The Working Mind

Finding it hard to start a conversation with your manager about your mental health or psychological well-being?  Feeling isolated or lacking consistent positive relationships with co-workers, emotionally exhausted, or noticing behaviours in yourself like curtness, cynicism, withdrawal, or heavy moods?  The Working Mind (TWM) Employee course can help. 

The Working Mind (TWM) Employee course provides:

• Language and tools to help you speak openly with your supervisor and colleagues about how you feel and how your mental health indicators such as mood, emotions, energy, and cognitive clarity are affected by occupational stressors like overwhelming caseloads or scheduling demands. 
• Insight into recognizing the signs of good, declining, and poor mental health in yourself and others using the Mental Health Continuum.
• Evidence-based resilience techniques to help you cope more effectively with occupational and personal stressors.
• Connection with peers in breakout discussions to normalize conversations about workplace mental health.  Together, practice using the Mental Health Continuum and common language to notice changes in colleagues, approach them with care, and know what to say or do to offer support. 

The Working Mind – Employee Course is an evidence-based training program designed to help you make a change in how you think, act, and feel about mental health. It provides practical knowledge and tools to support your own well-being and contributes to a healthier, more understanding workplace.

Recent research indicates that veterinary professionals, as a group, tend to have lower resilience than the general population. Serious psychological distress was twice as common among practice team members as among veterinarians, and overall well-being was lower. Among team members, 27% were classified as experiencing high to very high burnout, and 71% reported high levels of emotional exhaustion. These challenges have been linked to increased medical errors and a higher rate of leaving the profession.  This highlights the importance of ensuring that every member of the veterinary team including veterinarians, registered veterinary technologists and technicians, receptionists, client care staff, veterinary assistants, and kennel and administrative staff, has access to take The Working Mind Course.

• Hayes, G. M., LaLonde‐Paul, D. F., Perret, J. L., Steele, A., McConkey, M., Lane, W. G., Kopp RJ, Stone HK, Miller M, Jones‐Bitton, A. (2020). Investigation of burnout syndrome and job‐related risk factors in veterinary technicians in specialty teaching hospitals: a multicenter cross‐sectional study. Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care, 30(1), 18-27.
• Volk JO, Schimmack U, Strand EB, Reinhard A, Hahn J, Andrews J, Probyn-Smith K, Jones R. Merck Animal Health Veterinary Team study reveals factors associated with well-being, burnout, and mental health among nonveterinarian practice team members. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 2024;262(10):1130-1337.

The Working Mind (TWM) Employee course helps teams to:

• Communicate openly about mental and emotional health using the Mental Health Continuum.
• Recognize how stressors can impact the indicators on the Mental Health Continuum and work together to find healthier ways to manage them.
• Appreciate each other and strengthen interpersonal relationships.
• Strengthen individual and team coping capacity to reduce strain on team relationships while supporting organizational resilience.

Supporting mental health of employees is important  and managers play a key role in creating environments where team members can thrive. The Working Mind (TWM) Manager course helps leaders recognize early upstream signs of workplace stress before burnout develops, time off is needed, or individuals leave the profession.

The Working Mind (TWM) Manager course offers managers the same learning outcomes as the Employee Course along with one additional module that provides:

• A common language and Mental Health Continuum framework to discuss stress and mental health in a psychologically safe and open way.
• Connection with other managers in breakout discussions to learn and practice processes to:
• Support employees’ emotional and mental health following critical workplace events
• Provide appropriate, non-punitive, and recovery-oriented actions to support employees within each colour zone of the Mental Health Continuum.
• Perspectives to collaborate with teams on protective measures such as adjusting schedules, workloads, or processes to help prevent emotional exhaustion and burnout.