Executive Leadership Webinar
Psychological Health and Safety at Work:
Is Your Organization at Risk?
September 20, 2024
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. ET
Virtual
About the Webinar
From unreasonable job demands to workplace bullying to unpleasant or dangerous working conditions, there are many stressors that have the potential to negatively affect workers’ mental health.
Employers increasingly have a duty of care to protect workers from these hazards and can be held liable by workers compensation boards and other legal and regulatory bodies when they fail to meet their obligations.
To create a healthy, high-performing workplace, organizations need to take steps to identify and eliminate those hazards or reduce the risks they pose. While healthy work design is a relatively new focus for employers in the U.S., where the emphasis has historically been on health and wellness benefits and individual-level behavior change, other countries, such as Canada, the UK, and Australia, are considerably further ahead in tackling psychological health and safety at work in a more systemic way.
In this webinar, Dr. Merv Gilbert will sit down with Dr. Ashley Spetch, Chief Mental Health Officer at WorkSafeBC, and David Yamada, Professor of Law and Director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, to talk about the role of prevention and risk management, implementation challenges and solutions related to psychological health and safety programs, and how employers can get upstream of potential problems to protect their workers and the organization.
Presented by the Psychology in the Workplace Collaborative with support from the Kentucky Psychological Foundation
Presenters
Ashley Spetch, PhD
WorkSafeBC
Dr. Ashley Spetch is WorkSafeBC’s Chief Mental Health Officer — the first position of its kind for any workers’ compensation board in Canada. She is responsible for the organization’s overall strategy on mental health, and works with various stakeholders to support B.C. workers affected by psychological injury — with the goal of improving their recovery and safe return-to-work outcomes.
Prior to joining WorkSafeBC, Dr. Spetch held progressive leadership positions in workplace mental health and psychological health and safety. She has extensive experience in helping employers develop programs to cultivate return to work, employee well-being, and psychologically safe and healthy workforces and workplaces.
Dr. Spetch has a PhD in consulting psychology, and is a respected leader in her field. She brings to every situation a balance of academic, clinical, and practical expertise.
David Yamada, JD
Suffolk University Law School
David Yamada is a Professor of Law and Director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. A widely recognized authority on the legal, organizational, and human implications of workplace bullying, he has authored leading law review articles on the topic, and he co-edited, with Dr. Maureen Duffy, a two-volume treatise, Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States (2018).
He has been an affiliated scholar with the Workplace Bullying Institute, founded by Drs. Gary and Ruth Namie, since 1998. David’s Minding the Workplace blog is a popular source of commentary on work, workers, and workplaces, and his insights about employment relations have been frequently sought out by national and local media.
He is also a leader in the therapeutic jurisprudence movement, a school of legal theory and practice that encourages the application of psychological insights to inform law and policy and affirm human dignity.
Merv Gilbert, PhD
Vancouver Psych Health + Safety Ltd
Dr. Merv Gilbert is a Director at Vancouver Psych Health + Safety Ltd, a consulting group providing services that enable organizations to foster psychologically healthy employees and workplace climates.
He has worked as a psychologist for over thirty years in clinical and leadership roles in regional, provincial, and international settings. He is a primary participant in the development, evaluation, and dissemination of resources for workplace mental health.
Dr. Gilbert has published in national and international professional journals and has presented at a diverse array of forums on the importance of workplace psychological health issues for individuals and organizations.
He has consulted with governmental, private, and public-sector organizations. He recently led an evaluation of 40+ organizations as they implemented the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace on behalf of the Mental Health Commission of Canada.
About the Organizers
The Psychology in the Workplace Collaborative is a strategic alliance of independent psychologists and organizational consultants with a shared mission of promoting business practices that support and advance workforce well-being, psychologically healthy workplaces, and organizational excellence.
Our members engage in professional activities spanning research, practice, education, training, and public outreach, and have extensive experience in governance, leadership, and volunteer service.
Our Collaborators
The mission of the Kentucky Psychological Foundation is to build a psychologically healthy Kentucky through: Decreasing mental illness and stigma; Promoting healthy behavior throughout life; Embracing diversity; Promoting leadership in psychology; and Helping all Kentuckians discover and reach their full potential.