Agnico Eagle, a leading global gold producer, is taking the lead in ensuring its employees feel psychologically safe and healthy on the job site.
Marsha Nicholas is a Toronto-based registered psychotherapist who’s working as a mental health and addictions consultant for Agnico Eagle’s Detour Lake Mine, located about 300 kilometres northeast of Timmins.
She’s leading the development of a psychological health and safety policy at the site, which includes creating educational materials and facilitating training to “enhance psychological resilience within the mining sector.”
Recent research has revealed that 70 per cent of people feel their manager has more of an impact on their mental health than either their therapist or their doctor, she said, and mental stress claims currently make up 35 per cent of short-term disability cases.
Having a psychologically safe workplace means that workers are able to speak freely about mental health issues and won’t be punished for speaking out, she added.
“So this is really what we are doing,” Nicholas said in her address at the Workplace Safety North Mining Health and Safety Conference held in Sudbury on May 1. “How can we reduce the stigma and have people really freely talking about mental health?
“At the end of the day, we really can do this by creating an accepting culture and by putting the message out consistently and proactively, [with] constant support and reassurance.”
Nicholas said some of the ways they do this is by talking about mental health during company safety shares and increasing training for personnel that have a higher likelihood of managing workers’ mental health, in areas such as mental health first aid and applied suicide intervention.
The company wants its leaders to feel confident in addressing workers’ concerns and having challenging discussions about mental health and wellbeing.
“It's really important for our leadership to guide and model those types of behaviours as well, so that the regular workforce will feel comfortable to do so,” she said.
“If leadership is encouraging employees to come forward, then they really need to show that it's okay to do so. This is where the power of vulnerability really comes into play.”
Agnico Eagle has also put into place a substance use rehabilitation program to help employees that are struggling with drug and alcohol misuse.
If an employee has a substance use problem, they can come forward and receive an assessment, followed by recommendations for treatment.
A key piece of Agnico Eagle’s mental health initiative is a peer support program dubbed Dig Deep, through which carefully selected employees are trained to support their coworkers.
Because they’re familiar with the work and the challenges that mining can pose — especially at remote mine sites — they’re well suited to understand one another, provide support and model a sense of hope and guidance, Nicholas said. Many also have personal experience with mental health challenges or addictions.
“If someone has lived that lived experience, whether it be addiction or struggles with various mental health challenges, and someone is coming to them with a very similar circumstance, they're better able to help and understand,” she said. “Peers can be more available and approachable to talk to than a manager or a leader.”
Dig Deep was launched thanks, in large part, to Dylan Loiselle, a blaster helper at Detour Lake Mine who shared his own struggles with mental health and addiction.
After 15 years of active addiction, Loiselle said, he reached sobriety in 2019, the same year he was hired at Agnico Eagle.
But as he came out of addiction, he said, personal issues he’d been anesthetizing and suppressing started to emerge. In 2020, he tried to take his own life and went on short-term disability.
“Upon coming back to site, I realized how many people are struggling with that in silence and nobody knows about it,” he said.
“The return to work is, ‘Let's get you back on a haul truck. Let's get you back to work.’ But there were some gaps that I had noticed, so I figured having a program like Dig Deep would be beneficial.”
Agnico Eagle was fully supportive of the idea, and today they’ve trained 14 peer supporters across nine departments, with more resources being added over time.
“What we do is we aim to be an ear for people to listen and give them the guidance that they need,” Loiselle said.
For the program to work, confidentiality and trust has to be assured, he said. That’s why they take measures to choose the right people for the role.
Workers who apply are first vetted by their supervisor to ensure they’re a good fit. Following that, they’ll be interviewed using carefully selected questions, and each peer supporter must sign a non-disclosure agreement to proceed.
Peer supporters are all formally trained by a psychological professional, in areas including managing stress and anxiety, addressing depression, crisis intervention, recognizing suicidal risks, emergency interventions, referral service pathways, self-care, and protection for caregivers.
“We do know that the volunteers are taking a lot on by hearing stuff that people may be disclosing to them, so it's important that they are able to decompress and debrief,” Loiselle said.
“So we have active debrief sessions with the volunteers, just to see where their head is at, because some of the things that may be disclosed can be very heavy and affect them, not in the moment, but over time.”
Agnico Eagle is now a few years into its work in developing its psychological health and safety policy, Nicholas said, and it continues to evolve with added training and workshops, as well as surveys to ensure they’re meeting their goals.
The message the company wants to send is very clear, she added: Agnico Eagle will continue to support its employees throughout their mental health and addictions journeys.
By creating a safe space where people can talk about these issues, it creates awareness and gives workers insight into the challenges others are experiencing, while enabling them to address their own, Nicholas said.
“It supports a workplace culture that is free of judgment and empowers positive change by learning ways to approach people who may be experiencing a decline in their mental wellbeing.”
