From Awareness to Action: Promoting Mental Health in the Workplace

Protecting the health and safety of our employees, contractors, suppliers and communities is our first priority and a cornerstone of our operating philosophy – it’s essential to everything we do and is at the core of our daily operations. Health and safety refers not only to physical safety on-site, but also to the mental health and well-being of our team members.

Each year, we recognize the Canadian Mental Health Association’s (CMHA) Mental Health Week. This year, from May 6-12, Mental Health Week recognizes the importance of compassion – for others and for ourselves.

While we all may not experience mental illness in our lifetime, we all have mental health, which includes our emotions, feelings of connection to others, thoughts and feelings, and managing life’s highs and lows. It’s clear that paying attention to and talking about our mental health can make a difference. For Eldorado Gold, it can help us deliver on our commitments of safe and inclusive workplaces, which includes fostering psychological safety in our workplace. Part of building psychological safety is ensuring our workforce has the psychological and social support needed to manage our mental health by practicing compassion.

Creating a Compassionate Workplace

The CMHA reports that 71% of Canadian employees reported that their work was impacted by their mental health and that compassion has been linked to “higher job satisfaction, loyalty and trust in the organization, higher retention rates and improvements in performance and motivation.”

Through a variety of resources and programs, we are fostering a compassionate workplace that prioritizes employee health and well-being. Below are a few resources available to our people:

• Respectful Workplace Policy: this policy articulates our commitments and expectations for a physically and psychologically safe work environment where everyone is treated with respect, decency, and dignity, and where harassment, discrimination, and workplace violence in all forms are prohibited.
• Not Myself Today: a Canadian mental health program that aims to break down mental health stigma by encouraging open dialogue and understanding of mental health challenges. This program offers a number of resources available to support conversations about mental health at work.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program (EFAP): employees in Canada have access to this program which provides flexible counselling services and resources on a range of topics for self-directed support. EFAP is fully confidential, with 24/7 access to tools to help employees and their families through challenges they may be facing.

Creating a compassionate workplace takes all of us. We’re proud of the resilience of our people and will continue to identify ways we can support and prioritize their mental health and well-being.