Great Employers Create Thriving Workplaces - Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month - October 2020

TORONTO, Sept. 24, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canada Life and Excellence Canada are pleased to present the annual celebration of wellness at work, Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month^®.

The main objective of Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month is to raise awareness about the value that systematically fostering a Healthy Workplace will bring to employee and employer wellness, by having fun together, challenging ourselves, innovating and sharing great ideas, building trust, and celebrating the achievement of aspirational goals. The good habits and knowledge we acquire at work spread out into our families and communities.

In the midst of this global pandemic, when avoiding infection by COVID-19 is the #1 priority, a Healthy Workplace seems more to describe a place where we will prevent catching the coronavirus. A Return to Work Plan now refers to an entire organization going back to the workplace safely, rather than an individual accommodation.

Our theme for 2020, Great Employers Create Thriving Workplaces, aims to support organizations in their efforts to transform the employee experience at work. For employers that have made significant headway, we encourage them to apply right away for the 2020 Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month Great Employers Award.

This year, we are also inviting organizations to submit their stories in our Showcase section, to share successful Healthy Workplace initiatives and have their submission displayed on our website.

For those organizations that are earlier in their improvement journey, we encourage them to use the self-assessment tools provided and the links to external resources to implement their own improvement strategy, including employee surveys.

“This global pandemic is a time for employers to double-down on their investment and effort to create a Healthy Workplace, not cut back,” says Allan Ebedes, President and CEO of Excellence Canada. “If you haven’t surveyed your employees in the last 60 days, you don’t have the information you need to prevent trauma and loss of trust in leadership when planning their return to work.”

Take the Healthy Workplace Challenge for the four weeks of October

• Week 1: Taking Action on our Mental Health
• Week 2: Keeping our Workplace Safe
• Week 3: Making our Workplace Resilient
• Week 4: Improving our Workplace Culture

This year we are focusing on tools and initiatives that can directly impact the successful transition from the organizational disruption and trauma of the COVID-19 Pandemic lock-down toward a transformed and supportive workplace culture.

Even before COVID-19 struck, most corporate leaders acknowledged the importance of healthy workplaces to the well-being and productivity of their employees, thanks to overwhelming evidence and data. Like so many other decisions made during this global crisis, solutions for survival have been implemented at record-breaking speed. The impact of heightened risk and unwelcome change on people has been felt around the world, threatening to have long-term negative impact on psychological and physical health.

Fortunately, the state of the art has evolved to the point where leaders have only to adopt proven successful Healthy Workplace^® strategies to achieve better outcomes, not develop and test them.

There is also powerful collection of timely information at Workplace Strategies for Mental Health that will both educate you and help you develop a plan for safer return to work.

We would like to thank our Sponsors for their generous support:

Presenting Sponsor - Canada Life

Supporting Sponsors - Durham Region, Civic Action, SE Health, WSIB

About Canada Life

Canada Life is a leading insurance, wealth management and benefits specialist, focused on improving the financial, physical and mental well-being of Canadians. We help Canadians achieve their potential, every day. Our customers across Canada have trusted us to provide for their financial security needs and deliver on the promises we have made. We serve the financial security needs of more than 13 million people across Canada and provide a wide range of products and services for individuals, families and business owners.

As an Imagine Caring Company, we support the principles of corporate citizenship and benchmarks for community investment established by Imagine Canada. Our companies contribute at least one per cent of pre-tax profit in support of the communities where our employees and customers live and work. This includes $13.3 million in contributions to non-profit, charitable and community organizations in 2018.

About Excellence Canada

Excellence Canada is an independent, not-for-profit corporation that is committed to advancing organizational excellence across Canada. As a national authority on Excellence, Innovation and Wellness^®, Healthy Workplace^®, and Mental Health at Work^® awards, Excellence Canada provides excellence frameworks, standards, and independent verification and certification to organizations of all sizes and in all sectors. It is also the custodian and adjudicator of the Canada Awards for Excellence program, of which the patron has been the Governor General of Canada since 2005.

For more information, please contact:

Karen Jackson
Senior Advisor, Healthy Workplace Strategies
Excellence Canada
1(800) 263-9648 x250
[email protected]

“Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month” and “Healthy Workplace” are Registered Trademarks of Excellence Canada