It’s very common today to see organisations that have brilliant mental health support packages and resources in place. The problem that these organisations have is that it sometimes doesn’t seem like employees are actually making use of them, even though mental health and wellbeing at work is a bigger point of discussion than ever.
The issue isn’t always a lack of care or interest. More often than not, it’s a lack of awareness.
People simply don’t know what’s available, how to access it, or whether they are safe to access it.
The 10th of October 2025 is World Mental Health Day, and this year’s theme is ‘access to services – mental health in catastrophes and emergencies’. Whilst this might sound dramatic, the reality is that we’re living through times of significant global uncertainty, ranging from economic instability to political upheaval. These external pressures don’t disappear when people arrive at work.
This, alongside employees’ changing attitudes towards mental health and wellbeing at work, means that creating visible, accessible, and trusted mental health support at work has never been more important.
You don’t need to be a mental health expert to make a real difference. This guide provides practical guidance on what to provide and, importantly, how to ensure employees are aware of and feel able to access the support available to them.
The Hidden Crisis in Many Workplaces
There’s often a significant gap between the mental health support employers provide and employees actually knowing about or using it. Research by Benenden Health reveals that despite 75% of UK employers offering workplace mental health support, only 45% of employees believe that their employer prioritises mental health.
It seems that the crux of this issue is a lack of communication, rather than a lack of resources. If employers can find a way to communicate the available support, perhaps these figures can change.
Understanding how to support mental health at work starts with recognising the barriers preventing people from accessing help. These include a lack of awareness about available support, stigma around mental health preventing people from seeking help, concerns about confidentiality, and uncertainty about what’s available or appropriate to use.
Building Your Company’s Mental Health Support Resources
First, we’d like to say that employers aren’t expected to provide clinical mental health services or become therapists. This guide isn’t intended to serve as clinical support in any way: clinical care should always be provided by qualified healthcare professionals.
An employer’s role is to facilitate access to appropriate support and create an environment where seeking help is normalised rather than stigmatised. There are a few different resources that can be put in place for employees to make use of, including:
Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs)
EAPs provide confidential counselling and support services, typically including 24/7 telephone support, face-to-face or virtual counselling sessions, and assistance with various issues, including mental health, financial concerns, and legal matters.
They work because they’re professional, confidential, and accessible outside normal working hours.
These personalised plans are developed collaboratively between employees and their managers. They identify early warning signs to watch for, triggers that might affect the individual’s mental health, strategies that help them cope, and what reasonable adjustments might be helpful.
The benefit of WAPs is that they’re proactive, tailored to each team member’s individual needs, and very effective in building understanding between managers and team members about how best to support wellbeing.
Digital Mental Health Resources
Apps and platforms for mindfulness and meditation (such as Headspace or Calm), mental health education and self-help, mood tracking and journalling, and stress management techniques can be valuable supplements to other support.
They’re accessible, can be used privately without anyone knowing, and help reduce stigma. However, they should supplement rather than replace professional support when it’s needed.
Mental Health First Aiders
Trained employees who can provide initial support and signpost to appropriate help create a culture of openness around mental health. They’re not therapists, but they can be invaluable first points of contact for colleagues who need support.
Closing this gap in awareness starts with ensuring your mental health support is not only available but also accessible, visible, and communicated effectively. Here’s how to start.
Ensuring Employees Actually Know What’s Available
Having excellent mental health support means nothing if employees don’t know about it. Mentioning the support that is available during onboarding is all well and good, but if you don’t bring it up again or inform employees on how they can go about accessing these resources, you may find that uptake is disappointingly low.
You can combat this by using multiple communication channels, including:
- Onboarding for new starters,
- Team meetings
- Company email newsletters,
- Staff portals,
- Posters in shared spaces
- Manager one-to-ones
- Specific campaigns around awareness days, such as World Mental Health Day.
In your communications, it is important to include information such as clear explanations of what each service offers, specific steps and contact details for accessing mental health support and resources, and reassurance about confidentiality: essentially, making access as easy as possible by removing any questions or doubts teams may have.
You can also help make mental health support resources easy for your team to access by ensuring that the referral processes are simple and that support can be accessed in multiple formats (email, phone, in-person), so that no individual is barred from using these resources due to lacking the correct technology, for example.
Regular review ensures your approach stays effective. Ask employees whether they know what’s available, track usage patterns without identifying individuals, update communication based on feedback, and refresh content regularly to maintain visibility.
Tackle Stigma and Build a Culture of Openness
Another reason that teams may be reluctant to reach out for help is due to feeling fear or shame brought about by a stigma towards mental health challenges and support.
Mental health stigma refers to negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours toward mental health issues and people experiencing them. In the workplace, stigma may manifest as fear of being seen as weak or incapable, concerns about career progression being affected, worry about being treated differently by colleagues, and assumptions that mental health difficulties aren’t “serious enough” to warrant support.
Tackling these stigmas is important because they can prevent people from seeking help when they need it most. Employers can be powerful forces in reducing this stigma and can do so in a variety of ways, including:
Starting open conversations by having leadership talk openly about mental health, including mental health in regular team discussions rather than only on awareness days, and normalising the idea that everyone has mental health just as everyone has physical health.
Eliminating mental health discrimination through clear policies, treating mental health absences the same as physical health absences, ensuring equal access to opportunities regardless of mental health history, and taking discrimination complaints seriously.
Being mindful of language by avoiding casual use of clinical terms (“I’m so OCD about that”), challenging stigmatising language when you hear it, and using accurate, respectful terminology.
Making support visible and accessible by regularly communicating what’s available, showing that support is valued without breaching confidentiality, having leadership use and promote mental health resources, and celebrating positive outcomes appropriately.
Making Mental Health Support Accessible Every Day
This World Mental Health Day reminds us that, while having mental health support and resources in place is great, employees must know about it and feel able to use it without fear of negative consequences for it to truly be beneficial.
Fact is, creating that kind of workplace takes more than good intentions. It takes clear communication, supportive leadership, and a culture that values mental health enough to make it a part of day-to-day conversations.
If you need support developing your approach, we’re here to help. Whether it’s HR strategy services for developing plans to help you manage your teams well or people management training for building manager capability, we’re here to empower you and your people in creating genuinely supportive workplaces.
This World Mental Health Day, let’s commit to ensuring employees know what support is available and feel able to access it. That’s what true access to mental health support looks like.