Winter resilience for teams: a seven-step review for the darker months
The darker evenings and the shortest days are on the calendar every year. This guide helps a team plan the parts of the season it shares and notice the parts it cannot plan.
In Mental Health UK’s Burnout Report 2026, a high or increased workload was the factor UK workers most often said had caused them stress in the past year (42%). The survey is not about the seasons. Our point is that how much work lands at once, and when, is partly in a team’s hands. Mental Health UK, Burnout Report 2026, YouGov survey of 4,502 UK adults including 2,591 workers, fieldwork 3 to 5 November 2025
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The rest of the guide covers what the calendar can and cannot tell you about the darker months, then seven steps for a team: putting the year’s heavy weeks next to the shortest days, moving what can move and planning recovery around what cannot, putting daylight into the working day, keeping the shape of the week, making check-ins about more than the task list, comparing someone with their own usual rather than with the team and putting the routes to help where people will see them. One-off, you won’t need to do this again on this device.
What the calendar can tell you about the darker months, and what it cannot
Some of the season can be planned from a diary. The rest can only be noticed, one person at a time.
What you can see coming
When the clocks go back in October, it gets dark an hour earlier by the clock. The change itself takes no daylight away: an hour of it moves from the evening to the morning. The shortest day falls on 21 or 22 December. Most of the team’s own heavy weeks are in a diary too: an appraisal round, a client renewal round, a reporting deadline or cover over the end-of-year holidays. Which of them land near the shortest days can be checked in advance.
What you cannot
How the season affects any one person cannot be read from a calendar. Some people notice their energy or their routine change as the evenings draw in; others notice no difference at all. Ordinary variation like that is not a diagnosis, and nobody at work needs to decide whether it is anything more. 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.
Most of the seven steps change arrangements a manager controls, such as which heavy weeks move and where the routes to help are posted. The rest, like the midday break and the shape of the week, are agreed with the team. None asks anyone to try harder. The skills each person brings still matter, and they sit alongside these arrangements rather than standing in for them.
Seven steps for a team in the darker months
Before you start, gather the team’s calendar from the clock change in October to the end of February, with deadlines, leave and cover on it.
Put the year’s heavy weeks next to the shortest days
List every deadline, peak and busy stretch between the clock change and the end of February, with the week each falls in. Then mark the ones in December and January: the weeks around the shortest days, when holiday leave also thins the team. You are not predicting who will struggle, only finding the weeks where the most work meets the fewest people.
- Include the work that sits on nobody’s project plan: handovers, holiday cover and the recurring jobs that always land on the same few people.
- Ask the team to add to the list: whoever covers over the holidays knows busy days the manager’s diary does not show.
- Where heavy items pile up in the same fortnight in December or January, circle them. Step 2 starts there.
Move what can move, and plan recovery around what cannot
In its Burnout Report 2026, Mental Health UK recommends “protecting staff from unplanned or repeated peaks in workload demand so they do not become the norm”. Applying that to the darker months is our step: a peak you can see in October can be planned for rather than absorbed in December. Some dates are fixed by a regulator, a client or the financial year. Others sit where they do because that is where they sat last year, and those can move.
- Ask of each date who fixed it and what would happen if it moved out of December and January. If the answers are nobody and nothing, it is habit and can go to November or February.
- After each peak that cannot move, put the lighter week that follows it in the diary before anything else fills it: no new projects starting and optional meetings cancelled.
- Choose one low-value task the team can drop until the spring, and tell everyone it has been dropped rather than letting it quietly lapse.
A team’s client reporting deadline in mid January cannot move. The same fortnight also holds a new system going live, a team away day and a process review. The launch moves to early February, the away day comes forward to November and the process review goes to March. The deadline stays, and the week after it is booked light before anything else can claim it.
Put daylight into the working day
These suggestions are ours and ordinary good practice, not a treatment for anything. The middle of the day is the stretch of daylight a team can most easily make room for, so keep it open rather than booking it solid.
- Agree a midday break the team can take away from their desks, outside if they want to, and keep meetings out of it.
- Offer walking one-to-ones only where both people want one, and keep a seated option open every time, so nobody has to explain why they would rather sit.
Keep the shape of the week
A regular week is one of the few things a team can hold steady through the season. Give it a shape people can rely on: a finish time that holds and one fixed point each week when the team is together, in person or online.
- Write late if you must, but schedule the message to arrive the next morning. One that lands at seven in the evening suggests the finish time is optional.
- Move recurring meetings out of the last hour of the day, and do not book new ones into it.
- Check who the weekly point misses, such as anyone whose working days do not include it, and put another date in for them.
Make check-ins about more than the task list
In the same report, Mental Health UK recommends that employers “embed regular check-ins as a core element of line management” and says “these conversations should go beyond task updates”. Through the darker months, set aside a few minutes in each one-to-one for one or two of these, not all five at once.
- “How is your energy compared with a month ago?”
- “Which week coming up are you most worried about?”
- “What would make the next few weeks easier?”
- “Is there anything about when or where you work that you would change for the winter?”
- “What should we stop doing until the spring?”
- Keep the slot in weeks with nothing to report: those ordinary answers are the usual that step 6 compares against.
- Listen for a change from how they usually answer, not for a score. The same answer can mean different things from two different people.
Compare someone with their own usual
The comparison that matters is between a person and their own usual over several weeks, not between them and the rest of the team. A quiet person being quiet tells you little; a change that lasts tells you more. When you see one, raise it privately with an open question and leave the cause alone.
- If they would rather not talk about it, accept that and keep the next one-to-one in the diary as normal.
- Name no cause. “Winter blues” is not a diagnosis, and whether someone has SAD is for a GP to decide. Suggesting either puts a label in the room that nobody there can confirm.
- The signs worth watching for, and the words to use, are in the post under Related reading below.
Put the routes to help where people will see them
For anyone who is struggling, the usual first route is their GP. Next comes the employee assistance programme, if there is one, with its number written out rather than a link to a policy. In England, people aged 18 or over (16 or over in some areas) can refer themselves to an NHS talking therapies service without going through a GP.
- Your part is to notice and point to help, without needing to know what is wrong first. If someone tells you about a health condition, ask them about involving HR or occupational health.
- Post the list where nobody has to ask for it: the team channel, the intranet page people actually use and the template for one-to-ones.
- Before anyone needs it, ring the employee assistance programme’s number once yourself: does it reach a person or a clear menu?
Samaritans on 116 123, free, any time day or night; the Samaritans Welsh Language Line on 0808 164 0123, every day from 7pm to 11pm; NHS 111, choosing the mental health option; 999 or A and E if a life is at risk.
Resilience Training alongside your team’s plan for the darker months
Resilience Training, half a day, onsite or online, covers skills a team can build together, including how to support colleagues through challenges and change. Before delivery we talk to you about the pressures your people are facing, so the session starts from them. It works alongside the seven steps, not in place of them.
Enquire about Resilience TrainingThis guide is general information for employers and people leaders, not medical, legal or HR advice. Where a health condition or disability may be a factor, talk with the person about involving HR or occupational health. If a check-in leads to a request to change hours or place of work, handle it under your flexible working policy. The seven steps, the daylight suggestions and the check-in questions are ours, not advice from the NHS or Mental Health UK. The workload figure is from The Burnout Report 2026, published by Mental Health UK from a YouGov survey of 4,502 UK adults, 2,591 of them workers, with fieldwork from 3 to 5 November 2025; the words quoted in steps 2 and 5 are the report’s recommendations to employers, not survey findings. The figure is what workers said had caused them stress in the past year and says nothing about the seasons. The description of seasonal affective disorder is from the NHS, the clock change from GOV.UK, the shortest day from the Met Office and self-referral to talking therapies from the NHS talking therapies service finder, which covers England. Crisis routes: Samaritans, the Samaritans Welsh Language Line and the NHS guide to urgent help for mental health. Related reading: our post on what to look for and what to say when a colleague seems to be struggling.