Behind the Scenes: AMHSA's Maintaining Mental Fitness Webinar
October 19, 2022
Maintaining Mental Fitness is a webinar created by the Alberta Municipal Health & Safety Association (AMHSA) in partnership with the CSSE, Howatt HR Consulting, and Alberta Municipalities. Season 1 of the weekly webinar ran from March 24 to July 28, 2020, and season 2 ran from May 11 to October 12, 2021.
Season 3 began in late September and wraps up on December 6. It is an educational series designed to support mental fitness for organizations and individuals. This final season focuses on the transition from a pandemic to an endemic workplace environment.
Each episode of the webinar is presented and moderated by a Canadian mental health subject matter expert.
From Pandemic to Endemic
Olana Todoruk, the Director of Learning Assurance at AMHSA and one of the creators of Maintaining Mental Fitness, is enthusiastic about the reach and impact of the series. “Season 1 and 2 were more focused on learnings in micro skills, facilitated by the instructor. What we wanted to do in season 3 was to have more of a podcast, more of a conversation.”
The series, the idea for which was conceived on March 15, 2002, was designed to address the significant challenges that AMHSA’s municipal members—both employers and employees—have been facing since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It was developed to try to help individuals work their way through the pandemic, because it was bringing a lot of psychological impacts to us as individuals in organizations. It’s not therapy—that’s not our mandate—but we’re hoping these interactive programs can give people some of the tools they need to navigate the change we’re going through.”
Olana notes that the feedback she’s received so far has been overwhelmingly positive—participants are finding the series to be really valuable.
Although many employers were forced to recognize, and reckon with, the profound shifts brought on by the pandemic, only a few have tried to meet those challenges head-on in this kind of constructive way, says Olana. “Social and political events really shaped and redefined workplace cultures during COVID-19, and what this means in the long term is still a very big unknown. So season 3 is really a timely discussion on examining key strategies and behaviours that leaders and employees can practise to focus on maintaining mental health and many of the shifts that they’ve had to deal with as organizations. It’s really focused on the endemic stage—and how we respond and act in this ‘new normal.’”
The Importance of Collaboration
The collaboration with CSSE is something that Olana is enthusiastic about and keen to expand on going forward. “AMHSA and the CSSE have essentially the same approach—a psychological and physical safety approach in terms of what we’re here to do; we serve a membership; we have a lot of shared values. We are typical not-for-profits; we’re member-centric organizations. And even though we might deal in different spaces with different industries, we have a lot in common. And because of that, we can leverage each other’s learnings and opportunities and foster a long-term, really productive relationship.”