Law 27: Transforming compliance into a continuous improvement process
“I didn’t know who to talk to about it.”
A manager overheard this sentence, her office door barely closed. Since the beginning of summer, an employee has been receiving inappropriate remarks from a colleague.
The harassment policy exists. So does the prevention program. On paper, everything is in place.
Twenty years spent entering workplaces as different as factories, hospitals, schools, and offices have allowed me to observe a gap worth examining (to make this observation): : The difference between a prevention framework that strictly meets the requirements and a workplace that concretely protects its people appears when practices meet the reality on the ground.
The example of a fire drill illustrates this well. An evacuation plan may exist, responsibilities assigned, and exits identified. The real test, however, comes when the alarm actually sounds.
In workplace mental health, the logic is the same. A situation arises, management must intervene, a team looks for guidance. The natural reflex is sometimes to shift responsibility to one person: “That’s Josée’s responsibility in HR.” That reflex is precisely a signal that something needs to be corrected: occupational health and safety is built on shared roles, not a single point of entry.
The framework exists. When it is time to act, who actually knows what to do?
Compliance establishes responsibilities, mechanisms, and preventive measures—an essential foundation. The challenge then becomes developing the capacity to recognize situations, intervene at the right time, and mobilize appropriate mechanisms when reality puts them to the test.
Psychosocial risks take various forms, such as harassment that builds through accumulation, violence that escalates quickly, or a traumatic event whose effects persist long after it is over.
An organization capable to be in action goes beyond simply setting up mechanisms. It knows how to prevent, intervene, and support, depending on what the situation requires.
Act at the right time
To prevent, means taking action upstream.
It is about paying attention to psychosocial factors such as workload, support, recognition, decision-making autonomy, and organizational justice in order to reduce risks and strengthen what protects people.
It also means taking early warning signs seriously, including rising tension, repeated incivilities, and expressed unease, before the situation escalates further.
To intervene , is to be able to act when a situation arises.
The roles are known, the mechanisms accessible. People know who to turn to, so they can act diligently rather than improvising.
To support, is to pay attention to the people involved, and the consequences of what has been experienced.
Support often extends beyond the end of the event: maintaining a presence, facilitating access to resources, and adapting certain working conditions. This also ensures that someone who previously admitted not knowing who to talk to will know exactly who to contact and what their role is in the future.
These three dimensions are interconnected. What an organization learns through intervention and support informs its future prevention efforts. A strong prevention plan strengthens its capacity to act when a problem arises.
Continuous improvement is based on this ability to learn from experience and adjust prevention over time.
An Action Plan Is Not a Finish Line
To guide action, a structured approach remains essential: identify, analyze, correct, and control.
IIdentify means recognizing the risks and risk factors present in the workplace.
Analyze means understanding and prioritizing the situations observed and their potential effects on people’s health, safety and integrity.
Correct means putting measures in place that are adapted to the reality of the workplace and acting on the conditions at the source of the risks.
Control means verifying whether the measures are applied, whether they remain relevant and whether they produce the desired effects.
Then adjust as work evolves. An action plan, like prevention, remains an ongoing process.
Bringing Prevention to Life
Let’s get back to our fire drill example.
The evacuation plan displayed on the wall shows what should be done. Its actual effectiveness depends on committed leadership, committed teams, clear roles, a structured approach, and the ability to adjust where necessary.
In mental health at work, an approach comes to life through decisions, management practices and responses to signals emerging from work, going beyond the recognition of risks, into the ability to act concretely.
Compliance provides the framework. Continuous improvement develops the ability to bring it to life.
The best prevention strategies go beyond good intentions. They are successful when employees no longer say “I didn’t know who to talk to” because they will know what to look for, what to do, and how to respond.
Daisy Gauthier is an expert in workplace mental health and occupational health and safety. A specialist in work-related psychosocial risks, her career has taken her from fieldwork to consulting, contributing to the evolution of prevention practices in Quebec. Today, with Désia, she supports workplaces as a speaker, trainer, and strategic advisor.
