinking this is their way of recovering some dollars from those celebrated EI rate increases and the addition of opt-in unemployment for self-employed Canadians.
Given that there's been a marked increase over the past two decades in the amount of unemployment or disability claims due to workforce-related mental health issues such as burn-out and depression, I'd really like to know what set the Government off on this healing mission. Why not a decade ago, prior to this recent recession wherein job insecurity, employee cutbacks (and therefore increased work-loads for employees lucky enough to keep their jobs) and a higher cost of living in most heavily-populated Canadian cities are every day occurrences?
What made Harper stand up and take notice? And commit to ... action?
I see a promise of action, but it seems to me that this was a long-time coming, and well, we've been promised an initiative that will do something. Don't ask for specifics, because no one knows what something is, or how it will be done, yet.
It's a grand and noble cause - aiming to remove stigma in the workplace, but it's kind of, in my point of view, akin to drafting and approving labour laws that unwaveringly forbid discrimination due to a mental health issue. Oh wait, that's already been done!
It works on paper. But suddenly-isolated employees, judged for anxiety attacks or having received subtle 'not meeting company expectations' notes on a performance review, are often hard-pressed to prove there is discrimination taking place.
Short and sweet: that's how stigma is perpetuated, whether consciously or not.
Any workforce wellness program will need to take a multi-level approach, providing treatment, education and supports for employees and their employers, as well as additional resources to follow-up in employee-employer satisfaction. I can't see a single Government term creating that much change, while also proclaiming the reduction of national debt and a three-year operating freeze - which will effectively pile more work on the same amount of shoulders (um. Isn't that how burnout and stress occur?).
I'll be waiting to see the results of this roll out, but I don't think I'll hold my breath. They're not even slated to begin thinking about it until next year.
Photo credit: orphanjones
Original Canada Moms Blog post. Zoeyjane finds freelancing much more relaxing, even though her three year old wields a much heftier whip. While she's cowering in fear, she's hiding on Twitter, waxing existential (adolescently) at Mommy is Moody, lifehacking at Everything Mom, and writing about mental health at SexIs.
