This article is written by Faith Stephenson, senior adviser at the Citizen Services Branch at Employment and Social Development Canada.

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is key to remaining strong and sane, no matter where or who we are.

We can support our teams, whether virtually or physically, by developing and maintaining our connections through planning and sharing project based activities.

For the last three years, our directorate has been able to provide staff with workplace wellness support through a number of repeatable and successful project-based and managed activities such as ergonomic comfort assessments for all staff and the weekly office kitchen clean up schedules. However, one example that can be adapted for any team virtually or on site is our lunch and learn series.

Lunch and learn

We have many workplace and mental health resources and official plans from our department to reference and use for our own inspiration. However, because we are mostly operating on a minimal budget with little room to pay external speakers, we often turn to our colleagues for inspiration. What we found was that a number of our colleagues had the prior experience, education and willingness to talk about various work/life topics.

One of my colleagues had studied nutrition and health and was able to talk on the importance of heart health through the Mediterranean Diet. We had another colleague with a Ph.D in neuroscience who spoke about her sleep research and studies with practical tips on how to sleep better.

These human connections we make, are and will continue to be paramount to keep us sane and healthy as our global workforce rises to new work-life balance challenges

To ensure we didn’t get bogged down by the logistics of organising these events, we had a number of processes, schedules and communication pieces all created beforehand to use for each speaker; including setting up a biography, preference of presentation and equipment list, as well as gaining approvals from our senior staff and the employee’s manager. Everyone was invited to these lunchtime talks through email and posters at the office and a board room or place was reserved for all to bring their lunch, listen and ask questions.

The benefits were numerous. The speakers gained experience setting up and presenting. The audience received live and pertinent information, tips and tricks which they could apply to their immediate life. Plus, we avoided having to always go for external speakers or develop costly contracts.

The bi-monthly program was so successful last year that we have continued to hold on to the format during the pandemic, which has now shifted to a virtual lunch and learn session to reach our teams now working from home.

I’m just a public servant doing my job, so why bother with work-life balance?

What’s the relation between these initiatives and a healthy work-life balance?

By bringing up topics of balance in a direct way, in building a sense of community where all were sharing information, stories and experiences, staff are more engaged at work, more energetic and more productive. And in these times, when many are working at home every day whether with pets, children, significant others or alone, we are all in great need of connection and knowing how to live in balance with all the changes we are still dealing with in this pandemic.

What can I do as a public servant to set up something similar for my area?

Take a look at what is offered within your network about work and mental health. Do you already have resources available internally at your fingertips?

Here at ESDC, our federal department, over the years, has communicated a number of initiatives and themes and references are stored online. We researched, acknowledged and used these resources to create a general list of categories. We chose five areas to concentrate our efforts on including physical and psychological health, engaged staff as a community through learning and social activities, leadership supports and work-life balance.

Putting well-being on the agenda

Based on these themes, my directorate developed its own mission statement to foster a healthy and respectful workplace that values and supports all employees. Through the review of various models, from sources such as the insurance company Great West Life, the Canadian Government Workplace Psychological Factors Awareness Campaign (WPFAC) and others, our team selected a top five of 13 factors or categories of well-being. As pointed out by the Mental Health Commission’s factors addressing mental health in the workplace, each factor is tied to the next and can flux and influence one another creating positive or negative changes in the workplace mindset.  We always want to accentuate the positive!

With support from our senior champion (our director general) and a small team of employees from managers and advisers, to administrative assistants, we developed planned activities for each of these five areas including:

  1. Physical Safety (i.e. kitchen clean up, prevention of accidents, emergency evacuation training and ergonomic comfort assessments)
  2. Psychological Well-being (i.e. mental health supports, displays of accomplishments and departmental mental health campaigns)
  3. Engaged Staff (onboarding of new staff, monthly staff stand-up sessions, team dialogue days, career path sessions)
  4. Leadership Supports (management support sessions and review of annual divisions/team dialogue days with senior staff)
  5. Work-Life Balance (maintaining e-communication tips and tricks, sessions by and for staff, work-life balance speaker series)

Don’t let a shoestring budget get in your way

It is possible to set up workplace wellness and mental health activities on a shoestring budget and succeed in helping work colleagues keep their work-life balance no matter where they are physically located.

What is needed is an ongoing dialogue and response, a core group of trusted, committed supporters and a project based approach to ensure successful, repeatable and engaging activities that all employees want to participate in, sharing useful and interesting information and making personal connections with each other. These human connections we make, are and will continue to be paramount to keep us sane and healthy as our global workforce rises to new work-life balance challenges. — Faith Stephenson

(Picture credit: Unsplash)