our vision
ma company aims to cultivate mentally healthy workplaces by providing business-appropriate, contextualized and upstream solutions, making a multidimensional impact on companies’ quadruple bottom line: profit, people, culture, planet.
from our founder & CEO
The “ma” in ma company is taken from the Japanese concept of a pause in time or an interval. There is no better time than now to pause and reflect, as we all straddle the challenges of COVID-19, no matter who we are, where we live and what we do.
I grew up in Germany where family members over multiple generations may have suffered from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. Eventually, my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia, more likely schizoaffective disorder, around 70. The diagnosis made me take pause, enabling me to put pieces together. I now suspect my mother may have lived with her psychotic disorder most of her and my lives. In that light, “ma” in ma company also honors my mother. From today’s perspective, I also wonder whether my father’s narcissism would be diagnosed as a mental disorder.
Growing up with just one mentally ill parent is considered a trauma.
In research for ma company, I learned that about three-quarters of adults who have experienced trauma suffer at least one psychiatric disorder within their lives.
COVID-19 and the resulting mental-health tsunami are requiring organizations to include mental health, not just well-being, in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, along with social and ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation and disability. Mental health is a facet of diversity long underappreciated and underestimated. It now merits attention.
As to myself, I have experienced periods of burnout and depressed mood. Yet, by all measures, I have served as a high-results executive throughout my career. I consider myself in recovery from common mental-health disorders. My own experiences with mental-health challenges sparked my vision for ma company. The company is a network of amazing professionals who believe our services will improve today’s workplace for the vast number of employees who encounter mental-health ups and downs.
— Bettina Davis
our approach
Empower organizations
Teach how to identify and support employees displaying symptoms of mental disorders.
Reduce stigma
Train how to dispel myths and misconceptions about people experiencing mental illness.
Build capability
Guide how to programmatically support employees from well-being to illness back to recovery.
Augment knowledge
Portray how mental health affects a company’s bottom line – for better and worse.
Raise awareness
Detail how workplace culture can shape employees’ experience with mental-health difficulties.
our programs & services
MEASURE THE BASELINE
Assessments & Programs
-
You believe the time has come, and you want to do more than extend your organization’s employee assistance program (EAP) benefits to address the mental well-being and emotional-health needs of your employees. Organizations often try first to offer employee education on the topic, but workplace mental-health training is unchartered territory for most. Where do you start? What type of mental-health training should you offer? For which audience? And what should it include? A thorough training-needs assessment can answer such questions by taking existing development programs into account and seamlessly integrating new mental-health-awareness offerings into your training strategy. Engage an expert to assess your training needs, then design a training program tailored to your company, employees and culture.
Target Audience: Any professionals chartered to bring mental-health training into an organization.
Format: Virtual or in-person.
Duration: Four to six hours.
-
Your organization is ready to go beyond expanding benefits and increasing mental-health awareness training. It is ready to commit to mental health in the workplace for the long haul. But where should it start? Introduce new work models to afford more flexibility? Make mental-health awareness part of its diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) initiatives? And how should it bridge varying global understandings of mental well-being? As with any large-scale initiative, it’s best to start with a holistic assessment of your organization’s practices, including its behavioral and organizational leverage points. Engage an expert to assess your mission, vision, values, culture, structure, programs, processes and metrics with an eye to mental health and well-being needs and build a comprehensive plan, one that can be consistently communicated by your leaders.
Target Audience: Human resources and training professionals tasked with advancing mental health in the workplace.
Format: Virtual or in-person.
Duration: Two to five days.
-
Ready to take things yet another step further? Do you want to align your organization with ISO 45003, a global occupational health and safety standard that outlines how to manage and protect mental health at work? Or is your organization more interested in the Bell Seal for Workplace Mental Health, a national employer-certification program that recognizes companies which prioritize employee mental health and well-being? Or is your organization ready to join other global leaders, such as Deloitte, Salesforce Inc. and HSBC, by signing the pledge for the Global Business Collaboration for Better Workplace Mental Health, lining up behind its mission to advocate positive change for mental health in the workplace? All these initiatives take a proactive approach to mental health in the workplace. Their goal is to create happier, healthier, more productive working settings. Engage an expert to usher your organization through an application initiative with more efficiency and better results.
Target Audience: Any organizations aiming to take a leadership role on workplace mental health.
Format: Virtual or in-person.
Duration: Varies.
CREATE THE FOUNDATION
Training & Experiential Learning
-
Managing Difficult Customer Interactions: Transforming Challenging Exchanges into Constructive and Supportive Dialogues
Encounters with difficult customers can make day-to-day operations challenging, even dangerous in some cases, for organizations and their front-line employees. Calming responses to unhelpful behaviors often are keys to averting physical confrontations with customers who lose control over their behaviors. This course teaches how to respond to difficult customers in the safest, most effective way possible. Starting with how to assess whether disruptive individuals could endanger themselves or others, this course focuses on defusing anxious, hostile or confrontational customers. In group activities, guided visualization and role play, the course explores how to grasp individual triggers and deploy techniques to substitute for instinctive responses. The course covers tips and practices for active, empathetic listening to enhance psychological safety and deflate confrontation. The class concludes with an action-planning activity.
Target Audience: Front-line employees, customer-service representatives, security personnel, supervisors.
Format: Virtual or in-person, instructor-led, synchronous.
Duration: Four hours.
Mental Health Awareness Training: An Overview of Mental Health Impact in the Workplace
This overview of mental health in the workplace is a foundational step to start the journey to normalizing workplace conversations about mental health at work and curbing stigma around it. The course explains why workplace mental health matters and how unaddressed mental-health challenges can affect organizations’ bottom lines – for better or worse. The class provides insight into myths and facts about mental illnesses, the prevalence of these concerns and which factors – organizational and other – influence mental health. Data and findings from reputable research help build buy-in from organizations’ leadership teams and workforces, no matter what organizational-change methodologies they follow. The course concludes with tips on how to craft a common language about mental well-being and mental health that can cross organizational boundaries in support of progress towards becoming a more fully inclusive employer.
Format: Virtual or in-person, instructor-led, synchronous.
Duration: One hour.
Mental Health in the Workplace: A 360-degree Perspective on Approaches and Best Practices
Experiences with mental health in the workplace vary by many dimensions, including gender, role, reporting level, performance and culture. This brief course offers a 360-degree perspective on mental health in the workplace by considering the topic from various angles, thereby raising awareness and creating alignment as an organization embarks on mental-wellness and mental-health initiatives. The course provides best practice examples from companies further along in their journeys and highlights those examples of how to make sure work increasingly becomes psychologically safe while addressing employees’ short- and long-term expectations. The course evaluates which departments and functions are best-positioned to build, strengthen and sustain workplace mental-health initiatives and which organizational levers are commonly used to integrate such initiatives into existing efforts. The class concludes with tips on dos and don’ts.
Target Audience: Department managers, directors, HR professionals, in-house legal counsel and specialists in health and safety.
Format: Virtual or in-person, instructor-led, synchronous.
Duration: 90 minutes.
-
Mental Health for HR Professionals: A Practical Approach to Concepts, Practices & Regulations
After exploring myths and facts, respectively propelling and dispelling stigma and presenting a proactive approach to mental health in the workplace, this course highlights most common mental-health disorders in addition to serious mental illnesses, complex and co-morbid disorders and suicide. The class introduces the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official guidebook to understanding widely accepted specifications of mental-health diagnoses. The course highlights best-practice concepts such as the Biopsychosocial Model and Total Worker Health – frameworks for holistically understanding and managing mental health in the workplace. Next is a review of standards, laws and rules from regulators with relevant workplace oversight authority, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The course concludes with suggestions about how organizations can stage mental-health conversations and integrate resulting discussions into existing practices, such as DEIB initiatives.
Target Audience: HR professionals, in-house counsel and specialists in environmental health and safety.
Format: Virtual or in-person, instructor-led, synchronous.
Duration: Four hours.
Mental Health for Managers: A Practical View of Fostering a Culture of Diversity and Well-being
This training highlights the importance of managers in de-stigmatizing mental health in the workplace and shows how early intervention with employees struggling with mental illness raises their potential for recovery and return. The course begins with an overview of factors inside and outside the workplace that influence mental health and highlights when and how mental health, or the lack thereof, tends to become a problem. The class covers why mental health in the workplace matters and helps managers recognize the most common mental-health conditions. It focuses on manager’s roles in addressing mental-health challenges as well as their responsibilities to cultivate work cultures promoting employee mental well-being and mental health. A course activity explores how to initiate conversations about workplace mental health and navigate sensitivities in carrying discussions to meaningful ends. The course concludes with a brief overview of legal and performance-management considerations, suggestions about how best to encourage employees to seek help and an outline of resources available to affected employees.
Target Audience: Supervisors, department managers, directors.
Format: Virtual or in-person, instructor-led, synchronous.
Duration: Four hours.
Mental Health for Employees: A Practical Guide to Recognizing and Responding to Signs and Symptoms
Because mental-health disorders are invisible, people can appear healthy while concealing suffering. This training promotes individual accountability for total health, early detection and support, before mental and emotional conditions undermine employees’ ability to work, live and love. The course offers insights into the myths and facts of mental illness, their prevalence and which factors inside and outside the workplace influence mental health. The class helps participants to recognize common mental-health conditions as well as mental distress of any kind in others and themselves. Other key topical areas are stress factors, including individual stressors. The course offers language and strategies for approaching and supporting colleagues facing mental-health challenges as well as tips for their care. It concludes with the development of a self-care action plan.
Target Audience: Employees.
Format: Virtual or in-person, instructor-led, synchronous.
Duration: Four hours.
-
Mental Health First Aid (MHFA): A Global Program to Recognize and Respond to Mental-health Challenges
Mental Health First Aid is a global program that teaches learners how to help people with developing or worsening mental-health problems or crisis. The course promotes early detection, intervention and recovery by instructing participants about signs and symptoms of specific problems, such as debilitating anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and addiction, as well as how to respond to the people experiencing them. It introduces participants to risk factors for mental-health concerns, builds understanding of the concerns’ impacts and provides an overview of common treatments. The course offers concrete tools and answers key questions, such as, “What can I do?” and “Where can someone find help?” Through workplace-centric role play and simulations, the program demonstrates how to assess co-workers in crisis, provide them initial help and connect them with more specialized resources, all within workplace boundaries. Upon completion, attendees are awarded certificates to show they are Mental Health First Aiders.
Target Audience: Any adult who wants to become a Mental Health First Aider.
Format: Asynchronous, individually paced pre-work (one to two hours); virtual or in-person, instructor-led, synchronous (eight hours); individual post-work and certification (one to two hours).
Duration: 12 hours.
Mental Excel-lence Workshop: An Experiential Leadership Training Built on Well-known and Trauma-Informed Leadership Principles
This course teaches a framework called “Trauma-informed Leadership,” based on attachment theory and corresponding research on how early developmental trauma produces impact enduring into adulthood and carries into the workplace. The framework explains how workplace actions – tactical and strategic – can constitute trauma for individual employees or even a workforce. The research aims to help organizations understand the correlation of behavior with bottom-line impact, learn how to mitigate the related risks and become a trauma-informed system imbued with a basic understanding of the role that corporate actions play in the lives of candidates for mental-health and addiction services. Through role-playing, the course teaches the application of trauma-informed principles – safety, collaboration, empowerment, culture and gender – to the workplace and concludes with an action-planning exercise.
Target Audience: Directors, executives, HR professionals.
Format: In-person instructor led, synchronous.
Duration: Eight hours.
RAISE THE CAPABILITY
Program Development & Consulting
-
Fortunately, conversations about mental health have begun to make their way into the workplace. Managers talking about their own mental-health journeys can set the tone, deflate stigma and begin to normalize such conversations. Indeed, authentic leadership can spring from managers connecting and empathizing with employees by sharing lived experiences. It can be powerful to hear about others’ trials and tribulations. Many people rise beyond their challenges by taking accountability, building resilience and embracing recovery – a trajectory best-known for overcoming substance-use disorders but applicable to managing other mental disorders as well. But how can organizations jumpstart managers to detail their personal journeys? Invite a leader who has been there, can empathize and is willing to share experiences of overcoming mental-health challenges while maintaining a successful career.
Target Audience: Supervisors, department managers, directors, executives.
Format: Virtual or in-person.
Duration: Varies.
-
Despite growing awareness of mental-health challenges, many misconceptions about the realities of suffering from mental-health disorders and how to approach them in the workplace still circulate. At times, company directions and employee needs are not aligned; they may even seem to contrast. For decades, training in interviewing skills discouraged managers from asking interview questions about candidates’ age, race, religion or gender, as those questions were thought to open up companies to discrimination lawsuits. Wait – but now it’s OK to ask employees about their mental or emotional status? And how is a manager supposed to direct the performance of employees who suffer from mental illness? These are just two examples of questions in which this guides conversation can tease out paths for evolving traditional employment practices and addressing sensitive workforce needs in tandem. Invite an expert who understands these tensions and associated taboos – the elephants in the room – to find solutions that create better, more responsive and supportive work cultures.
Target Audience: HR professionals, department managers, directors, executives.
Format: Virtual or in-person.
Duration: Varies.
-
“Pivot,” a buzz word that gained traction in the corporate world amid the pandemic, suggests a hard look at facts, then a change of course in a better direction. So why not pivot by expanding your leadership program to embrace discussion about mental health and well-being in the workplace – a need employees nationwide are voicing? No matter whether your company embraces principles taught in Situational Leadership (Blanchard), “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” (Covey) or “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team “(Lencioni), making workplace mental-health conversations part of your leadership program will guide your leaders along their journey to becoming more effective. Take the principles of “Encouraging the Heart” (Kouzes, Posner): It applies at least as well to manager wellness checks with employees as do most leadership principles. Invite an expert to lead this customized, leadership session to assist with connecting the dots between your mental-health practices and programs and your leadership approach.
Target Audience: Supervisors, department managers, directors, executives.
Format: Virtual or in-person.
Duration: Varies.