Confidentially policies need to offer clear rules

In an ideal world, a workplace is a place of co-operation, productivity, and professionalism. Employees bring their skills and ambition to the office and check their personal problems at the door. Of course, the reality is that people are occasionally overwhelmed by issues in their home life and cannot prevent these concerns from seeping into their workplace behaviour. This is particularly true when the employee is suffering from mental illness. Although many see mental illness as a rare or extraordinary occurrence, according to Health Canada’s 2002 A Report on Mental Illnesses in Canada, approximately 20 per cent of all Canadians will suffer from mental illness at least once in their lives. As a result, employers need to know how to recognize and accommodate mental illness in the workplace, especially when an employee reaches a crisis point.

Way back in the Dark Ages, when I was in elementary school, the raging debate among educators concerned homogeneous versus heterogeneous classes. Do we put all the smart kids in one classroom and the not-so-smart kids in another?

Employers are presumed to no longer have a cause argument unless they can come up with compelling evidence to prove their case.