Stress Awareness Week 2026: the 10-minute check-in every manager can run

What is Stress Awareness Week?

ISMA describes International Stress Awareness Week as “a major annual campaign” to increase public awareness of stress, its impact and the importance of mental health and wellbeing. The 2026 theme is “Shaping the Future of Stress and Wellbeing: Rehumanising the Workplace”. Stress Awareness Day, also known as National Stress Awareness Day, sits in the middle of the week. In 2026 it falls on Wednesday 4 November.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Great Britain’s workplace health and safety regulator, defines stress as “the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them”. Pressure is part of most jobs. Stress is the point at which it becomes more than someone can manage.

What a line manager can add to the week is smaller and more direct: asking each person, privately, where the pressure is in their work.

What is a 10-minute stress check-in?

A 10-minute stress check-in is a short, private conversation between a line manager and each person in their team, using the same three questions every time. The questions ask about the work, not about feelings: which piece of work is on their mind, what they are waiting on and what would give first if nothing changed. It ends with any change the answers call for and a date for the next one.

Three things set it apart from a general catch-up.

• Everyone gets one. Booking the same 10 minutes with every person in the team makes it routine, so nobody wonders why they were picked. It also lets you see whether a pressure is one person’s or everyone’s. If one person is already worrying you, talk to them separately as well.
• The questions ask for something specific. “How are you?” and “How’s work?” are both easy to answer with “fine”. A question that asks someone to name something, such as which piece of work is taking up the most room in their head, makes “fine” a hard answer to give. What they name gives you something specific to act on.
• It ends with a change when the answers call for one. If someone names a pressure and not even a small thing changes, they learn that answering honestly makes no difference.

It is not a performance conversation, a diagnosis or counselling. It does not replace your organisation’s stress risk assessment. It is how a manager finds out what the work is doing to people while there is still time to change it.

How to run a 10-minute stress check-in

Book 10 minutes with each person, somewhere private, with nothing straight after it. Eight minutes are the conversation and the last two are for your note.

1. 1 Open (one minute). Tell them everyone in the team is having the same check-in about where the pressure is in the work, and that if there is something you can change, you will agree it before you finish.
2. 2 Ask about the work on their mind (two minutes). “Which piece of work is taking up the most room in your head, even when you’re not working on it?” Their answer shows which task is weighing on them most, even when they are busy with something else.
3. 3 Ask what they are waiting on (two minutes). “What are you waiting on at the moment, from me or from anyone else?” It tells you whether answers, sign-offs and decisions are getting to them. If something is stuck with you, it is the easiest change you will make.
4. 4 Ask what would give first (two minutes). “If work carried on as it is, what would give first?” If the answer is a deadline, the cost would land on the work. If it is their evenings or their sleep, it would land on them, so slow down and ask whether that is already happening and for how long.
5. 5 Close (one minute). If the answers call for a change, agree it, whose job it is and by when. Then put the next check-in in the diary and give them the number for your employee assistance programme, if you have one.
6. 6 Write a short note (two minutes). What they said about the work in their own words, the change and the next date. Leave out health details and guesses about how they seemed.

Ask the questions as they are written and then stop talking. A small rewording, such as “Is anything on your mind?”, turns a question back into one that can be answered with a no.

What to do if someone says they are not coping

The timings stop mattering. Tell them you are glad they said so, then listen without fixing, comparing or reassuring. A manager’s job here is not to work out what is wrong, only where the person needs help from and how soon.

Once you know it can wait, point them to their GP and to your employee assistance programme if you have one. Change one thing about their work straight away, then set a date to talk again within days rather than weeks.

Bring in HR when someone tells you about a health condition that affects their work, is off sick, needs changes you cannot agree alone or is being badly treated by someone. Acas advises an individual risk assessment for anyone who says work is causing their stress. Tell the person before you go to HR, unless you are worried for their safety.

Once the whole team has had a check-in, read all the notes side by side. If the same pressure comes up in several of them, it is about how the work is set up rather than any one person. It belongs in your organisation’s stress risk assessment. Our post ISO 45003 explained sets out the risk assessment duty that already applies to every employer. For the full script, with what to say back to each answer, how to close and when to bring in occupational health, download our guide The 10-minute stress check-in: a script for managers.