The 2026 theme is Action. Three practical things you can do this week that won’t feel like a tick-box exercise, even if half your team started in the last six months.
Most MHAW toolkits assume a stable, settled workforce. This one is for companies where the headcount has changed faster than the culture – where managers are new, half the team hasn’t been through a full annual cycle, and the culture is still being written.
Over a third of workers don’t feel comfortable raising mental health concerns with their manager. In a growing team, that number is likely higher. These three actions don’t require a budget sign-off or a six-week lead time.
Most managers in growing companies were promoted because they’re good at the work, not because they’ve been trained in people management. Asking them to “support wellbeing” without tools is setting them up to fail. Instead, give them one thing to do this week:
Growing companies often have a messy patchwork of support: an EAP nobody knows about, a Slack channel that went quiet, a mental health first aider who left in January. Use the week to clear this up publicly.
This is the most important shift. The best thing Mental Health Awareness Week can do for a growing company is open a door that stays open after May 17th.
The Mental Health Foundation is explicitly asking organisations to move beyond awareness. That gives you internal cover to propose something with actual follow-through – your leadership can’t argue with the campaign’s own message.
We’ve worked with organisations from 20 people to 700+. These are the patterns we see most often in companies that are scaling fast.
You share a Mental Health Foundation graphic on Slack. Your team reacts with a thumbs up. Nothing changes. People in new roles are reading the culture right now – they notice when what’s said doesn’t match what’s done.
They were individual contributors three months ago. You promoted them because they’re brilliant at the work. Now you’re asking them to spot when someone’s struggling and have a conversation they’ve never been trained for. That’s not fair on them or their team.
You run a session on Wednesday, everyone says it was great, then Monday arrives and nothing follows. People remember the drop-off more than the session. It actually erodes trust – you showed them you know it matters, then went quiet.
Position the week as a launchpad. Run a proper training session during it – not a webinar – and pair it with a visible commitment to what comes next. We ran exactly this with a 200-person organisation last year: one manager session during the week, followed by quarterly sessions. Six months on, their managers reported feeling significantly more confident having mental health conversations. That’s what the “Action” theme is asking for.
964,000 UK workers were affected by work-related stress, depression or anxiety last year – up 24% year-on-year. In growing companies, the pressure is often invisible until someone leaves. HSE 2024/25
You don’t need to fill every day. One or two well-placed actions will land better than a packed programme that nobody has capacity for.
Brief managers on the one-question conversation. Share the support map you’ve put together. Let people know what’s happening and why – keep it short, honest, and avoid corporate language.
Pick one: a training session for managers, an awareness session for the whole team, or an honest all-hands on where you are with wellbeing. Don’t try to do all three. One well-run session that people talk about afterwards is worth more than a packed programme nobody has energy for.
Share what you heard (themes, not names). Announce the next step – the follow-up session, the quarterly commitment, the new policy. This is the moment people decide if it was real or performative.
The week gave you momentum. A rolling programme of sessions – even one per quarter – turns a moment into a culture. Your new hires will see this as “how things work here” rather than “that thing we did in May.”
We run practical, interactive mental health training for whole teams and for managers. One session during the week, paired with a plan for what comes after. If you want to make this year’s MHAW the starting point, let’s talk.
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