Although the mental health of working Canadians was improving with warmer weather and the lifting of many pandemic restrictions, a new report says it’s on the decline again.
The LifeWorks Mental Health Index, a monthly survey into workers’ wellbeing, went down almost a full point from May to June.
Paula Allen with LifeWorks Research told Global News that uncertainty remains for many across the country, despite the end of lockdowns and other restrictive measures.
“We are still reeling from the impacts of the pandemic,” Allen said.
“We were knocked off our perches for quite some time — a lot of lack of control, a lot of uncertainty, and we’re coming out of it with high sensitivity to stress … and now we’re seeing the impact of inflation.”
The latest report, which surveyed 3,000 people, says 74 per cent of respondents reported feeling some impacts from work or personal stress — about an even split.
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When it comes to the workplace, Allen said that at the height of the pandemic, people in management positions expressed more work stress, but that’s now shifted to non-managers worried about job security.
“With the economic situation, if you are a non-manager, you likely have less income — you’re more likely to be a renter, you’re more likely to be younger,” she said.
“We’ve had a lot of movement, so people are more likely to feel vulnerable.”
According to Allen, four out of five managers surveyed said they’ve had to address and support employees’ mental health throughout the pandemic.
“Right from the very beginning, business leaders really saw that this is a risk to the health and well-being of their people, and therefore a risk to their business.
“So we had more investment in training of managers, more investment in services supporting employees to sort of chip away at the stigma of talking about mental health issues in the workplace.”
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