According to the Mental Health Commission of Canada(1), one in five Canadians will experience a mental health challenge this year. Meanwhile, continuing education programs are tasked with solving labour market shortages, meeting diverse community needs, navigating global uncertainty, addressing artificial intelligence and innovating in real time—with shrinking budgets and limited staff. As we hold space for our students, show up for the communities we serve and stretch to meet shifting demand, how do we make sure we are still supporting our teams’ well-being along the way?
Institutions and organizations are expanding mental health support through training programs, wellness apps and community-based initiatives, but as continuing education units are being asked to do more with less, they must embrace intentional mental health strategies, from mindfulness to leadership modeling, to avoid burnout and build sustainable workplace cultures.
For institutions wanting to build resilience and responsiveness, core strategies such as engaged leadership, deliberate workplace culture and open communication are required. Stressful conditions and demands in continuing education are chronic, as team members are asked to meet community demands, deliver workforce-ready programming and innovate without the cushion of time, money or mental bandwidth. When institutions push to do more with less, stress becomes embedded in the fabric of operations.
We know that personal strategies are still important. The basics—sleep, rest, diet and exercise—are critical, as are practices in mindfulness, gratitude and personal connection. While these dedicated efforts improve our personal resistance, they do not always address the deeper issues. In environments where leadership doesn’t model balance or where workloads are seen as a badge of honour, stress festers and spreads.
Personal resilience can only carry us so far. When the workplace itself reinforces chronic stress through silence, overload or misaligned expectations, individual strategies start to feel like coping mechanisms rather than sustainable solutions. We need intentional workplace strategies to ensure sustainable solutions and supports.
Engaged Leadership Matters
Leaders play a critical role here. The tone they set—through communication, scheduling flexibility, prioritizing wellness initiatives—ripples outward. Research from the Canadian Mental Health Association emphasizes that psychologically healthy workplaces hinge on organizational norms, not just individual habits. When leaders show vulnerability, respect boundaries and speak openly about mental health, they destigmatize care-seeking and reshape the culture.
In continuing education environments, strain isn’t an occasional wave but the tide. Shifting community demands, evolving labour market needs and the pressure to innovate often land on small teams tasked with delivering big results. During these moments, leaders hold more than strategic responsibility; they become emotional anchors. Leaders who remain calm should not be seen as avoiding reality. Rather, they should be seen as taking on complex challenges with clarity and adaptation. Demonstrating transparency around budget constraints while providing emotional steadiness gives teams the opportunity to understand and adjust. Being mindful of additional stressors during enrollment periods and orientation weeks allows staff to plan and prioritize mental health while still meeting organizational needs.
This engaged presence must be consistent, not just performative during specific wellness events. Leaders who attend wellness workshops alongside staff, who visibly protect their own downtime and who set expectations that prioritize people over metrics help institutionalize balance. Leaders who set organizational goals that emphasize quality over quantity and are delivered in appropriate time frames aligned with available resources lead not only better outcomes but more cohesive teams. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association(2), psychologically healthy workplaces are rooted in everyday norms—norms that leadership behavior shape most powerfully. In high-pressure environments like continuing education, modeling calm and resilience isn’t a luxury but a required competency.
Technology as Tools, Not Solutions
Technology has expanded access to mental health support. Wellness apps offer on-demand meditations, mood trackers and cognitive behavioral tools, while virtual training sessions allow staff to engage in self-care practices from anywhere and at any time. Teams can even collectively engage in YouTube sessions of yoga, mindfulness or meditation. While these tools are assets, we must be cautious to see them as complementary and not solutions. These products can become poorly integrated, lack cultural sensitivity or risk superficial solutions that overlook real human needs. The best technologies enhance—not replace—human connection.
A well-designed app can help normalize mental health conversations, but it cannot substitute empathy, compassion, communication or trust built through lived relationships and team dynamics. Building healthy workplace cultures means pairing the recommendation of digital tools with healthy work-life balance, psychological safety and engaged leadership.
Inclusive Strategies
In continuing education environments, where staff often represent diverse cultural, generational and professional backgrounds, an inclusive approach to mental health in the workplace is essential. A truly inclusive environment cultivates a sense of belonging that allows employees to feel seen, valued and free to express what wellness looks like for them. Wellness support needs to resonate to differing identities, roles and lived experiences. That might mean creating spaces for culturally informed healing practices, ensuring mental health materials are accessible in different formats and multiple languages, or simply recognizing the stressors unique to differing roles, biodemographics or socioeconomic circumstances.
Celebrating every individual’s uniqueness enriches the collective culture because, when people feel safe to show up as themselves, their engagement, creativity and resilience deepen. Organizations need to be careful not to view inclusive wellness approaches as extra but rather honouring the true value of an inclusive, psychological safe, healthy culture.
Mental health, organizational culture and workplace wellness are the foundations upon which high-performing teams and meaningful, productive innovative work are built. In the dynamic field of continuing education, we must shift from reactive care to proactive cultures, where compassion is normalized, wellness is intentional and leadership is visible and engaged. We must design work environments where balance is modeled, inclusion is valued and delivered, and care is not reactionary but a shared responsibility. In our field of lifelong learning, this is one of most important lessons we have yet to fully learn.
References
(1) Mental Health Commission of Canada. (2024). Annual report 2023–2024: Partnerships in action. https://mentalhealthcommission.ca/what-we-do/annual-report/
(2) Canadian Mental Health Association. (n.d.). Fast facts about mental illness. https://cmha.ca/fast-facts-about-mental-illness