Impact

Discover how leaders can transform workplace stress management from a reactive task to a foundational leadership skill.

Employee support has shifted. The reactive approach of waiting until a team member is overwhelmed before offering an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) number is insufficient. Today, employees require leaders who proactively embed well-being into the daily workflow, treating workplace stress management not as a benefit, but as a core leadership competency. For organizations to thrive in a demanding landscape, leaders must evolve from simply managing tasks to mastering the art of supporting and sustaining their teams’ psychological capacity.

Stress Management as a Leadership Skill

The most effective leaders recognize that their team’s stress levels directly impact productivity, engagement, and retention. Viewing stress management as a leadership skill means moving beyond generic employee wellness programs and building robust, leader-led support systems.

Forward-thinking organizations now understand that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. They are not just offering mindfulness apps; they are training leaders to be the first line of defense against burnout.

These systems include:

• Proactive Workload Balancing: Leaders continually monitor project scopes and deadlines, adjusting resources before a crisis hits.
• Modeling Healthy Boundaries: Leaders demonstrate work-life separation and encourage the use of vacation time and appropriate breaks.
• Authentic Communication: Creating an environment where an employee can say, “I am overwhelmed,” without fear of negative repercussions.

Coaching Strategies: Empowering Resilience

Leaders who are skilled in stress management employ coaching techniques to empower their team members, rather than simply solving their problems. This strategy fosters resilience, the ability to adapt and recover from stress.

Key Coaching Strategies for Leaders:

1. The “Listen First, Advise Later” Rule: When an employee approaches a leader with stress, the leader’s primary role is to listen empathetically and validate the feeling. Leaders should avoid rushing to solutions.
2. Facilitating Self-Discovery: Instead of dictating a fix, a leader asks empowering questions like:
   • “What feels like the single biggest pressure point right now?”
   • “What small change could make the biggest difference in your day?”
   • “If you had 10% more capacity, where would you invest it?”
3. Reframing Control: Helping employees identify what is within their power to change and what is not. This shifts focus from paralyzing worry to actionable steps.

Like the adoption of Psychological Health and Safety (PHS) frameworks, embedding these coaching skills ensures that support is not an afterthought but a foundational part of leadership design.

Peer Support: Shared Purpose and Connection

While a leader sets the tone, a culture of workplace stress management is sustained by peer-to-peer support. Teams that trust and rely on each other create a safety net against isolation and stress.

Modern workplaces are adopting new tools to promote this shared responsibility:

1. Designated Check-In Buddies: Assigning non-reporting peers for weekly, confidential “temperature checks” on workload and emotional state.
2. Team Resilience Workshops: Facilitated sessions that teach the team—not just the leader—how to recognize signs of strain in a colleague and offer appropriate, non-clinical support.
3. Gamified Connection Challenges: Encouraging cross-functional social activities or challenges to build high connection, which research shows is critical for high-performing teams.

This echoes the concept of a “Last 8% culture” where high connection (trust, belonging) is combined with the courage to have difficult, honest conversations about workload and mental state. When peers feel safe to speak up for one another, the risk of hidden, individual burnout drops significantly.

Early-Intervention Models for Sustainment

Waiting for a formal mental health crisis is a failure of leadership. Early-intervention models are designed to catch stress at the friction point, before it becomes a breakdown.

Effective Early-Intervention Strategies:

• Routine ‘Pulse Checks’: Short, anonymous surveys that detect general team stress trends (e.g., meeting overload, perceived lack of control) before they become individual burnout cases.
• Workload Audits: A structured process where a leader reviews an employee’s calendar and task list with them weekly, actively looking for unsustainable patterns.
• Mandated Restoration Time: Encouraging and sometimes enforcing the use of micro-breaks or “digital detox pods” during the workday to restore focus.

By utilizing HR analytics and routine, structured check-ins, leaders can predict burnout risks and offer real-time support, complementing but not replacing formal human resources or clinical care.

Final Thought

Workplace stress management is the infrastructure of the modern, successful team. It is no longer a soft skill, but a hard requirement of leadership. The next generation of workplaces will treat the psychological capacity of their employees as a resource to be designed, maintained, and continuously improved.

In Canadian workplaces, the duty to accommodate ensures that employees with disabilities, including those related to mental health, can participate fully and equitably. But many employers don’t always recognize that accommodation has two components: the procedural duty, which includes the duty to inquire, and the substantive duty, where actual accommodation measures are implemented.¹

Understanding how these duties operate in the context of mental health is essential. Understanding how to have safe, supportive, stigma-free conversations is even more essential. 

This is where mental health training becomes not just helpful, but foundational. 

The Procedural Component: Understanding the Duty to Inquire 

The procedural component requires employers to take steps to understand an employee’s disability-related needs. In the words of the reference document, employers “have a duty to inquire about the disability-related needs of the employee,” even when the employee has not requested accommodation.

This duty arises in two common scenarios: 

Scenario 1: The Employee Identifies Their Challenges 

Sometimes an employee comes forward with an accommodation request, saying they’re struggling. Even then, employers must gather the information needed to understand how the employee’s needs affect their work, while still protecting privacy.

Employees may hesitate because medical information is deeply personal, and they may fear stigma or negative repercussions. Creating a psychologically safe culture around the accommodation process helps reduce this hesitation. 

Scenario 2: The Employer Notices a Change and Must Inquire 

The duty to inquire also applies when the employer “suspects, or should suspect,” that a disability could be affecting performance – especially when mental illness makes it difficult for individuals to recognize or communicate their needs.

The referenced guidance explains that this inquiry must occur before performance management or disciplinary action is taken. It also recommends approaching employees using factual observations such as: 

• “I’ve noticed that you don’t seem to be yourself lately. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” 

• “Your productivity numbers have fallen recently. I want you to be successful. Is there anything I can do to help you?” 

These examples align directly with the type of stigma-free, supportive conversations that mental health training prepares leaders to have. 

In Mental Health Contexts, the Duty to Inquire = The Duty to Have a Safe, Brave Conversation 

What makes mental health unique is that symptoms are often invisible. An employee may not understand their condition, may be reluctant to discuss it, or may fear being judged. This is why the duty to inquire, in practice, becomes the duty to engage in a conversation that is: 

• grounded in non-judgment and curiosity 

• respectful of privacy 

• informed, not assumptive 

• focused on behaviour and observable changes 

• supportive rather than diagnostic 

This requires skill, and not all leaders have been trained to navigate these moments. 

This is one of the key reasons mental health training is essential. 

How Opening Minds Training Strengthens Culture and Capacity 

Culture Support: The Working Mind (TWM) 

TWM helps build a psychologically healthy and safe culture by increasing mental health literacy, reducing stigma, and giving everyone a shared tool, the Mental Health Continuum, to identify changes early and talk about them openly. 

This directly supports the procedural duty by making conversations about mental health feel normal rather than exceptional. 

Conversation Capacity: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) 

MHFA equips employees and leaders to: 

• recognize signs of a mental health problem 

• approach someone safely and non-judgmentally 

• engage in supportive conversations 

• provide immediate assistance 

• encourage appropriate professional help 

These are the precise skills needed to navigate the duty to inquire with sensitivity, respect, and confidence. 

Together, TWM and MHFA give organizations both the culture and the practical skills needed to fulfill the procedural duty in a meaningful, human-centred way. 

The Substantive Duty: Accommodation Doesn’t Always Require a Complex Plan 

The reference document notes that the substantive duty involves putting accommodation measures in place and assessing their reasonableness.

In practice, especially with mental health, early interventions are often simple but effective. 

The Mental Health Continuum reminds us that mental health changes over time. Early conversations allow employers to offer support before the situation escalates. 

Accommodations may include: 

• temporary workload adjustments 

• flexible scheduling 

• modified duties 

• use of sick or mental health days 

• increased check-ins 

• quiet spaces or environmental adjustments 

These align with the source document’s guidance that accommodation should be tailored to what the employee can and cannot do, not their diagnosis.

Early support can prevent crises, reduce absenteeism, and lower the likelihood of long-term disability claims, benefiting both the employee and the organization. 

Conclusion: Training Makes the Duty to Accommodate Possible 

The duty to accommodate is nuanced, but when it comes to mental health, one thing is clear: 

Supporting employees requires a culture that makes space for conversations and the skills to have those conversations safely and confidently. 

With evidence-based training like The Working Mind and Mental Health First Aid, employers can: 

• notice changes earlier 

• engage in supportive, stigma-free inquiry 

• provide appropriate accommodation 

• foster healthier, more resilient teams 

• support productivity and retention 

Accommodation is not just a legal responsibility -it’s a human one. Mental health training ensures employers can meet that responsibility with sensitivity, confidence, and respect. 

What HR Leaders and Managers Can Do Next 

To strengthen your workplace’s ability to meet both components of the duty to accommodate, especially the duty to inquire, consider taking these three practical steps: 

1. Build Your Confidence in Having Safe, Supportive Conversations 

Learn how to approach concerns about performance, behaviour, or well-being in ways that are non-judgmental and grounded in psychological safety. These skills are what make the duty to inquire possible. 

2. Learn to Recognize Shifts in Mental Health 

Whether it’s changes in communication, productivity, engagement, or behaviour, knowing the signs of shifting mental health helps you intervene early, long before a crisis develops. 

3. Examine and Challenge Your Own Stigma 

Everyone has unconscious biases. Reflect on your own assumptions about mental health and how they might affect the way you respond to employees. Leaders who recognize and reduce stigma create safer, more inclusive workplaces. 

Strengthen Your Culture and Capacity with Opening Minds 

If you’re ready to help your organization meet its duty to accommodate with confidence and care, explore The Working Mind and Mental Health First Aid. 

Together, they help create workplaces where employees feel safe to speak up, accommodated, and leaders can feel capable of supporting them. 

1. Information in this article was sourced from: Ontario Human Rights Commission. Policy on Preventing Discrimination Based on Mental Health Disabilities and Addictions: 13. Duty to Accommodate. OHRC, https://www3.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-based-mental-health-disabilities-and-addictions/13-duty ↩︎

Featuring the perspective of firefighter and facilitator Pat Zazelenchuk

Strength is evolving.  

Not through technology, accolades, or physical feats, but through the quiet courage of showing up as our truest selves. For too long, society applauded the loudest, boldest, strongest among us, while discouraging vulnerability. But that narrative is shifting. Strength is no longer defined for us; it is something we define for ourselves. 

Redefining Strength Beyond Stoicism

And yet, the weight of expectation still presses heavily on men. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, 60% of people with a mental health problem or illness won’t seek help for fear of being labelled ‘weak’.¹ It’s a statistic that speaks volumes, because asking for help is not weakness, but courage. 

It’s time to redefine strength: to let go of rigid checkboxes and embrace all that strength can be. 

This November, as we continue to unlearn for Men’s Health Awareness Month, we sat down with Pat Zazelenchuk. By day, Pat is a firefighter with the City of Edmonton, carrying the physical demands of his job with skill and dedication. By night, he is a facilitator in our network, showing that mental strength requires its own kind of courage. For Pat, strength isn’t a fixed state, it’s daily practice. 

Asking for Help as Everyday Courage

“Strength isn’t measured by physical endurance or stoic silence,” he says. “It means being honest about your emotions, unafraid of judgment, and no longer feeling the need to perform toughness.” Over time, Pat’s understanding of strength has deepened. “Historically, men were expected to suppress vulnerability, but that suppression disconnects us from ourselves and those around us.” True strength, he explains, comes from acknowledging pain, expressing feelings, and embracing emotional openness. That’s what brings balance to life. 

Pat emphasizes that asking for help is not weakness, it’s wisdom. Through therapy and the support of his family, he learned to navigate stress, recognize triggers, and develop healthy coping strategies. “Life is too short to live in distress, anger, or shame,” he reflects. His lived experience, combined with his work as a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) and The Working Mind (TWM) facilitator, reinforces a critical message: men’s mental health matters, and seeking support is essential. 

Support, Pat admits, isn’t always simple. Even when reaching out to trusted friends or family, responses may not always meet expectations, and that’s part of healing. “Two years ago, I had to find the courage to ask my wife for help. As a full-time firefighter, my work/life balance was slipping. I was isolated, quick to anger, emotionally checked out at home, and I completely missed the signs, even as a facilitator and peer support member.” Healing is rarely linear but having a core circle you fully trust makes a difference. 

Looking more broadly at men’s mental health, Pat challenges the culture of stoicism that still dominates. “I wish we were more accepting of men’s mental health. This culture of stoicism, the idea that men need to be tough, is preventing many from seeking help. Experiencing a decline in wellness and asking for support is not weakness; it’s a profound act of strength.” 

Building a Culture that Supports Men’s Mental Health

This Men’s Health Awareness Month, let’s honor the courage it takes to be open, the wisdom in asking for help, and the transformative power of empathy. Strength is no longer about enduring alone. It lives in connection, in support, and in the courage to be fully human.