Winter wellbeing at work: what managers can change when the days get shorter

Why winter wellbeing at work starts with the team calendar

Two dates in the darker months are fixed years in advance.

The team’s own heavy weeks can be seen well ahead too, once they are in one place: the appraisal round, the reporting deadline that has sat in the plan for months, the handovers and holiday cover that are easy to leave off a project plan. Put them next to those two dates and you can see which land in the darkest weeks while there is still time to act.

What the calendar cannot show is how the season will affect any one person. Some people find that their energy or routine shifts once the evenings draw in, and others feel no different. Ordinary ups and downs like these are not a diagnosis, and telling them apart from illness is not a manager’s job. The NHS describes seasonal affective disorder (SAD) as a type of depression that usually happens in the winter, and advises anyone who thinks they might have it to see a GP.

That split, between what can be planned and what can only be noticed, runs through this post. Mental Health UK’s Burnout Report 2026 makes the case for organisations to “treat wellbeing as a shared responsibility rather than an individual test of resilience”. For the darker months, we would put it this way: resilience is something a team builds together. It rests on arrangements a manager controls or agrees with the team, such as which heavy weeks move and the shape of the week, alongside skills people learn for handling pressure and supporting each other. Neither replaces the other, and nobody is being asked to try harder.

Move the heavy weeks where you can, and protect the daylight

Some heavy weeks cannot move: a statutory deadline or a date a client has set. Others sit in December or January by habit, because they went there last year or nobody asked. December already carries holiday cover and handovers, and some people notice a change in the darker months. Nobody can say in advance who, but a manager can avoid making those weeks heavier than they need to be.

So move the dates that can move, and plan recovery around the ones that cannot. A date that can shift away from the shortest days at no cost is worth shifting. A peak that cannot shift gets a plan for the week after it, agreed before other work claims that week. Both are easier decided early, while the diary still has room.

Daylight is worth planning for too, and in the darker months it is most dependable around the middle of the day. Some ordinary good practice:

• A midday break that can be taken outdoors in daylight. Make it a normal part of the day rather than something anyone has to justify.
• Walking one-to-ones, for anyone who would like one. The choice is theirs, and a seated option is always open.
• A middle of the day that is not booked solid. Without it, the first two stay good intentions.

All three are our suggestions. They are ordinary good practice, not a treatment.

Keep the week’s shape and let check-ins go past the task list

A team also shares the shape of its week. Three parts are worth holding on to.

• A finish time that holds. When the day regularly runs past it, look at the workload before anything else.
• A fixed point each week when everyone is together. In a room or on a call, and kept in busy weeks too.
• The last hour of the day kept free of meetings. Once meetings creep into it, finishing on time depends on everyone else’s diary.

None of this is special to winter. A week that keeps its shape is one less thing each person has to hold together alone while the evenings are dark.

Check-ins belong in that rhythm: the same slot every week, so they are routine rather than a sign that something is wrong. Then let them go past the task list, which fills a one-to-one easily because it is the part with deadlines attached. Two questions to add in the darker months:

“Which part of the week is hardest to get going at the moment?”

“If the next few months got harder for you, what would you want me to notice?”

The first asks about the week rather than the person, which makes it easier to answer, and the answer may point at something you can change, such as where a meeting sits. The second lets the person choose what you look out for, instead of a list of signs you have guessed at, and tells them that noticing is part of your job.

When someone seems different, and where to point them

The calendar cannot tell you who will find the darker months harder. What a manager can see is a change in someone compared with their own usual, lasting weeks rather than one bad day, and it is worth noticing without naming it. “Winter blues” is not a diagnosis, and SAD is one a manager cannot make. Whether anything is wrong, and what, is for the person and a GP to work out.

In the recommendations to employers in its Burnout Report 2026, Mental Health UK describes a trained manager as one who “notices changes in behaviour early-on” and “agrees clear next steps with staff”. In practice: ask an open question without guessing at a cause, then agree one next step, which can be as small as when you will check in again. If they would rather leave it there, accept that.

For what a change can look like and the words to use, read our post on noticing when a colleague is struggling.

As for where to point someone: a GP first, and the employee assistance programme if your organisation has one. Neither needs you to know what is wrong before you suggest it. If someone tells you about a health condition, ask them about involving HR or occupational health to look at what adjustments might help.

To plan all of this with your team, our guide Winter resilience for teams: a seven-step review for the darker months turns it into a review you can run together, with five check-in questions and a worked example of moving work away from a deadline that cannot move.