Mental Health Campaign Brings Awareness
BCAA is changing the way it talks about mental health and supporting team members to get real about how they feel—putting wellness first.
BCAA launched its first team member-led mental health campaign during Mental Health Awareness Week in 2018. The 3-month campaign was designed as a highly visible way for BCAA and their leadership to demonstrate commitment to their team’s mental health, supporting team members who might experience challenges.
The first goal was to get people talking.
From the outset, BCAA focused on nurturing an open, sharing culture and by featuring the workplace as a ‘safe space’.
At the heart of their wellness campaign is a focus on personal storytelling and providing forums for open discussions and support, with executives modelling the way and high visibility around supportive wellness policies, programs, initiatives, and practical resources.
To this day, BCAA continues to keep the conversation around mental health going.
Leaders and team members share their mental health experiences in their own words through a regular series of feature stories published on their intranet homepage. Their personal accounts of journeys through challenges including anxiety, depression, social isolation and grief are often raw, emotional reads, but also uplifting recovery stories which exemplify the importance of speaking out and seeking help. The storytelling series attracts high levels of readership and engagement with ‘likes’ and team member comments.
A holistic approach to wellness.
Shaped by input from a team member wellness survey, BCAA has crafted a holistic approach to wellness comprised of 4 pillars: physical, emotional, social, and financial wellbeing. Wellness training and resources are available to all team members, and wellness ‘Champions’ act as ambassadors helping educate team members on wellness program offerings.
COVID-19 only made BCAA even more committed to supporting its team members’ mental health. It offered curated webinars on COVID-specific wellbeing topics and established a mental health-themed Employee Resource Group (ERG). Open for all to join, the ERG is hosted as a private group on MS Teams, with an active discussion board and monthly meetings to check in and support one another.
“It makes me proud to work for an organization which sees mental health as important enough to make it a priority,”
says Dan Connop.
BCAA continues to invest in new ways to support mental wellness. One recent example is the funding of 30 team members to successfully complete a Mental Health First Aid Training course.