Mental health awareness isn’t enough:
Why action matters in every workplace

This year’s Mental Health Awareness Week runs from 11 to 17 May with the theme ‘Action’. Whilst awareness campaigns can help to reduce mental health stigma and drive much-needed understanding of the challenges people face, they can often feel performative and avoid addressing the deeper, structural problems.

In the workplace, many employees are now able to recognise signs of poor mental health such as burnout and depression, thanks to extensive awareness campaigns and events with guest speakers, webinars, ‘lunch and learn’ style talks and company-wide comms sharing educational resources and external support helplines. However, despite being assured that ‘it’s okay to talk’, many organisations simply lack the structural support and culture for employees to do so.

So what does meaningful, measurable action look like in the workplace and what can you do to ensure your organisation is doing its best to support colleagues?

• Building a culture of psychological safety. Employees who are worried about mental health stigma, confidentiality, or career consequences are not going to feel safe to seek help when they need it. People need to trust that they can speak up, fail and be vulnerable without fear of consequence. To do this, leaders and managers must role model inclusive behaviours; learning cultures need to be normalised over blame cultures; and performance policies should reinforce the safety to make mistakes.
  Example action: Start team meetings with a simple, informal check‑in round and encourage leaders to share their own learning moments to normalise vulnerability.

• Addressing the route cause. Employers have a legal duty to ensure the health, safety and welfare of employees, which includes mental health. Although many organisations promote wellbeing, employees are still facing excessive workloads, unrealistic deadlines, or constant availability expectations. Being aware of the signs and symptoms of poor mental health doesn’t reduce the stressors causing the problem. It’s important for employers to listen to employee pain-points through engagement surveys and other feedback forums to be able to offer an honest action plan for real change.

Example action: Run quarterly ‘pressure point’ reviews with teams to identify workload hotspots and remove or redesign the biggest stressors.

• Equipping leaders and line managers. Line managers are often the first person an employee will speak to if they’re struggling with their mental health at work. Having the skills to effectively respond to disclosure and signpost the correct support is imperative. Training leaders and line managers will build their confidence in handling these conversations sensitively, whilst also understanding boundaries (support vs overstepping).

Example action: Introduce a short, mandatory training module with a simple conversation framework (listen, reassure, signpost) and a clear escalation route.

In practice, awareness only works when it’s paired with meaningful change; supportive leadership, a psychologically safe work culture and structural support and policies that make it safe and practical for people to seek help. Without that, efforts risk appearing performative rather than a genuine commitment to wellbeing.

If your organisation would value support with any of the actions recommended in this blog, reach out to us at team@wihtlanddir.com

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