Agenda

In today’s fast-paced world, leaders often face the challenge of balancing performance with personal well-being. This transformative talk will guide leaders on a journey to rediscover their authentic selves and create a ripple effect of empowerment within their teams. Kristina M. Holle, founder of The Authentic You Coaching, shares how aligning leadership with authenticity and well-being fosters resilience, connection, and sustainable success.

Learn how to prioritize self-care as a leadership tool, cultivate emotional intelligence, and build a thriving workplace culture rooted in psychological safety and trust. Through actionable strategies and powerful insights, this session will inspire you to lead with intention, tap into your inner wisdom, and ignite the potential of those around you.

Discover how embracing your authentic self as a leader not only transforms your own life but also empowers your team to achieve greatness.

About a third of CCRW’s clients report living with a mental health disability. More than ever, conversations about mental health disabilities and accommodations are happening in workplaces across the country. Trauma informed workplaces and accommodations are a central component in fostering workplace inclusion of mental health related disabilities.

As part of CCRW’s comprehensive approach to service evaluation, we collect quantitative and qualitative data related to employability and workplace outcomes from our clients. In this session, we will present some of these findings as they relate to jobseekers with mental health disabilities, including workplace accommodation needs, workplace wellness, and intersecting sociodemographic factors.

Pulling on this data and the service provider experience, we present a framework for creating trauma informed workplaces for all employees therefore fostering a more inclusive and healthier workplace.

The increased focus on healthcare worker occupational stress injury has been described as a silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a part of a larger project seeking to learn from experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are interviewing leaders in staff wellness in hospitals within the Greater Toronto Area about their organizations’ response to staff needs. To-date, fifteen individuals representing seven organizations have participated. We will describe the various approaches taken to support staff well-being, including peer support programs, preparation of physical space for staff to decompress on-site, differing forms of psychoeducation, updates to organizational policies, critical incident debriefing, mental health first aid, fitness classes, pet therapy, massage therapy, and more. We will outline the ways that organizations evaluated program success (e.g., tracking program uptake) and gaps in the work done (e.g., measuring impact), along with key learnings from the perspectives of these program leaders.

The Montfort Management Model emphasizes the importance of fostering meaningful connections between managers and employees to enhance an engaged and healthy workplace culture and improve retention. This session explores how Montfort Hospital integrates staff recognition, employee involvement in problem-solving, Lean principles to remove waste, and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) to promote wellness and reduce turnover. Participants will learn how initiatives such as shared decision-making processes, structured recognition programs, EDI training and streamlined workflows have empowered employees, boosted morale, and strengthened collaboration. This approach not only supports psychological safety but also drives organizational excellence by aligning employee needs with leadership practices. Case studies from our hospital’s retention strategies will be presented, providing participants with actionable insights to implement in their own organizations.

The healthcare sector has faced unprecedented challenges in recent years, with staff working in complex, high-pressure, trauma-exposed environments. A resilient, empowered workforce is essential to delivering compassionate, person-centred care. At St. Joseph’s Health Centre Guelph (SJHCG), we are proud of our efforts to support staff well-being through initiatives like the Centre for Resilience, Learning & Growth and our multidisciplinary Resilience Working Group. These strategies have helped enhance resilience across our organization, enabling our staff to thrive in their roles and provide exceptional care. This session will share our journey, including key initiatives like Campfire Conversations, Wellness Moments, wellness webinars and continued dialogue with our colleagues. Participants will explore the importance of organizational values, discuss how resilience applies at all levels, and learn practical strategies to strengthen resilience within their own teams. Together, we’ll share best practices to build supportive, resilient healthcare workplaces for all.

The Canadian Mental Health Association Durham (CMHA Durham) is dedicated to fostering a health care workplace environment that prioritizes and encourages equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and anti-racism (EDIA-A) through co-design. In today’s diverse workplace, wellness programs must involve and engage employees in developing collaborative initiatives to champion wellness while immersing EDIA-A into their wellness initiatives.

Our interactive presentation will highlight the development of a co-designed wellness room to exemplify how wellness programs can be developed with a clear EDIA-A approach. Participants will learn the importance of co-design as a key strategy for creating inclusive programs that promote mental heath and wellbeing for everyone, and gain insights on developing their own inclusive workplace wellness strategies. This interactive presentation will invite participants to discover practical approaches and tools for embedding EDIA-A principles into wellness programs, enhancing workplace culture and employee satisfaction.

In 2020, the Ministry of Long-Term Care released the “Long-Term Care Staffing Study”, a report with guidance for staffing levels, models, working conditions, and sector culture for Long Term Care (LTC) centres. The report recommended that LTC centres adopt the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (the Standard). A senior leader recognized the need to improve employee wellbeing in the region’s LTC centres, and advocated for dedicated resources to support implementation of the Standard. . While these Change, Culture and Wellness Advisors’ journey is just beginning, they will describe their role, share the high-level approach that informs their work, and actionable recommendations that they have implemented across five LTC centres and Adult Day programs. This will include sharing their experience and highlights of their learning from the Ontario Centre for Learning, Research and Innovation in Long-Term Care’s Workplace Mental Health Program.

This presentation introduces a new psychological health and well-being tool designed to support healthcare workers and leaders in navigating their well-being needs. The Stepped Care Model tool provides a structured, easy-to-use approach to identifying and connecting individuals to the appropriate supports and services, ensuring timely and effective care at every level of need. In it’s first year, the tool has made significant impact by supporting leadership development in influencing psychological and emotional well-being, as well, improving organizational psychological wellness frameworks across the central region, enhancing both individual well-being and overall workplace culture. Leaders have found it to be an invaluable resource, helping them engage in compassionate, supportive conversations with employees and better manage the emotional and psychological challenges of healthcare work. By guiding leaders in offering tailored interventions and resources, the SCM Tool not only supports the immediate needs of workers but also strengthens the supervisor citizenship skills and broader organizational framework for health and well-being, ensuring a sustainable, proactive approach to workplace wellness and narrative for leaders.

Healthcare workers in Canada deserve to feel safe. The increasing severity of Canada’s healthcare crisis shows no signs of slowing, and healthcare workers bear the brunt of this stress each day. Right now, in healthcare, the workforce is experiencing unprecedented levels of personal and professional distress. CMA’s 2021 National Physician Health Survey shows high rates of burnout (53%), depression (48%), low professional fulfillment (79%) and alarmingly high reports of intimidation, bullying or harassment (80%). We know that more needs to be done to foster safe, inclusive, and health-promoting training and practice environments.

This session will: present the current state of health workforce safety in Canada and the challenges experienced by healthcare providers; explore approaches for creating safer work and learning environments and the interconnectedness of physical, psychological and cultural safety; discuss the road forward and seek input on the future direction and vision for creating a thriving health workforce through health workforce safety.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic the mental health care sector has seen an increased need for prioritizing staff health and wellness to meet psychological health and safety objectives. What was once managed through broad policies and initiatives has transformed into developing equity-based programming that meets the diverse needs of staff for psychological wellness. Over the past several years, Services and Housing In the Province (SHIP) has championed the philosophy of “For You, By You” in the development of a psychological health and safety plan by creating an atmosphere of critical acceptance using five pillars to foster braver spaces for employees. These pillars include courageous communication, staying outside the story, honouring professionalism, emotional safety and vulnerability. Critical acceptance is a foundational principle for changing the organizational culture to one that understands the intersections of psychological and physical health and safety. Follow SHIP’s journey of recognition to implementation of employee driven change.

The ongoing Health Human Resource (HHR) crisis is contributing to rising rates of substance use and substance use disorders among healthcare workers. More acutely evident on the post-pandemic environment, these issues are closely linked to burnout, mental health challenges, and stigma (especially when experienced by healthcare workers). However, the Substance Use Health of HHR is often overlooked in workplace health and safety initiatives. This session blends evidence-based strategies with lived and living expertise to address these challenges with actionable tailored solutions, by focusing on shared priority areas identified in an HHR Symposium. We will present an innovative toolkit designed to equip organizations to take action to reduce stigma, improve workplace culture, and create safer environments where employees feel supported in seeking help for their Substance Use Health.

Scarborough Health Network (SHN) received feedback identifying risk factors related to psychological health and safety, highlighting the need for increased resources. This reinforces our strong Health and Safety Commitment Statement. With a rise in requests for learning opportunities to further enhance transformational leadership development associated with well-being, focusing on engagement and valuing practices.

The goal of this learning intervention is to equip our people with tools to identify, address, and promote mental health, reduce the stigma of mental illness in the workplace, recognize behavioural changes that could indicate mental health issues in oneself or others, and learn coping strategies for navigating the mental health continuum.

Objectives are:

• Cultivate a culture where participating in mental health awareness is encouraged
• Maximize utilization of available staff support resources
• Increase knowledge and accessibility of existing supports such as Employee Assistance Program
• Learn about other professional development programs such as PeopleFirst Compassionate Care Training