Employers urged to turn workers’ mental health experiences into real change

The call comes ahead of World Mental Health Day on Saturday 10 October, which is this year focusing on the theme: “lived experiences heard: real voices, real change”.

The campaign, led by the World Health Organisation, seeks to recognise the knowledge of people with lived experiences of mental health conditions as a vital form of expertise. It calls for their voices to help shape relevant policies, services and decisions.

IOSH says this principle must be applied in workplaces, where workers’ experiences can help employers identify psychosocial hazards and understand how workload, working relationships, job control and organisational change affect mental health.

The most recent annual workplace health and safety statistics from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show that an estimated 964,000 workers experienced stress, depression or anxiety caused or made worse by work in 2024/2025. Mental health conditions remained the leading cause of work-related ill health.

Overall, an estimated 1.9 million workers suffered from work-related ill health during the year. Workplace injuries and ill health together resulted in 40.1 million working days being lost.

IOSH research published during Mental Health Awareness Week in May also found that two in five professionals said that they often experienced challenges with their mental health because of their work or working life. A further 29% said they sometimes experienced such challenges.

Kelly Nicoll, Immediate Past President of IOSH, said: 

“We need to move beyond encouraging people to speak up and think much harder about what happens when they do. Psychological safety is demonstrated in the response, not in the campaign.

“The scale of work-related stress, depression and anxiety, and the millions of working days lost as a result, show that employers cannot treat this as a marginal wellbeing issue. They must identify and manage the aspects of work that can cause harm, while creating an environment in which people can ask for support without their capability or commitment being questioned.

Kelly has previously spoken about experiencing burnout and poor mental health throughout her career, including finding it difficult to reach out for help because she was often the person others approached for such support. She has also described the lasting trauma of dealing with serious and fatal workplace incidents.

IOSH is encouraging employers to take five steps:

• create psychologically safe ways for workers to be heard, including confidential and accessible channels
• ask about work-related factors, rather than asking workers to disclose medical diagnoses or personal details
• involve workers early, before mental health policies, organisational changes or risk controls are finalise
• explain what action will be taken, including what cannot be changed and why
• review whether changes have worked, using further worker feedback and relevant organisational data.

IOSH guidance advises employers to manage mental health risks through the same structured cycle used for physical hazards: identifying hazards, assessing risks, implementing controls, and monitoring and reviewing their effectiveness. Work-related psychosocial factors can include excessive demands, limited job control, inadequate support, poor working relationships, unclear roles and poorly managed change.

Kelly Nicoll added: “It should never be left to an individual worker to carry the responsibility for fixing workplace mental health. Employers must listen to people, identify the root causes of harm and make prevention part of how the organisation operates every day.”

Employers, managers and occupational safety and health professionals can access guidance, training and resources through the IOSH mental health and wellbeing collection.