Year: 2020

As we gear up for the holiday season, and gear down the work year, how is your stress level? Holidays and vacations are great for our Mental Bandwidth and Mental Health At Work, but they can also lead to a spike in Workload before and after. Here are two tips to help you minimize that …

“As much as I loved the work, at one point I realized that the trade-offs to my mental well-being weren’t worth it.” This is one of the early sentences in an article that was published this week, when I was asked about an interesting story that shaped my career. The article, “5 Ways That Businesses Can …

Confession time: I was working on Sunday until 10 pm. I also had a call on Monday over dinner time. And yet, one of the first things I tell the leaders I work with is to set boundaries around evenings and weekends, and to make sure we give ourselves breaks. Does this make me a …

As a leader, you know Mental Health impacts how your team shows up at work, and your success as a team. You know Mental Health is under greater strain these days, so teams need to work together for Mental Health at Work. But how do you talk about it? It’s a sensitive topic. If these …

I don’t know what the weather is like where you are. Here in Calgary, we’re on day two of rain. Today it is REALLY coming down. It’s not our usual “heavy storm for a bit then clear up,” no, this is serious rain. It’s unrelenting. It reminds me a bit of the winter rain in …

“I’m fine.” “Good, thanks.” “Busy. “Tired.” *shrug* “You know.” These are all examples of what I’ve said in response to “How are you?” when I’ve been struggling.  In those times, if you’d asked me if I was ok, I would have probably said “yeah” or “sure.” Once or twice, when I was feeling brave, I …

Balancing motherhood and full-time work has always been a challenge.  With the cancellation of school and daycare in an attempt to flatten the curve of COVID-19, that challenge is bigger than ever.  The Morneau-Shepell Mental Health Index Report for April 2020 released this week finds that parents of two or more kids, and women in particular, …

  Employee mental health is being stretched to the max right now.  Between the stresses related to Covid19, the abrupt and unplanned move to remote work (while everyone else is home, including our kids), and the uncertainty of how long we’ll be in this situation, it’s a perfect storm for negative mental health impacts.  As …

I’ll admit it – I’m finding the uncertainty over Covid19 and how it will impact our community to be really unnerving. I imagine that, on some level, we all are. Events like this are a real strain on our mental well-being, with stress and anxiety rates climbing higher. To make matters more challenging, Covid19 is …