Interventions
Our intervention services will assist you in providing:
- A psychologically safe workplace
- Resolution of individual or team conflicts
- Stay at work plans to resolve complex performance, conflict or behaviourial concerns
- Return to work plans that allow people to remain productive in spite of mental health issues
- Sustainable and effective team engagement processes
- An approach to performance management that can increase employee commitment and is practical even in situations where mental health may be a factor
Let us help you address complex problems in a way that allows you to move toward more productive and healthy working relationships.
Team Resolution
Mary Ann Baynton has been successfully engaging groups in developing plans to resolve their own team issues for over 15 years. Her philosophy is that no outsider can effectively or sustainably come in and dictate how a team should interact or how they can reduce workplace stressors including conflict, bullying behaviours, or personality conflicts. Each team is as unique as its members and only they know what is required to provide a workplace that allows them to thrive. Mary Ann’s approach is to engage each team member to privately and confidentially discuss their own recommendations for resolution. She looks for themes and patterns among the various answers and puts together a plan that the team not only can live with, but have created for themselves.
What has made this process so successful are the following elements:
- Objectiveness of the interviewer in honouring all voices.
- Confidentiality for each interviewee.
- Use of themes and patterns to identify how the team defines a healthy work environment.
- A final report that does not assign blame or rehash complaints. Rather it is a guide for moving forward in a way that the team agrees would be healthy for them.
This process helps avoid the potential trauma of an investigation (when it has not yet reached the stage where investigation is required by regulation or collective agreement) and rather than just finding fault, actually finds a new way of interacting as a team. Members are much more committed when they all contribute to the solution.
The Team Resolution Approach PDF contains information on the process that takes place.
Return-to-Work Process
When an employee returns to work, especially after a “mental health” leave, there may be fear or uncertainty on the part of the supervisor and/or co-workers as well as for the employee. In some cases, unaddressed performance issues, previous conflicts with co-workers or concern about ongoing behaviours in the workplace are barriers to a successful reintegration into the workplace. Medical notes do not usually address any of these issues.
Our return-to-work planning is not a replacement for sound medical or rehabilitation programs, rather it is the way for workplaces to ensure they have done all they can to allow the employee’s return to be successful in terms of productivity, performance and sustainability.
Our past cases have included complex and diverse situations involving a range of mental health issues.
We are experienced with:
- depression
- bipolar
- anxiety
- PTSD
- OCD
We have worked in:
- unionized environments
- healthcare
- educational settings
- industrial
- high-risk settings
- corporate head offices
- small business settings
We have helped:
- professors
- engineers
- nurses
- bus drivers
- receptionists
- many others
All make a successful transition back into a work situation that effectively addressed the many issues that might have prevented them from staying at work.
Our approach is to understand the issues that existed before the leave, understand the situation that will exist after the return to work and develop a plan that addresses what the employee may need to stay productive, what they are willing to do to help themselves and how they want to deal with future issues as they arise. This comprehensive planning gives the supervisor a solid plan that honestly deals with the issues in an effective way.
The best time to call for our help is well before the employee actually returns to work.
The Return to Work Process PDF contains information on the process that takes place.