Mental Health Awareness Week, taking place from 15 May to 21 May 2026, is an ideal time to review what you’re doing to support your employees’ mental health in the workplace.
Running with “Action” as the headline theme, read on to learn why taking steps to protect the mental health of your employees could make a positive difference to your bottom line.
Health and wellbeing concerns topped employees’ worry list in 2025
Research reveals that the top three concerns for employees in 2025 were:
- Physical health and fitness
- Work/life balance
- Mental and emotional health.
Notably, mental and emotional health has climbed from seventh spot in 2022 to rate among the most important issues for employees today. [1]
All this to say that wellbeing is no longer “a nice-to-have”. Ideally, it should be a core element of the benefits and support your business provides.
3 positive ways to help support your employees’ mental health
Whether you support employees’ financial wellbeing with workplace advice or provide access to counselling through an employee assistance programme, there are multiple ways to help protect your team’s mental resilience.
1. Be proactive by providing space to talk
Sometimes poor mental health can occur at work simply because problems go undetected. In the worst case, relatively small issues can spiral into a crisis.
By being proactive, managers are more likely to get ahead of problems early.
Encourage managers to go beyond a simple “How are you?” and ask specific questions about what support would be helpful. And don’t just accept the glib answer at face value. Instead, encourage people to air their questions and concerns.
2. Encourage employees to switch off after work
Because we’re all glued to our devices, many employees end up feeling the need to be constantly available and end up working more hours than they should.
To prevent this becoming the norm, make sure your employees know when to stop and encourage them to switch off when they sign off at the end of the workday.
While a single response may only take a moment, lots of small moments soon mount up. So, encourage your team to give quality time to themselves, their family, and friends by establishing a policy that your employees shouldn’t answer emails or reply to internal messages out of hours.
3. Offer flexible working and be open to workplace adjustments
Having to stick to set hours might cause difficulties for some employees.
As well as offering flexible working hours, ensuring you provide adequate time off for annual leave, sick leave, and parental leave can make a big difference.
Collaborative and supportive conversations with affected employees can help both parties understand what adjustments might help. For example:
- Adjusting responsibilities if some cause too much pressure
- Minimising noise or providing a quiet working space
- Adjustments to working hours or shift patterns
- Increasing supervision and support
- Working from home
- Providing a mentor.
The potential cost of not addressing mental health
At a global scale, depression and anxiety cost businesses around 12 billion working days every year. The collective cost of lost productivity is estimated to be $1 trillion.
With 16 million lost work days in the UK, ignoring the issue could cost you more than you might think. [2]
Healthier employees are more productive and engaged, while a happy workforce is also key to reducing staff absenteeism and staff turnover.
To find out more about how we can help you devise a benefits package to support your employees’ mental health, please get in touch.
Email [email protected] or call us on 0800 048 0150.
Please note
The information contained in this article is based on the opinion of Titan Wealth Planning and does not constitute financial advice or a recommendation for any investment or retirement strategy.
All information is correct at the time of writing and is subject to change in the future.