Assessing Your Business Consider forming focus groups of no more than ten people who represent different groups within your company. Include leadership like your HR director and other senior employees, as well as superintendents and foremen. Invite open and honest discussion in these focus groups, and try to answer the following questions: 1. Is resilience and mental fitness discussed in our workplace? If so, is it discussed with the same rigor as physical health or safety? 2. What’s the impact to our work crews and overall business if workers are experiencing poor mental fitness? 3. When do workers experience the most stress, worry or loneliness? a. Consider major project deadlines, or days with important milestones at a worksite, like a scheduled concrete pour. b. What about when seasonal workers aren’t working for weeks or months during winter? c. How are these situations handled by our leadership? Are employees given extra support, flexibility and resources? 4. Do our workers often abuse alcohol or substances to deal with the stresses of the job? a. What healthy coping strategies exist that we can promote? 5. What is our company doing to support employees who may be actively struggling, or to support employee mental fitness on an ongoing basis? What is working? Where are the gaps? 6. Does our company have any reasonable suspicion training for signs of substance abuse? 7. What are the barriers to employees accessing the resources or services we DO provide? 8. Is there a written policy clearly establishing resilience and mental fitness as a company value on par with physical safety? 9. Do workers feel they’d have a safe person to talk to (like their foreman or superintendent) if they ever felt like they were struggling?
Record the answers to these questions. They’ll give you a clear sense of where to start, where to improve, and help you create an action plan for addressing mental fitness.
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