Guarding Minds at Work

Guarding Minds at Work is a free online 15-20-minute employee survey that assesses workplace psychological health and safety and is grounded in the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. Guarding Minds can help districts identify where they are, identify areas for improvement, and provide an ongoing measurable way to assess the state of workplace wellbeing. A 2023 update to the survey provides additional data on stress, trauma and inclusion.

Guarding Minds compiles reports providing detailed feedback; however, the length of data for all employee groups (hundreds of pages) presents an analytical challenge.

Well at Work advisors have direct experience supporting over a dozen school districts across Canada to move from data into actionable workplace wellbeing strategies. We support districts to use Guarding Minds thoughtfully and wisely, interpreting their data in the context of data from a wide range of districts and contexts.

Our proprietary tool summarizes Guarding Minds at Work survey results across employee groups, pulling from comprehensive data to identify overall areas of strength or weakness.

Based on work with school districts across the country, the Well at Work team has developed tools to enable you to make the best use of Guarding Minds in a K-12 educational context.

The Well at Work's Guarding Minds At Work Summary Report transforms your districts' 500+ pages of Guarding Minds data into a concise, personalized report. The report includes easily understandable visual representations, graphs, and a summary table with highlighted areas of importance. Based on our proprietary analysis tool and our review and analysis of aggregated data, the report streamlines the data analysis process, drawing attention to critical findings, areas for further exploration, and priority areas.

The Guarding Minds at Work survey is hosted by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety and all data is protected on a secure server. Employees complete the survey anonymously, and only aggregate data is available to the organizational administrator. Individual survey responses are not available, and all groups must include at least 10 respondents.

While Guarding Minds is great at identifying areas of strength and concern, it does not provide insight into the why or additional details that can be crucial in addressing the issue. For example, suppose Guarding Minds reports a high level of concern about psychological and social support, e.g. that 73% of employees and 87% of teachers report feeling lonely when working. Guarding Minds would not give you insight into the factors that are contributing to employees’ feelings of loneliness. Following up the survey with a series of focus groups and interviews would be one way to uncover the deeper issues and prepare to take meaningful and relevant action.