Psychological health & safety training that people leaders actually use
How we helped Workplace Mental Health turn a live workshop into a self-paced e-learning course for managers and executives
Client: Workplace Mental Health, a division of Opening Minds
Subject matter experts: Liz Horvath, Senior Advisor, Psychological Health and Safety, and Tiana Field-Ridley, Brand Manager, Psychological Health and Safety
Format: Self-paced e-learning course with animated scenarios, filmed interviews, and supporting rollout materials
Audiences: Managers in larger organizations and C-suite executives
Our role: Learning design, visual communication design, animation, on-location filming, video production, and supporting materials
Overview
Most people leaders want to support the people on their teams. The hard part is knowing what to say when someone is struggling, and what to do next.
The Workplace Mental Health team at Opening Minds had a strong program on psychological health and safety, delivered as a group workshop. It worked well in the room. It could only reach as many people as the room could hold.
We worked with the team to rebuild that workshop as a self-paced online course called Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. The course gives managers practical tools for real conversations. It also helps executives connect the work to their organization’s goals. Alongside the course, we created the materials the team needed to bring it to market.
The challenge
Workplaces are dealing with stress, burnout, and the stigma that still surrounds mental health. People leaders sit in the middle of all three. Many have never had training on how to respond, so they either avoid the conversation or handle it in a way they later regret. Over time, that gap shows up as turnover, absenteeism, and lost productivity.
In our experience, a lot of workplace mental health training falls short in one of two ways. Some is too surface-level to change behaviour. Some is solid in theory but leaves managers unsure what to do on a Tuesday afternoon when an employee is clearly not okay.
The Workplace Mental Health team needed a course that avoided both problems. It also had to serve two audiences with very different needs:
Managers needed tools to recognize when someone might be struggling, connect them to the right support, and put accommodations in place.
Executives needed to see how psychological health and safety fits with organizational goals, so they could back it and plan the rollout.
The real problem underneath
On paper, the request was to move a workshop online. Underneath that sat a harder question: how do you keep the weight and nuance of a facilitated conversation when nobody is in the room to guide it?
A live facilitator can read the room, slow down when a topic lands hard, and answer the question someone was nervous to ask. A self-paced course has to do that work through its structure, its examples, and its tone. If it doesn’t, learners click through and forget it by the end of the week, so that shaped every decision that followed. The course needed to feel practical and human, and it needed to hold up without a facilitator.
Our approach
Building on expert knowledge
We worked closely with Liz and Tiana throughout. They brought deep expertise in psychological health and safety. We brought learning design and visual communication. The collaboration meant the course stayed accurate to the subject while becoming easier for a busy manager to absorb.
Structuring the learning for two audiences
We split the course into two clear sections:
- Foundational knowledge: why psychological health and safety matters, and how it connects to wellbeing, productivity, and organizational value.
- Actionable strategies: the leader’s role in driving change, and practical steps for recognizing, responding, and supporting.
This structure gave executives the strategic case they needed, and gave managers a direct path from understanding to action. Each group could find what mattered to them without wading through content meant for the other.
Showing the conversation
Reading about a difficult conversation is very different from watching one unfold. We built animated workplace scenarios so learners could see realistic situations play out, then reflect on what a good response looks like.
Quick knowledge checks and interactive elements gave learners regular moments to apply what they had just seen. The goal was to replace some of what a facilitator does in the room: pausing, checking understanding, and keeping people engaged.
We built the course in Articulate Storyline and used Adobe Character Animator for custom character animation. That combination let us create scenarios that felt specific and real while keeping production efficient.
Keeping production close
Projects like this can overwhelm small and mid-sized teams. Animation, filming, voice-over, and interactive development each come with their own demands, and coordinating them across vendors adds risk.
We managed every step of animation and video production in-house. We filmed on location in Vancouver and Toronto, coordinated interviews across Canada, and paired dynamic animation with professional voice-over. Keeping it under one roof meant the learning intent stayed intact from the first outline to the final file.
The project also asked for flexibility. It went through multiple stakeholder reviews, and the world of work kept shifting while we built it. We adjusted scope and timelines as needed so the course reflected how people were actually working.
Supporting the rollout
A strong course still needs a way to reach the people it’s meant for. Beyond the course itself, we created:
- one-pagers to explain the course to decision-makers
- social posts to support launch and promotion
Together, these gave the team a complete set of materials to launch, sell, and sustain the program.
The impact
For Workplace Mental Health
A sustaining revenue source: For an extended period, the course served as the team’s primary source of revenue.
A foundation for growth: Its success became the base for developing additional products and services.
Wider reach: As a self-paced online course, it reached far more people leaders than a workshop format could.
For learners and the team
The client team responded warmly to the finished course. They highlighted how well the questions, interactions, and overall experience fit together, and how much care went into the build. For a course on a sensitive subject, that sense of coherence matters. It helps learners trust what they’re being taught.
What this project shows
Many organizations already have good training on sensitive topics. The gap is usually scale, and what gets lost on the way there. A workshop that works in the room can fall flat online if the format is treated as a simple conversion.
Three things made this project work:
- Designing for each audience. Managers and executives needed different things, so the structure gave each group a clear path.
- Showing, then checking. Animated scenarios made difficult conversations concrete, and knowledge checks helped the learning stick.
- Planning past the launch. Supporting materials helped the course reach the right people and keep earning its place.
The same thinking applies well beyond psychological health and safety training. It fits manager training, leadership training, facilitator resources, and any learning program where people need to act with confidence on a subject that carries real weight.
Have training that works in the room but struggles to scale?
If your team has a program that matters and you want it to reach further without losing what makes it work, tell us a little about it. We’ll ask a few questions, share what we see, and leave you to decide whether it makes sense to keep talking.
