Workplace Wellbeing 101

Discover the key ingredients to develop a thriving workplace and Find out how investing in a socially and mentally healthy workplace leads to happier, healthier students.

What is a healthy workplace in K-12 education?

What is wellbeing?

Characteristics of a Healthy Workplace

What is mental health?

Why does a healthy workplace in K-12 education matter?

Better Return On Investment (ROI)

Key Facts: Stress in the K-12 Education Workplace

A Legal Responsibility

Making the Case: K-12 Staff Stress and Burnout: An issue worthy of investment

Making the Case: The Importance of Teacher & Staff Wellbeing

What is a healthy workplace in K-12 education?

Learn more about what constitutes a healthy workplace in the K-12 school setting and what conditions within the workplace need to be set to ensure that educators thrive within their roles.

Healthy workplaces that promote mental health and wellbeing are productive, attract and retain top talent, and get the best out of highly engaged employees. This means better outcomes for the organization’s bottom line, whether that be profits, social impact or – in the case of our public education systems – student outcomes.

While schools and school districts come in all shapes and sizes and differ between provinces and territories, healthy environments for both teaching and learning generally have a few common ingredients.

It Starts at the Top

Workplace wellbeing strategies

What is wellbeing?

“Wellbeing” is an imperfect term due to its broad coverage across various disciplines including healthcare, economics, and the social sciences, among other disciplines. This makes it difficult to define wellbeing in simple terms, although it generally refers to “how we are doing” as individuals, communities or society. Most relevant to the workplace, wellbeing refers to the interrelated dimensions of physical, mental, and social/emotional wellbeing for individual workers (i.e. “life satisfaction based on an individual’s perception of their health, happiness and sense of purpose” – and its interaction with work¹) and the workforce as a whole.

Our understanding of workplace wellbeing is based on the Health Canada/Public Health of Canada model. This three-pronged approach, which is widely accepted in Canada, involves three “avenues of influence” by which employers can influence a worker’s health and well-being: the physical work environment, the psychosocial work environment, and personal health resources.

Some Characteristics of a Healthy Workplace

In brief, while there are numerous factors that can impact a staff member’s sense of personal or subjective wellbeing, research in positive psychology has identified three key characteristics of a healthy workplace:

1. Sense of Relatedness

A SENSE OF RELATEDNESS MEANS THAT…

staff have positive relationships with other staff members, feel welcome and included, greet and acknowledge each other daily, and check-in with each other to provide support. When individuals have positive relationships, they are also more sensitive to each other in times of stress.

2. Sense of Competency

A SENSE OF COMPETENCY MEANS THAT…

staff feel that their strengths, skills, and potential are valued, appreciated, and recognized. Unlike workplace gossip or other harmful conversations, shared work goals allow staff to work as a team, to complement each other’s skills, and to contribute to overall team performance.

3. Autonomy Support

AUTONOMY SUPPORT MEANS THAT…

staff feel heard and valued in developing solutions and strategies, find opportunities to collaborate, and seek others’ perspectives. Unlike bullying or other behaviours that belittle, workplaces that practice autonomy support also foster psychological wellbeing.³

What is Mental Health?

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental health as “a state of wellbeing in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.”

The WHO also emphasizes in its constitution that “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”⁴

What Makes a "Good" School Culture

School culture is not a fluffy concept; rather, it is a concept that can be pinpointed, designed, and executed – and school leaders are able to influence school culture where there are strong relationships between every member of the school community. Here are five key elements that shape school culture:

Fundamental Beliefs and Assumptions

Things that staff consider true, such as the belief that “All students have the potential to succeed.”

Shared Values

Staff judgments about whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust, in relation to their fundamental beliefs and assumptions, such as “The right thing is for our teachers to be collaborating with colleagues every step of the way.”

Norms

How staff believe they should act and behave, or what behaviour they think is expected of them, such as “We should be engaged at our weekly staff meetings.”

Patterns and Behaviours

How staff actually act and behave at work. In a strong school culture, organizational norms often lineup with how staff act and behave. In a weak culture, staff actions and behaviours may differ from the established norms.

Tangible Evidence

Practical evidence that you can see, feel, and hear that signals to those within the school and beyond what is the school’s culture. For example, a full staff parking lot an hour before school begins.⁵

What Are The Top Organizational Conditions That Support Staff Mental Health and Well-being

School Mental Health Ontario outlines the top ten organizational conditions that position schools and school districts to maintain high-quality practices in school mental health and wellbeing. While these conditions centre around the wellbeing of students, they can similarly be applied to the wellbeing of adults working in K-12 education. Some top conditions include:

Commitment

Put simply, when senior leaders demonstrate commitment to mental health and wellbeing, the result is contagious and school staff are also empowered to make this a priority.

Clear and Focused Vision

Collaborating to create a shared vision with staff, key stakeholders, and the community about what wellbeing looks like helps guide the creation of wellbeing strategies and decisions that align with staff strengths, needs, and priorities.

Communication and Shared Language

Given the complexity of mental health and wellbeing, it’s important to adopt common terms to build a shared understanding, such as the difference between mental health and mental illness.

Systemic Professional Learning

Ensuring that staff at all levels of the school district receive professional learning about mental health and wellbeing that is consistent with their role and based on best available evidence. This ensures that all adults are equipped to promote mental health and wellbeing.

Broad Communication

Realizing that mental health and wellbeing is an important matter that impacts all staff within a school district – and for which everyone has a role to play – as a step towards building relationships founded on respect, trust, and collaboration among all staff.⁶

Why does a healthy workplace in K-12 education matter?

An in-depth look at why school districts investing in creating a healthy workplace that promotes educators’ wellbeing is not only beneficial for increasing retention rates and getting the best out of highly engaged employees, but also for better student outcomes.

A school district that cares about staff wellbeing and strives to build a positive and safe work environment makes schools a more enjoyable place to be. Generally, when staff feel valued, respected, and supported in the workplace, they are more likely to be productive and committed to their work.

Compassion Fatigue

When teachers care too much

Better Return On Investment (ROI)

Research by Sun Life has shown that money spent on creating a healthy workplace that promotes and supports staff wellbeing saves an estimated $251 per employee annually.

In the Canadian education sector, the average work days lost per worker has jumped from 8.9 in 2014 to 11.9 in 2018.¹ Teacher absenteeism is partly due to greater job stress. In British Columbia, 51.5% of teachers reported taking a leave of absence due to stress-related reasons (e.g. workload).² When a classroom’s regular teacher is away, it may take time for students to adjust to and connect with their new teacher. As a result, teacher absenteeism also influences students’ learning.

With this in mind, a benefit to investing in wellbeing in the workplace includes reduced absenteeism, with staff missing fewer days and students having a consistent teacher in the classroom. Research has shown that investing in a healthier workplace saves approximately 1.5 to 1.7 days in absenteeism per worker in a year.³

Investing in a healthy workplace that places wellbeing at the heart of school values and practices leads to better supports for school staff, greater student engagement, and improved student achievement.⁴

Stress and Burnout

Insights for new teachers

Key Facts: Stress in the K-12 Education Workplace

Stress and burnout syndrome are one of the most frequent negative experiences in the helping professions, and staff within the education sector – including superintendents, principals, teachers, and other teaching and non-teaching staff – are not immune. Here are some statistics on the state of staff wellbeing in Canadian K-12 education:

58%

of teachers reported feeling stressed “all the time,” compared with only 36% of the overall Canadian workforce

79%

of Canadian educators felt their stress levels had increased over the last five years as a result of work-life imbalance and just as many (85%) felt this imbalance was affecting their ability to teach

50h

On average, Canadian teachers work 50 to 55 hours per week

30%

of teachers new to the field resign after only five years of teaching

A Legal Responsibility

Employers have a legal responsibility to follow certain legislative requirements that apply to their workplaces. All school staff have formal rights and responsibilities under health and safety legislation to ensure both the physical safety of both staff and students in the classroom and to create a workplace that supports staff wellbeing and healthy lifestyle practices.

The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Safety in the Workplace is a valuable resource available to all sectors that provides a set of guidelines that guide and support an organization’s mental health promotion efforts in a way that produces the best return on investment.

It’s Just Good Business

Creating safe workplaces for employees

Staffs Are Engaged

Approximately one-third of teaching staff have reported experiencing mental health problems with workload and stress identified as the most common reasons.⁵ As a result, teachers are more likely to become disengaged with their work and leave the profession altogether.

When staff are disengaged, relationships with both colleagues and students are affected and productivity levels are lower. Taking the time to invest in creating a healthy workplace is beneficial not only for boosting staff engagement, but it also supports a school climate that promotes mental health and wellbeing.

An engaged, healthy workplace where opportunities are created for staff to apply their skills, have some control over their teaching practices, and maintain positive relationships with school leaders will retain staff and improve morale.

Positive Social Impact

A work environment that values the wellbeing of staff in K-12 education opens up the conversation around staff wellbeing and creates a space where staff feel supported.

Healthy workplaces encourage work-life balance by establishing clear boundaries between work and home life and minimizing the stresses associated with juggling the demands of multiple roles that school staff often experience.

By extension, creating a healthy workplace that fosters staff wellbeing has an influence on: