Creating a mentally healthy workplace isn’t about adding extra tasks to your to-do list — it’s about embedding well-being into the way work happens every day. Mental health looks different for everyone, and it’s shaped by factors like identity, community, and lived experience. Understanding this helps create a workplace where all employees feel seen, supported, and able to bring their whole selves to work.
Mental Health vs. Mental Illness
It’s important to know the difference: mental health is a state of well-being that we all have — it fluctuates, but it’s always part of us. While mental illness refers to a diagnosed condition, such as depression or anxiety, that significantly impacts daily functioning. Understanding this distinction helps normalize conversations and reduce stigma in the workplace.
While research shows progress in Canadian workplaces, gaps remain — particularly for people from marginalized communities who may experience bias or microaggressions that increase stress and impact well-being.
Just as organizations prioritize physical health and safety through clear policies and everyday practices, mental health deserves the same attention. Integrating well-being into your existing safety and workplace practices ensures mental health is treated as equally important — not an afterthought, but a core part of how work gets done.
Here are eight practical tips to help make your workplace mentally healthy:
- Use Respectful, People-First Language: Avoid stigmatizing phrases and refer to people in the way they prefer. Encourage sharing feelings when comfortable.
- Check In Regularly: Notice changes in colleagues’ behavior and offer support. Approach conversations with care and empathy, and remember to protect your own well-being too.
- Enhance Flexibility: Support personal needs and life’s unpredictability with flexible schedules, task adjustments, and recognition of identity-specific holidays.
- Value Team Members’ Contributions: Recognize effort, attitude, and achievements regularly. Ensure everyone feels seen and appreciated.
- Create a Positive Workplace Culture: Foster connection and well-being with team check-ins, gratitude practices, social time, and role modeling healthy boundaries.
- Include Psychological Health in Policies: Integrate mental health into health and safety policies. Train staff on responding to concerns, and make support accessible.
- Seek Support or Refer When Needed: Encourage employees to use support resources — for themselves or others — such as Employee Assistance Programs or mental health support lines.
- Keep Learning: Mental health is an ongoing practice. Get informed, build competencies and assess your organization to identify opportunities for positive change.
Stronger Teams Start with Mentally Healthy Workplaces
Building a psychologically safe and high-performing workplace is a journey. Take small, deliberate steps, reflect on your culture, and adapt along the way. Step by step, your commitment creates a workplace where everyone can thrive.
For more details and access to resources to support your organization, read our full resource guide & watch our recording “Mental Health at Work: A Safety Priority”
- Free Resource Guide! With information, tips, & resources to continue your learning and support your team today. “8 Tips for Building Mentally Healthy Workplaces“.
This blog is based on the webinar ‘Mental Health at Work: A Safety Priority’, hosted by Inclusivity in partnership with the Canadian Mental Health Association in October 2025. Inclusivity would like to sincerely thank Roselene Dhaliwal, Director of Equity and Inclusion at the Canadian Mental Health Association BC Division, for her expertise, insights, and valuable contributions on this topic.
