Mental Health and Workplace Safety
The Nova Scotia Apprenticeship Agency is committed to providing apprentices with a fair, equitable and safe workplace. The Agency developed this Toolbox Talks series on workplace mental health to promote a better understanding of mental health in the workplace, to understand the importance of good mental health and what to do if someone is struggling with a mental health issue.
The goal of these resources is to help the person delivering the Toolbox Talks to become familiar with the material, provide talking points as a starting point for each topic and give links to more information if the person wishes to learn more prior to presenting the information to staff. In addition, the resources provided may also be emailed/texted to employees post Toolbox Talk so that they may learn more about a topic should they so desire.
These are guidelines only. The idea is not to present the information from these units verbatim, but rather for the designated person to learn the material and then present it to their employees using their own style and manner of speech.
Units are designed to be approximately 5-10 minutes in length, so pacing is key. Of course, if staff are having worthwhile conversations, the unit can be spread out over two Toolbox Talks; there is no one “right way” to conduct these talks.
The general layout of the Toolbox Talks is as follows:
- Introduce the topic. Encourage employee(s) to briefly provide their background knowledge.
- Provide information or statistics that generate conversation and make connections between mental health and the workplace. Encourage conversation, sharing and questions.
- Wrap-up the conversation by providing a summary of what was discussed and how it relates to their professional work life.
- Email resources to employees and provide a preview of the next topic (a sample follow-up email is provided for each unit).