Quality thoughts, quality working life

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This article was published 20/01/2025 (430 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mary Ann Baynton wants to help people suffer less.

The consultant and public speaker, who lives in Southern Ontario, seeks to do that through her work as director of collaboration and strategy for Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, an initiative of Canada Life.

“As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized most of our suffering comes from the way we think about people and situations that we want to be different than they are,” Baynton said by phone last week during a work trip to Alberta.

“When we can learn to realize that our mind creates most of our suffering, we can change the quality of our lives by changing the way we think.”

That’s important for employees and employers to think about because of the amount of time most adults spend in the workplace.

Baynton will be one of the keynote speakers at Safety Services Manitoba’s 40th annual occupational health and safety conference. Around 500 people are expected to attend the conference in Winnipeg, which takes place today through Thursday at the Victoria Inn Hotel & Convention Centre.

Baynton’s first presentation is focused on making tough decisions and will walk participants through “the four A’s” — accept, alter, adapt and avoid — which are strategies for addressing stressors at work.

If, for example, an employee is stressed by the tight deadlines they constantly face, that employee might ask themself if they can accept that tight deadlines are going to happen. If they can, then it’s no longer an affront each time it happens.

The employee can also alter things about their external environment to make dealing with deadlines easier, such as eliminating distractions. Adapt refers to learning techniques to make internal changes so that one can focus in the face of stress, and avoid refers to avoiding other stressors when working on deadline.

“This process of talking about something that might have been very emotional for you, very stressful for you, is now something you’re making a decision about,” Baynton said.

During her second presentation, Baynton will explore how health and safety committees, and organizations in general, can address the psychosocial factors named in the National Standard of Canada on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace.

Commissioned by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and launched in January 2013, the standard is a set of voluntary guidelines, tools and resources intended to guide organizations in promoting mental health and preventing psychological harm at work.

The standard establishes how work impacts employees and how people in a workplace impact each other.

“It’s not about hard hats or steel toe boots, but it is about protecting the attention, the focus and the energy of employees while they’re at work,” Baynton said.

Workplace hazards can include things like unresolved conflict and a lack of clarity about priorities or processes, according to Baynton. Her presentation will get participants thinking about asking the right questions so they can make concrete suggestions to management.

In 2023, the Mental Health Commission of Canada found in any given week, 500,000 Canadians miss work due to a psychological health issue. Last year, statistics from the federal government showed on average, Canadian employees miss 2.4 days of work a year due to stress or mental health reasons.

According to Baynton, work is good for people’s mental health when they’re working in psychologically healthy and safe work environments — work environments that do no harm to the psychological well-being of employees and, ideally, have a positive impact on the psychological health and safety of employees.

“We don’t want to be causing distress, anxiety (or) burnout to the people that are working for us or with us,” she said. “There is the potential that work can lift us up and make us feel even better.”

In addition to Baynton, keynote speakers at the Safety Services Manitoba conference will include former Winnipeg Police Service chief Devon Clunis, who will speak about diversity in the workplace, and Tyler Hayden, a best-selling author, who will give a presentation about safety leadership.

Bill Carr, an actor and comedian, and Dave Kramer, vice-president of SAFE Work Manitoba, will also give keynote presentations.

Ron Janzen, president and CEO at Safety Services Manitoba, encourages people to attend the conference for four main reasons.

“One is to gain insights from industry leaders on workplace safety and health,” he said. “Another is to engage in 30 different workshops. There will be networking of course: people will have opportunities to connect with around 500 safety professionals. And of course, to hear about the latest insights on occupational health and safety.”

Safety Services Manitoba offers occupational and road safety training and consulting solutions. It was founded in 1964.

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca