What the research says about policy and practice

Make UK research from 2026 found a consistent pattern across UK employers: senior leaders believe their organisations are proactive on employee mental health and wellbeing. Employees at the same organisations describe the culture as reactive. Wellbeing activity happens after people struggle, not before.

This is not a new finding. What is new is how clearly the gap is now understood. The problem is not usually a lack of commitment at the top. Most boards do take employee wellbeing seriously. The problem is what happens between the board resolution and the employee who is having a difficult week. That journey passes through a line manager, and if that line manager has not been equipped to play their part, the policy stops there.

The employee who needs support doesn’t access the EAP because no one has suggested they might benefit from it. The conversation that could have caught a problem early doesn’t happen because the manager doesn’t know how to start it. The adjustment that would have made a difference goes unmade because the manager doesn’t feel confident enough to ask what someone needs.

The four things capable managers do that others don’t

They notice earlier

Managers who have been trained to recognise the early signs of stress, anxiety and burnout intervene earlier. They notice the change in someone’s behaviour, energy or output before it becomes a formal HR issue. Early intervention is almost always more effective and less costly than late intervention, for the individual and for the organisation.

They ask the right questions

A trained manager knows the difference between a check-in that stays on the surface (“how are you?” replied to with “fine”) and one that creates genuine space. They know how to ask open questions, how to listen actively and how to respond in a way that makes the person feel heard rather than managed. That skill does not come naturally to most people. It comes from practice in a safe environment.

They know what to do next

One of the most common barriers to managers having mental health conversations is not knowing what to do after them. What if the person discloses something serious? What if they cry? What if they say they don’t want anyone else to know? Trained managers have the frameworks to navigate these moments, including how to hold appropriate confidentiality, when to involve HR and how to follow up without overstepping.

They model the culture

Managers set the emotional tone for their teams. A manager who visibly prioritises their own wellbeing, who takes lunch breaks, who is honest about their own limits, signals to their team that it is acceptable to do the same. This is not soft. It is the most powerful culture lever available to a line manager.

What to do now, not next quarter

If your organisation has just come through Mental Health Awareness Week and you want to sustain the momentum, here is where to put your energy.

• Audit manager confidence, not manager knowledge. Most managers know they should support their team’s mental health. The barrier is confidence: do they feel able to have the conversation? That is a different question and it points to a different solution.
• Give managers a specific next action, not just a policy reference. “Read the wellbeing policy” does not change behaviour. “Check in with one team member this week using an open question” does. Translate your policy into specific behaviours and give managers permission to practise them.
• Invest in structured manager training. A webinar is not enough. The managers who become genuinely capable in this area have had the opportunity to practise the skills in a low-stakes environment with qualified facilitators who can give feedback. That is what good training provides.
• Measure what managers do, not just what the policy says. If you review wellbeing at board level, include manager behaviour indicators: are managers having regular one-to-ones? Are employees in those managers’ teams accessing support at rates consistent with other teams? The data will tell you where the policy is landing and where it is not.

Our Mental Health for Managers programme is designed specifically for line managers and people leaders. It is practical, evidence-based and built around the real conversations managers need to have.

Why “Action” is the right theme for this moment

Awareness of mental health at work has improved enormously over the past decade. It is no longer unusual for a UK employer to run a wellbeing campaign, share mental health resources or include mental health in an employee benefits package. The gap has shifted. We no longer have a shortage of awareness. We have a shortage of action.

The Mental Health Foundation has been tracking this gap for years. Employees know that mental health matters. Employers say they take it seriously. But when employees are asked what support actually reaches them day to day, the picture is less consistent. The policy exists. The EAP number is on the intranet. But the line manager doesn’t know how to have the conversation, the first aider hasn’t been trained and the person who is struggling hasn’t told anyone because they don’t believe it will be handled well.

MHAW 2026 is an invitation to close that gap. Not with another campaign. With a concrete commitment.

Why Mental Health First Aid is the concrete next step

Mental health first aiders are trained employees who can recognise the signs of mental health distress, have supportive conversations and connect colleagues to professional help. They are not therapists or counsellors. They are the first point of contact at the moment someone is struggling but hasn’t yet sought help.

The MHFA England two-day programme is the standard qualification. It covers mental health conditions, crisis support, suicide first aid and the skills to have a conversation with someone who might be struggling. Graduates leave the course with the confidence to act, not just the knowledge that mental health matters.

The business case for training first aiders is strong. Organisations that invest in visible, trained mental health support report improvements in how supported employees feel, reductions in the stigma around seeking help and, over time, a measurable effect on absence rates. The Deloitte analysis of mental health investment in UK workplaces found an average return of £5.30 for every £1 invested in employee mental health support. Deloitte, 2022

How to build on MHAW so the momentum lasts

The risk with any awareness campaign is that it creates a spike of engagement that fades within days. Here is how organisations that do this well sustain the impact beyond the week itself.

Commit to a first aider training date before MHAW ends

The best outcome of MHAW is a decision, not just a conversation. If your organisation has been considering training first aiders, use the week to confirm a date. Announcing the commitment publicly, to staff, during MHAW makes it real. It also signals to employees that the organisation takes the week seriously.

Introduce your existing first aiders

If you already have trained first aiders, MHAW is the ideal time to make them visible. Many organisations have first aiders who were trained quietly and are largely unknown to colleagues. A brief all-hands acknowledgement, an intranet profile or simply a reminder of who they are and how to reach them makes a real difference to whether those first aiders get approached when it matters.

Ask your managers one question

Ask your line managers this week: “How confident do you feel having a mental health conversation with a team member?” The answer will tell you exactly where your training investment should go next. Manager capability is the biggest lever available to organisations after first aider provision, and the gap is often larger than HR teams expect.

If you’re ready to move from awareness to action this week, our Mental Health First Aid programme runs across the UK, onsite and online, and we can usually accommodate cohorts quickly around key dates like MHAW.

What first aiders can and cannot do

One of the most common concerns HR teams raise about training first aiders is the question of scope. Will first aiders be expected to deal with crisis situations they are not equipped for? Will they take on more than is appropriate?

The training is explicit on this point. Mental health first aiders are trained to listen, to refer and to support, not to treat. Their role is to be the first person someone talks to, not the last. They signpost to professional resources, encourage the individual to seek appropriate support and follow up. They are not expected to provide therapy or to handle situations beyond their training.

What they do provide is something that no EAP line or HR policy can replace: a trained, accessible human presence in the organisation. For many people, the most important step in seeking help is telling one person they trust. A first aider can be that person.

Why neurodiversity is the talent conversation of 2026

UK searches for “neurodiversity training” rose by 900% in the first quarter of 2026. That’s not a trend driven by policy compliance. It reflects something more fundamental: organisations are beginning to understand that neurodivergent employees represent a significant proportion of their workforce, and that failing to support them has a direct cost.

The cost is visible in retention. Neurodivergent employees who feel unsupported are more likely to mask, disengage and eventually leave. It shows up in performance: someone who processes information differently but has not been given adjustments to match their working style will consistently underperform relative to their actual capability. And it shows up in recruitment, where candidates who have experienced poor support elsewhere are increasingly selective about where they apply.

The good news is that most effective adjustments are simple. They don’t require a formal diagnosis, a specialist budget or a lengthy HR process. They require managers who know what to look for and feel confident enough to have the conversation.

The adjustment gap: why good intentions aren’t enough

Only 12% of employers have designed their onboarding process with neurodivergent hires in mind. CIPD, 2024 That means that for the vast majority of neurodivergent employees, the first weeks in a new role are structured around processes that don’t work for them. The information comes in the wrong format. The environment is too loud. The feedback loops are too infrequent or too ambiguous.

Many neurodivergent employees have learned to compensate. Masking, as it is known, requires significant cognitive effort. It is exhausting, it reduces performance and over time it is a major driver of burnout. Organisations often misread the result: they see an employee who seems to be coping, and don’t realise the cost at which that coping is happening.

A formal diagnosis is not required before an employer can offer adjustments. The Equality Act 2010 places the duty to make reasonable adjustments on employers whenever a worker is substantially disadvantaged by a provision, criterion or practice, or a physical feature of premises. For many neurodivergent employees, a conversation and a few targeted changes are all it takes.

Ten adjustments most organisations can make this week

The following adjustments are drawn from what we see working consistently across the organisations we support. Most require no specialist tools and no budget. They require a manager who asks the right questions and follows through.

Communication and instructions

• Provide written summaries after verbal briefings. For employees who process auditory information differently, a short written follow-up after a meeting or briefing removes ambiguity and reduces the cognitive load of trying to retain everything in the moment.
• Give clear, specific instructions. Vague briefs like “use your judgement” or “just make it work” create disproportionate stress for many neurodivergent employees. Clear scope, clear expectations and defined success criteria make a significant difference.
• Allow extra time to process and respond. Not every question needs an instant answer. Giving employees the option to come back to a discussion after thinking time produces better outcomes and reduces the anxiety of on-the-spot responses.

Environment and sensory needs

• Provide access to a quiet workspace. Open-plan environments are genuinely difficult for many people with sensory sensitivities. A dedicated quiet zone, a bookable meeting room or permission to work from home on high-concentration days makes a meaningful difference.
• Allow noise-cancelling headphones. This is one of the most low-cost, high-impact adjustments available. For employees with sensory sensitivities or who need to block out distractions to concentrate, it can be transformative.

Structure and planning

• Share meeting agendas in advance. Unexpected topics in meetings can be highly disorienting for some neurodivergent employees. Sending an agenda the day before is a minimal effort with a disproportionate positive impact.
• Build in regular, structured check-ins. Frequent, predictable one-to-ones remove the uncertainty that builds up between infrequent manager conversations. They also create the safety for an employee to raise adjustments before a problem becomes significant.
• Break large projects into defined stages with clear milestones. For employees who experience difficulty with executive function, a large undefined project can be paralysing. Structured milestones make progress visible and reduce the anxiety of working towards a distant deadline.

Feedback and performance

• Give feedback that is specific and direct. Indirect or implicit feedback is easily missed by neurodivergent employees who may not pick up on social cues. Specific, direct and kind feedback lands clearly and gives the employee something concrete to act on.
• Separate performance feedback from broader check-ins. Neurodivergent employees who are managing anxiety about their performance find it difficult to engage with a wellbeing conversation in the same meeting as a performance review. Keeping them separate makes both more effective.

How to find out what someone actually needs

The most important skill in this area is not knowing which adjustments to offer. It is knowing how to ask. Many neurodivergent employees have had poor experiences disclosing their needs at work and are reluctant to do so again. The conversation needs to feel safe, non-judgemental and practical rather than clinical.

A useful starting point is to frame the question around work rather than identity. Instead of asking “do you have any conditions we should know about?”, ask “is there anything about how you prefer to receive information, structure your day or approach your work that would help us support you better?” This shifts the focus from diagnosis to practical preference, and opens the door for the employee to share what they need without labelling themselves.

Not every neurodivergent employee will want to disclose. Some will be unaware of their own neurodivergence. Many of the adjustments in the list above will benefit everyone on a team, regardless of neurotype. Implementing them broadly, rather than waiting for an individual to ask, removes the stigma of having to request special treatment.

The organisations we work with that do this well don’t treat neurodiversity as a compliance issue. They treat it as a talent issue. They understand that the adjustments cost almost nothing and the returns, in performance, retention and culture, are significant. Find out how we support teams with our Neurodiversity Awareness programme.

The cost of co-ordinating multiple wellbeing providers

The problem LPPA faced is one that many mid-to-large organisations recognise. Wellbeing support had grown organically over time — different teams had procured different solutions, different initiatives had been added in response to specific moments. The result was a patchwork that looked comprehensive on paper but was difficult to navigate in practice.

For employees, the fragmentation created uncertainty: knowing that support existed but not knowing where to find it, or whether it was relevant to their situation. For HR, it created administrative burden: managing multiple vendor relationships, coordinating scheduling, tracking outcomes across different systems and formats.

The question LPPA brought to us was straightforward: could one partner deliver the range of programmes they needed — and do it in a way that felt coherent and consistent, rather than a menu of unrelated workshops?

A consolidated, bespoke programme

We worked with LPPA to design a programme that addressed their specific organisational needs — not a catalogue of available sessions, but a coherent wellbeing offer built around what their workforce actually needed.

Menopause Awareness at Work

With a significant proportion of LPPA’s workforce in the age group most affected by menopause, this was an immediate priority. Sessions covered the practical impact of menopause on work performance and mental health, how line managers could provide appropriate support, and what adjustments organisations can make to retain experienced staff through this transition.

Neurodiversity in the Workplace

LPPA’s leadership had identified neurodiversity as an area where managers lacked both awareness and confidence. The programme provided practical tools for supporting neurodiverse team members, understanding different working styles, and creating an environment where diverse thinking is genuinely valued — not just tolerated.

Manager Mental Health Training

The third strand of the programme addressed manager capability directly — the skills to have mental health conversations, recognise signs of distress, and signpost to support effectively. This was designed as a skills-building programme, not an awareness session: managers left with frameworks and language they could use in real conversations.

What changed

What other organisations can take from this

LPPA’s experience reflects a pattern we see often: organisations that have invested in wellbeing reactively over several years end up with a fragmented offer that is harder to administer than it is useful to employees. Consolidation isn’t just an efficiency measure — it’s a quality improvement.

When employees have a clear, consistent, well-communicated wellbeing offer — and when managers have the skills to support it — wellbeing becomes part of the culture rather than something that lives in a policy document.

Why wellbeing strategy matters more than wellbeing initiatives

There’s a meaningful difference between a wellbeing strategy and a collection of wellbeing initiatives. A yoga class, a mental health first aider, an EAP nobody uses — these are initiatives. A strategy ties them together with a clear purpose, measurable outcomes, and leadership commitment that outlasts awareness weeks.

Organisations that build structured wellbeing strategies — rather than adding things ad hoc — report a 30% improvement in employee retention. The difference isn’t the budget. It’s the intention behind the investment.

What a complete wellbeing strategy covers

A robust strategy addresses all five dimensions of employee wellbeing. Focusing on just one or two leaves significant gaps that employees will notice.

A step-by-step approach that actually sticks

Step 1: Assess your current state honestly

Before you design anything, understand where you are. Run an anonymous employee wellbeing survey. Analyse your sickness absence data, exit interview themes, and manager feedback. You’re looking for the gap between what people need and what currently exists.

Step 2: Set specific, measurable goals

Vague intentions don’t drive change. Set goals like “reduce stress-related absence by 15% within 12 months” or “increase the percentage of managers confident having mental health conversations from 24% to 60%”. These give you something to report against.

Step 3: Secure genuine leadership commitment

Wellbeing programmes that sit in HR rarely move culture. They need visible sponsorship from the top — leaders who participate in training, who talk about their own mental health, who hold themselves accountable to the same standards they ask of managers.

Step 4: Launch, communicate, and keep communicating

A strategy only works if people know it exists. Build a communications plan that goes beyond a single all-hands announcement. Regular touchpoints — in team meetings, manager one-to-ones, company newsletters — keep wellbeing visible and signal that it’s a sustained commitment, not a campaign.

Step 5: Measure, learn, and iterate

Repeat your wellbeing survey at six and twelve months. Track your absence data. Monitor engagement scores. The goal isn’t to prove the programme worked — it’s to understand what’s landing and what isn’t, so you can adjust.

What organisations get wrong

Treating wellbeing as an HR project. It needs to be an organisational priority with board-level ownership. When it sits solely in HR, it gets deprioritised when things get busy — which is exactly when it’s needed most.

Starting with solutions, not problems. Many organisations buy an EAP, run a yoga class, and call it a strategy. Start with your data: what are your people actually struggling with? Build from there.

One-off interventions. A single workshop or awareness week does not constitute a strategy. The organisations that see meaningful change are those that build sustained, recurring programmes — training that is repeated, reinforced, and built into the culture over time. If you’d like help building yours, see how we approach wellbeing strategy.

Why leadership makes or breaks mental health culture

The data on leadership and employee mental health is unambiguous. When employees perceive that their leaders genuinely care about their wellbeing, 91% report stronger engagement. When organisations have strong mental health initiatives driven from the top, absenteeism falls by 25% and retention improves by 40%.

And the financial case: for every £1 invested in leadership-backed mental health support, organisations see a £4.70 return in improved productivity and reduced absenteeism. WHO

What effective mental health leadership actually involves

Modelling vulnerability

Leaders who talk openly about their own mental health — stress, difficult periods, seeking support — give their teams permission to do the same. This doesn’t mean oversharing. It means demonstrating that mental health is a human experience, not a professional liability.

Creating genuine psychological safety

Psychological safety is the belief that you can raise concerns, make mistakes, or share struggles without punishment. It doesn’t happen by accident — it’s built through consistent leader behaviour: how they respond when someone raises a problem, how they handle underperformance, how they talk about people who are struggling.

Taking workload seriously

44% of employees experience work-related stress as their primary mental health concern. Leaders who consistently push for “just a bit more” without acknowledging the cost to their people are actively damaging mental health — regardless of how many wellbeing initiatives the organisation runs alongside it.

Investing in manager capability

Senior leaders set direction, but the day-to-day experience of an employee is shaped almost entirely by their direct manager. Equipping managers with the skills to have mental health conversations — not just pointing them to an EAP — is the most impactful lever available to senior leaders.

Where to start this week

• Audit your managers’ confidence. Ask directly: how comfortable do you feel having a mental health conversation with a team member? The answer will tell you where to focus your training investment.
• Make mental health visible at the leadership level. A senior leader sharing their experience — in an all-hands, in a company communication — does more to shift culture than any poster campaign.
• Review your meeting culture. Back-to-back meetings with no recovery time is a structural stressor. Leaders who model boundaries — finishing on time, protecting lunch breaks, not emailing at midnight — give teams permission to do the same.
• Book proper manager training. Not a webinar. A structured programme that gives managers the language, skills, and confidence to genuinely support their teams — and practise it in a safe environment first.

Why patchwork support isn’t enough

Most organisations have more wellbeing resources than their employees realise. The problem isn’t the absence of support — it’s fragmentation. An EAP that nobody knows how to access. A counselling service buried in the HR intranet. A mental health first aider who changed roles six months ago and nobody updated the directory.

When support is scattered, it reaches the people who are already proactive about their wellbeing — and misses the people who are struggling silently. A wellbeing platform consolidates everything into a single, visible, easy-to-navigate experience. That visibility alone changes behaviour.

What a mental wellbeing platform should include

Personalised support pathways

Different employees have different needs. A graduate in their first job has different stressors from a manager of fifteen years. A good platform adapts — offering relevant content, tools, and signposting based on where someone is, not a one-size-fits-all menu of resources.

Inclusive, equitable access

Remote workers, shift workers, employees with limited screen time — everyone should be able to access support equally. A platform that only works during office hours, or requires a desk login, is already excluding the people who often need it most.

Expert-led content and training

Resources should be grounded in evidence — not wellness trends. This means access to clinically informed content, properly trained facilitators for live sessions, and tools that have a track record of effectiveness rather than novelty.

Manager-facing tools

Managers are the first line of response for most employee mental health issues. A hub that only serves employees — and ignores managers — misses the most critical layer. Equipping managers with conversation guides, check-in frameworks, and training resources is essential.

Analytics and reporting

What gets measured gets managed. Anonymised usage data, engagement metrics, and wellbeing survey results allow HR and leadership to understand what’s working, identify high-risk teams, and demonstrate return on investment to the board.

Getting it right from the start

• Start with a needs assessment. Survey your employees before you select a platform. The gap between what your people need and what you currently offer is the brief for procurement.
• Secure leadership visibility. If the CEO introduces the platform, usage rates are consistently higher. Wellbeing tools need cultural endorsement to overcome the stigma barrier.
• Build it into the onboarding process. Every new joiner should know about available wellbeing support in week one — not find out after a crisis.
• Review usage quarterly. Track engagement, run short pulse surveys, and adjust based on what you find. A wellbeing platform is a living resource, not a product launch.

Understanding the true cost of poor mental health

Deloitte’s analysis of the UK workplace mental health landscape identifies three distinct cost drivers — and all three are measurable, which means all three are reducible with the right interventions.

The Mental Health Foundation reports that 15% of UK workers currently manage a mental health condition — and many more are struggling without a formal diagnosis. That’s not a fringe issue. It’s a systemic one that sits in every team in every organisation in the country.

What the research says about investment in wellbeing

The financial case for mental wellbeing programmes is well-evidenced. The figures cited most consistently across Deloitte, the WHO, and the CIPD:

• For every £1 invested in mental health interventions, employers see an average return of £5 through reduced absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover
• Spending approximately £80 per employee on structured wellbeing initiatives can deliver a net saving of around £600 per employee
• Organisations with proactive mental health programmes report 25% lower absenteeism and 40% improvement in retention

Where most organisations fall short

Despite the evidence, corporate mental health programmes remain underdeveloped in most UK organisations. 54% of UK organisations say they emphasise mental health in their wellbeing initiatives — but only 33% formally report on programme implementation, and fewer than 25% of CEOs publicly commit to mental health efforts.

That gap between intention and accountability is where the returns are lost. Programmes that are announced but not measured, resourced but not embedded, or owned by HR but not championed by leadership tend to deliver little. The organisations seeing the strongest returns treat mental health investment the same way they treat any other business investment: with clear goals, regular reporting, and senior ownership.

Making the internal case

If you’re building the business case for investment, these are the numbers that tend to land with finance and senior leadership:

• Calculate your current absenteeism cost. Multiply average daily salary by the number of mental-health-related sick days in the last 12 months. This is your baseline.
• Add the presenteeism estimate. Research suggests presenteeism costs 1.5–3x the cost of absenteeism — employees at work but underperforming is the invisible majority of the problem.
• Include turnover. The average cost of replacing an employee is 6–9 months’ salary. Mental health is consistently in the top three reasons people leave organisations.
• Set the programme cost against the baseline. When the numbers are in the same format, the ROI conversation becomes straightforward.

How AI is creating new pressure points at work

The psychological impact of AI adoption in the workplace isn’t uniform. Different employees experience different stressors depending on their role, their relationship with technology, and how well their organisation has managed the change. But these five themes appear consistently across sectors.

What organisations can do to support their people through AI adoption

Reframe AI as augmentation, not replacement

Communication matters. How leadership talks about AI shapes how employees experience it. Teams that are shown specifically how AI will support their work — rather than simply announced that “AI is coming” — report significantly lower anxiety and higher engagement with new tools.

Invest in comprehensive AI literacy training

Training shouldn’t be limited to how to use a specific tool. It should build genuine understanding of what AI can and can’t do, how decisions made by AI systems work, and how employees can use AI effectively in their specific roles. Confidence reduces anxiety.

Create space for honest conversation

Regular team conversations about AI adoption — facilitated by managers who have been trained to listen, not just reassure — allow concerns to surface before they become entrenched. Ignoring anxiety doesn’t make it go away. It makes it harder to address later.

Integrate mental wellbeing support into change management

AI transformation programmes should include wellbeing as a design element, not an afterthought. Stress management workshops, access to EAP services, and mental health training for managers should be built into the implementation timeline — not bolted on after problems emerge.

Be transparent about AI use in decisions that affect people

If AI is used in performance management, hiring, or workload allocation, tell people. Explain the criteria, the oversight mechanisms, and the routes for challenge. Transparency doesn’t eliminate discomfort — but it prevents the kind of corrosive uncertainty that silence creates.

What actually works for managing stress at work