The Canadian Mental Health Commission, in their booklet – Making the Case for Investing in Mental Health in Canada, reported that the economic cost of mental illnesses to the Canadian healthcare and social support system was projected at $79.9 billion for the year 2021.

SAHARA 4 ESG Corporate Wellness enables organizations to demonstrate Environmental Social Governance (ESG) by taking proactive steps to realize measurable improvements in safety performance as it relates to physical and psychological health and well-being. SWIFT facilitates ESG by providing measurable safety performance improvement and corporate wellness solutions and, through our philanthropic programs.

SAHARA allows organizations of all sizes to cost-effectively meet the requirements outlined in the CAN/CSA-Z1003-13/BNQ 9700-803/2013 National Standard of Canada.

This Standard specifies requirements for a documented and systematic approach to develop and sustain a psychosocial healthy and safe workplace including a framework to create and continually improve a psychologically healthy and safe workplace specifically:

• the identification and elimination of hazards in the workplace that pose a risk of psychological harm to a worker;
• the assessment and control of the risks in the workplace associated with hazards that cannot be eliminated;
• implementing structures and practices that support and promote psychological health and safety in the workplace; and
• fostering a culture that promotes psychological health and safety in the workplace.
• Off-the-shelf customizable industry verticals have been created for Service Hospitality and Tourism and Energy, Resources, and Industrial industry sectors. We have launched these through the SiS Foundation free to high school students.

SAHARA can be customized for regional HSE regulations, workplace settings and practices, corporate office settings, or custom developed to meet corporate needs. Both employees and/or employers can complete the hazard assessment for comparison reporting and continuous safety performance improvement opportunities. If a hazard is not listed, it can be added along with the likelihood and severity risk promoting a proactive culture and accurate real-time assessment of overall workplace risk.

With extensive reporting and data analytic capabilities we can help organizations educate, empower, and proactively mitigate mental health issues and, reduce incidents in the workplace – that is our mission.

When psychological health is assessed, it most often involves a third-party supervisor or evaluator. This is problematic for two reasons: the potential for evaluator bias, and the employee may not want to disclose their personal mental health issues. Eliminating evaluator bias and offering anonymity are both key to accurate and honest responses.

SWIFT recently conducted a focus group with eight organizations in the service hospitality industry and concluded that the process for assessing hazards was completely disjointed, confusing, and frustrating for managers and supervisors, not to mention the employee. A formal process for assessing psychological health was non-existent.

Combining workplace hazards and psychological health and well-being to calculate risk level is a novel concept and the genesis for SAHARA.

Potential workplace hazards are presented for different work environments raising awareness and educating employees. Personalized Recommendations are based on the industry, selected hazards, and the Personal Wellness Assessment, and link to eLearning courses accessible anytime from any device.

The confidential Personal Wellness Self-Assessment displays the Risk Level without disclosing details and correlates to the employee’s current mental health. Questions related to personal safety, psychological issues, well-being, and right to refuse unsafe work are included and can also be customized. Employees that indicate feelings of despair or that they fear for the safety trigger a High-Risk level and a direct link to an anonymous crisis response support organization.

SAHARA is integrated into the SWIFT SaaS Platform which includes the SWIFT LMS. The SWIFT LMS can incorporate AI and Machine Learning tools enabling data analysis to identify leading and lagging hazard indicators to better manage ESG, HSE, corporate, and employee wellness.

SWIFT SaaS Platform and SWIFT LMS Features:

• World class, secure cloud hosting via Azure
• Configured to mirror organization with tiered admin access
• Real-time hazard assessment (Field Level HA, Job HA, COVID HA)
• Extensive reporting
• employee/employer hazard selection and comparison
• incident management & root cause analysis/hazard selection
• corporate wellness overview
• employee mitigation recommendations
• SWIFT course master completions