Everything you need to know about our mental health first aid training

You’re looking for a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) course, so you already know that quality training is essential for fostering a psychologically safe workplace. But when it comes to supporting good mental health in the workplace, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work.

MHFA courses are a valuable part of your overall mental health at work strategy. But they’re designed to provide specific training, not the whole picture. That’s why it’s crucial to have an expert mental health partner who understands the unique needs of your organisation.

Here we outline the difference between having MHFA training just for designated employees and our holistic approach to your team’s mental health.

What is MHFA training?

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) Training is an internationally accredited course that equips your employees with the tools to support colleagues facing mental health challenges. Similar to physical ‘first aiders,’ organisations then have MHFA-trained individuals to spot, and be first responders to, mental health issues at work.

Over two days, attendees learn about mental health stressors, how symptoms vary, active listening skills, and how to signpost appropriate support. Your MHFA-trained employees become key touchpoints during workplace crises.

It’s crucial to ensure your training provider follows the licensed MHFA England programme, as there are an increasing number of options on the market.

Key benefits of training your workforce in MHFA

There are several key benefits of training your workforce in MHFA, for your employees and your business.

Employees:

  • Increased understanding of mental health issues and illnesses, and their impact on well-being in the workplace
  • Confidence in recognising and supporting colleagues with mental health challenges
  • Skills in active, non-judgmental listening and effective communication
  • Access to knowledge and resources to signpost appropriate support
  • Working in a culture of empathy and support, that enhances workplace relationships

Businesses:

  • Reduced absenteeism and staff turnover because you have a psychologically safe and supportive work environment
  • Fewer staff need recovery time from serious mental ill health by intervening early enough to prevent escalation
  • Increased productivity because employees are more engaged and have consistently better morale
  • Legal compliance and an alignment with best practices for workplace mental health provision
  • Save money on presenteeism and absenteeism due to sickness – absence due to sickness cost UK employers a huge £7bn in one year.

Common problems with MHFA training

You obviously see the benefits of MHFA training, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this!

But it’s not a complete solution in itself, there are 5 common problems with MHFA training:

1. It can be delivered as ‘one size fits all’

MHFA England training courses provide a solid overview of workplace mental health within a set two-day curriculum. However, all workplaces face unique challenges that may not be fully addressed in this standardised programme.

Without additional, tailored mental health training, there’s a risk of only achieving surface-level understanding. This could lead to unchallenged misconceptions, and/or an inability to effectively handle complex or nuanced issues.

2. People have a ‘tick the box’ attitude

Yes, you have a legal obligation to ensure the health and safety of your employees. If you treat your MHFA training as just making sure you’ve got the tick in the box, it signals to your employees that your business just pays lip service to mental health in the workplace.

Why would they take it seriously, when you see it as just another bit of statutory compliance?

Leading with this attitude means that your MHFA training investment only ever stays at a basic level of raising awareness. There’s no intent to deliver the deeper understanding necessary to reduce mental ill health stigma, change negative attitudes, or create a more inclusive workplace culture.

3. It’s often seen as one-and-done training

MHFA training is a great first step – it raises awareness and gives people the confidence to tackle tough conversations. But let’s be honest, skills from any one-off course can fade pretty quickly.

These short sessions don’t always give employees the ongoing support they need to really get to grips with mental health or feel ready to help colleagues facing longer-term challenges.

4. Lack of everyday support for mental health first aiders

It’s one thing to learn about mental health in theory, but supporting someone in distress is far more challenging. Mental health first aiders provide non-judgmental comfort during crises, but without proper support, they risk feeling overwhelmed, which can negatively impact their own mental health.

5. MHFA training is not embedded in the company culture

Training a few employees as mental health first-aiders won’t have much impact if the organisation’s culture isn’t supportive.

When management avoids mental health discussions, emotional expression is dismissed as banter, and fears of criticism silence conversations about stress or burnout, the workplace fails to nurture mental well-being. Without alignment between your environment, policies, and MHFA training, effective implementation becomes nearly impossible.

Why Resilient People’s approach to MHFA training is different

We have the expertise to support your development of a full mental health at work strategy. We’re not trying to deliver as many MFHA training courses as possible because this standalone training only has a limited impact.

We want you and your people to have the long-term support they need to really flourish. As you know, creating a psychologically safe workplace environment is complex. You need a full toolkit of the resources and skills that your specific organisation needs to manage the particular mental health challenges of your workplace.

Implementing MHFA training into your organisation

Here’s how we work as your expert partner, to help you give maximum support to your employees:

  • Initial assessment: We start by listening to what you need and conducting a comprehensive evaluation of your organisation’s unique culture and existing mental health support structures.
  • Tailored strategy development: Together, we design a customised mental health strategy that aligns with your company’s goals, addressing both prevention and response.
  • Leadership engagement: Change starts at the top! We provide training and resources to support you, as leaders, to develop a psychologically safe workplace environment.
  • Expert training: As well as MHFA training, we provide a range of different courses that support your organisation’s particular challenges.
  • Ongoing employee education: You can select from a range of workshops, online mental health hubs, resources, and campaigns to promote mental health awareness and encourage self-care practices among employees.
  • Accessible support systems: We can help you implement the right tools for your employees, like employee assistance programs (EAPs), anonymous helplines, or onsite mental health advisors.
  • Continuous monitoring and feedback: We don’t just dive in, deliver training and leave you to it. We’re also here to support you with regular assessment of your mental health strategy's effectiveness. As your needs evolve, we can shortcut the process of adapting to different needs.

Our aim is to develop long-term partnerships with our clients. Because we truly believe that the right support and guidance lead to sustainable mental health practices that become deeply embedded into workplace culture.

Common MHFA questions

Where can you deliver MHFA training sessions?

We will come and deliver your MHFA training course anywhere in the UK.

How much does MHFA training cost?

Our MHFA training starts at £325 per person. We offer substantial discounts for in-house courses, dependent on the numbers involved.

How often do you need to do MHFA training?

We’ll help you schedule the mental health training that best supports your mental health at work policy. Generally, we advise MHFA courses every 2-3 years, to ensure you have the most updated training. This should be accompanied by regular follow-up support for your mental health first aiders in between these full refresher courses.

Is Mental Health First Aid training statutory in the UK?

Despite a recent Private Members Bill being brought to Parliament and a lot of press on the issue, it’s not a legal requirement for employers to deliver MHFA training in the UK.

Book MHFA training and get ongoing support with Resilient People

Investing in mental health support that extends beyond MHFA training is key to fostering a resilient and thriving workforce. It’s not just about identifying issues or responding to crises but creating a proactive approach to well-being that aligns with your business goals and works for your people.

At Resilient People, we’re specialists. We can definitely lead MHFA training for you. But we can also help you design a whole mental health strategy that’s driven by your organisation’s unique challenges.

You don’t have to figure this out alone. Get in touch today to discuss the best options for your people.

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How to deal with an employee’s mental health crisis at work

You already have robust health and safety plans in place to deal with a variety of possible crises in your workplace. They’re so ingrained it’s second nature now:

  • If the fire alarm goes off, everyone knows how to get out and where to muster to wait for the fire service
  • If someone collapses, your trained first aiders know what to do until the paramedics arrive

So, why aren’t we dealing with mental health crises in the same way? Well, the key differences are that mental health crisis preparation is comparatively new and the subject matter is, generally, uncomfortable.

Dealing with a mental health crisis requires well-trained soft skills and up-to-date information to create an action plan that’s fully understood by all staff and gives clear direction. Many workplaces simply haven’t had the right training or support to do this effectively.

But if you’re ready to learn how to respond to a mental health crisis in the workplace, we’re here to help. This blog post provides you with a brilliant starting point for you to discuss, create and share the right mental health crisis strategy for your organisation.

Read on for our 5-step framework for dealing with a mental health crisis, including immediate actions and follow-up support.

What is a ‘mental health crisis’?

Mental health charity Mind defines a mental health crisis for an individual as ‘when you feel at breaking point and you need urgent help.’ And sometimes that crisis point happens at work.

Prior preparation and training mean that mental health crises in your workplace can be handled in the best way possible for everyone.

There are different reasons why people have mental health crises, such as:

  • Bereavement
  • Experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event
  • Burnout caused by workplace stress
  • Mental illness symptoms, such as PTSD being triggered, or severe depression
  • Domestic abuse
  • End of a relationship
  • Substance abuse or addiction
  • Financial pressure
  • Sometimes it's the cumulation of multiple factors over a period of time, with no clearly definable ‘thing’ in the moment.

Mental health crises don’t all look the same. People will present with different behaviours that need particular types of support at the point of crisis. The key for you as a manager – and for line managers – is to start from a place of knowing your employees.

You can’t identify behaviour that’s out of character, if you don’t know how they normally act at work. And this is the baseline for you to be able to recognise the subtler signs of a mental health crisis.

The likelihood that you’ll need to manage employees during a mental health crisis is quite high, according to research:

‘I’m not qualified for this!’

You’re not alone in feeling the pressure of this responsibility. Many managers feel out of their depth when developing mental health strategies – especially around the heightened risks of mental health crisis situations. Which, of course, impacts your own wellbeing.

Remember: You’re not a firefighter, paramedic or police officer but you know what to do if there’s a fire, accident or crime at your workplace – and so do your staff.

It’s the same principle, based on the same H&S law, when it comes to mental health crises. You’re not expected to be a mental health professional. You’re not giving a diagnosis or expected to solve the whole problem. Your responsibility is to keep everyone safe in the moment and initiate the next steps.

This 5-step guide is useful if you’re in a mental health crisis situation in your workplace before you’ve had internal discussions. It’s also a good framework to use as you put your mental health crisis at work plan in place. And we’re here for any other training or support you need.

Step 1: Recognise the signs of a mental health crisis

Someone may have been on your radar for a while with worries about mental ill health, and a mental health crisis isn’t completely unexpected. Other employees may find themselves at a crisis point that seems totally out of the blue to everyone around them.

In the moment of crisis, the how and why don’t matter, just how you can best support that person to step out of crisis mode.

The signs of a mental health crisis aren’t the same for every person. But they include a variety of different behaviours, including:

  • Obvious physical distress – crying, upset, shaking
  • Extreme anxiousness – like panic attacks or flashbacks
  • Extreme withdrawal – sometimes to the point of being completely shut down to any communication
  • Self-harm, or threats of self-harm
  • Suicidal thoughts and/or plans
  • Mania – including heightened activity, psychosis, hallucinations, extreme paranoia, loss of connection to reality

When should you intervene?

You need to step in when there are any signs of visible stress or disruption to other employees, and if their behaviour puts themself or others at risk.

Step 2: Take immediate action to support employee mental health

But what should that intervention look like? No one wants to make a difficult, distressing situation any worse – and you won’t.

  • Stay calm and assess the situation: Take a deep breath and think ‘safety first’. Consider the physical and psychological safety of all involved.
  • Determine immediate risk: If there’s any risk of self-harm or harm to others, escalate to HR or emergency services.
  • Use active listening and empathy: Avoid judgmental language and demonstrate to the person in crisis that you understand their distress. Use the words they’re saying and frame comments in a supportive way. Phrases like ‘Stop being silly’ and ‘Calm down’ are not useful in these moments of crisis. They diminish the emotional pain and are instructions that the individual is unable to follow at this moment.
  • Find a private space: If possible, persuade the individual to come with you to a private space where you can talk one-on-one. Remove onlookers from the situation, their intentions may be to help, but no one needs an audience at this moment.
  • Ask open-ended questions: Questions like, “I’ve noticed you seem upset; do you want to talk about it?”, put the power of the conversation with the individual. This isn’t an information-gathering exercise. You’re creating a respectful, caring space for someone to regulate themselves.

Step 3: Provide initial support

You need to tailor your initial support to each individual, depending on the signs of crisis they’re exhibiting. It’s good to have a rehearsed plan for all these avenues:

Know when to escalate

If this is a severe crisis with the individual showing less common, more extreme signs of distress, you need to call for the right professional help straightaway.

For example, if someone is using an implement to hurt themselves and even threaten others, 999 is the first port of call.

Other situations may need immediate HR involvement. This is why having a plan in place is crucial, preferably before you ever have to deal with a mental health crisis in your workplace.

Encourage the person to express their needs

It’s tempting to jump straight into problem-solving mode, but you can’t assume you know the right solution. Instead, activate your listening mode and really give time and space for the individual to say what they really need at that moment.

Offer practical support

If you’re in a position to offer practical help once the person has said what they need, great! Perhaps they’ve had a bereavement and you can immediately offer some time off for them to deal with the arrangements and initial shock.

Signpost to relevant resources

Sometimes the best thing you can do is direct people to experts who can give them the help they need. This might be local support groups, crisis helplines, mental health first aiders, or EAPs.

Step 4: Manage the wider team

If you’ve invested in a full mental health strategy, then it’s likely that your workplace culture is already infused with respectful compassion for individuals in crisis.

As a manager, it’s absolutely crucial to maintain the confidentiality of any employee who confides in you during a mental health crisis. Any critical details must only be shared on a need-to-know basis.

But you also have to provide appropriate communication, if the incident has impacted team dynamics. Those close to the individual will inevitably want to know how they are, out of genuine concern. It’s important to reassure and inform within the professional boundaries of your role.

Step 5: Follow up after the mental health crisis

As part of your mental health crisis management plan, it’s important to have a strategy for following up. It’s useful to include both formal and informal requirements in this, as your organisation will want a consistent approach that doesn't change with the individuals in charge.

Include:

  • Review of workplace policies: Did the response to this incident reveal any gaps in mental health support? Learn the lessons and implement changes quickly, so you're better prepared next time.

  • Reintegration of the individual: How are you managing their return to the workplace? If they had a period of leave, can they have a phased return instead of going straight back into full-time? Was there contact with them during their absence – a ‘get well soon card’ reinforces the ‘health’ aspect and may help reduce feelings of embarrassment.

  • Regular check-ins by management: A simple ‘How are you doing?’, outside of planned reviews, can go a long way.

  • Highlight ongoing well-being practices: Things like workshops, flexible work arrangements, and specific mental health training. What are you doing now? What else might be helpful? Does everyone know about it?

Be well prepared for future mental health crises with Resilient People

Everyone needs to know what to do if there is a mental health crisis – for the individual and the rest of your employees. Resilient People will help you mitigate the risks, and lay the necessary foundation of shared knowledge, to lessen the impact of mental health crises for everyone.

Knowing what to do before an issue occurs will be best for your team and company overall. Here’s how we help:

  • Train managers and staff: Ensure the team knows how to respond to a mental health crisis.
  • Implement mental health first aid training: Equip leaders and mental health first aiders with the right knowledge and practical skills.
  • Strengthen support structures: EAPs, peer support networks, and HR policies that have compassion towards mental ill health at their heart.

Developing a mental health first aid strategy, which includes responding to mental health crises, isn’t solved with a ‘pick and mix’ of courses. We work as your mental health expert, starting by understanding your organisation and leading mental health risk assessments. Then we’re in a position to design the exact mental health support that your people will benefit from the most.

For example, one of our long-term clients is a railway company. To create their mental health strategy, we’ve been able to provide:

  • Emphasis on management training – including it as part of new manager training programs
  • Training a group of wellbeing champions to promote staff wellbeing across the organisation
  • Extensive one-to-one well-being and psychology coaching across the network, minimising the impact of traumatic events and the pressure of high-stakes roles
  • Staff access to our online resource hub.

Because that’s what works for them.

Let’s talk about what you need, to help you handle mental health crises in your workplace.

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5 reasons why you should invest in trauma response training

You’re completely committed to the idea of training employees with what they need to thrive—it's good for them and good for productivity levels. But you still need to make the business case…

Investment in trauma response training has several benefits that go beyond the lessons learned on training days. The collective skills and knowledge of your team improve workplace culture and productivity while decreasing expensive absenteeism, staff turnover and presenteeism.

It’s tricky to draw a straight ROI line between trauma response training and profit margins. But this doesn’t mean you can’t measure and evaluate these different areas of your business as you embed psychological safety throughout.

What is trauma response training and do we really need it?

Trauma has a lasting impact – not just on individuals but on entire teams and workplace culture. When employees experience or witness distressing events, the effects can run through an organisation, affecting morale, performance, and future well-being.

Specifically tailored trauma response training ensures that you’re prepared to support your people in meaningful, practical ways.

This type of training is not about a quick-fix approach or a one-off seminar. It’s about embedding compassion, awareness, and resilience into the fabric of your workplace. A well-trained team can:

  • Communicate openly and confidently about trauma and its effects
  • Recognise the signs of trauma in themselves and their colleagues
  • Use practical strategies to foster a psychologically safe and supportive environment

Do we really need trauma response training?

It’s an understandable question when you’re balancing the benefits of different CPD options within a tight budget.

Trauma response training is essential in any workplace where employees may experience or see distressing events. Our first thoughts often go to high-risk industries, like construction and emergency services, but trauma can affect employees in any sector – including yours.

Whether it stems from a workplace incident, global events, or personal challenges, trauma can have a significant impact on mental well-being, team dynamics, and overall performance.

A workplace that prioritises trauma awareness and response ensures employees feel supported, understood, and equipped to handle difficult situations. By embedding compassion and preparedness into your workplace culture, you create an environment where support is always available when it matters most.

Trauma response training can be transformational for your employees, your management team and your bottom line. So yes, you likely do need trauma training. And here are 5 ways it improves your company…

1. Increased resilience

Being resilient isn’t an inherent character trait – it can be built, with the right training. Increasing the resilience of your employees is beneficial for them as individuals and your business.

Improve resilience in individual employees

Resilience to trauma is vital for individuals because it empowers them to recover more effectively from distressing experiences and maintain their mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

When someone has the tools and capacity to process and adapt to trauma, they are less likely to experience long-term negative impacts such as chronic stress, anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Resilience allows individuals to regain a sense of control and confidence after adversity, helping them to re-establish balance in their personal and professional lives.

It also enhances problem-solving abilities, emotional regulation, and interpersonal relationships, helping individuals approach challenges with greater clarity and composure.

Improve your overall business resilience

Increased resilience in the workplace refers to the ability of employees and teams to adapt, recover, and thrive in the face of challenges, setbacks, or traumatic events.

Resilience doesn’t mean avoiding stress altogether – it’s about building the capacity to navigate difficulties while maintaining productivity, well-being, and collaboration.

A resilient workforce is better equipped to handle sudden changes, such as organisational restructuring, industry disruptions, or unexpected crises.

This resilience fosters a more positive workplace culture, improves employee satisfaction, and enhances overall performance.

2. Better support for affected employees

High-quality trauma response training has several key benefits for affected employees, including:

  • Improved emotional well-being
    Trauma-informed training helps individuals understand and process their emotions, reducing the likelihood of chronic stress, anxiety, or depression.
  • Enhanced coping skills
    Participants gain practical strategies to navigate the aftermath of traumatic experiences, fostering resilience and a sense of control.
  • Reduced stigma
    Trauma training fosters a supportive environment where individuals feel understood and validated, decreasing feelings of isolation or shame associated with trauma.
  • Better relationships
    Trauma-informed approaches promote communication and empathy, enabling individuals to build trust and strengthen personal and professional relationships.
  • Increased confidence and productivity
    By addressing trauma effectively, individuals are empowered to focus on their goals and responsibilities, improving their performance and overall quality of life.

3. Reduce the chance of burnout in both managers and employees

The World Health Organisation defines burnout as “an occupational phenomenon…not classified as a medical condition”. Burnout is the result of chronic workplace stress, with 3 main defining features:

  • Exhaustion
  • Growing negative feelings and emotional distance towards work
  • Decreased efficiency at work

The knowledge and skills learned through trauma response training have a beautiful ripple effect that can help prevent your managers and employees reaching burnout.

They have a deeper understanding of their own emotions, the vocabulary to express their situation confidently, and the knowledge that you will take their workplace mental health concerns seriously—because you’re taking action, not just writing policies.

4. Improve team performance and efficiency

During trauma response training, your people will learn skills that boost their ability to truly work as a team, like:

  • Better communication
    Trauma response training provides teams with a shared language to discuss and address challenges, encouraging clearer and more empathetic communication.
  • Stronger cohesion
    Training builds trust and mutual support, creating a sense of unity and teamwork – whatever’s going on.
  • Reduced conflict
    Understanding trauma responses helps team members approach one another with empathy, minimising the misunderstandings that can end up in workplace conflicts.
  • Improved decision-making
    Teams trained to manage stress and trauma can think more clearly and make better decisions under pressure.
  • Surviving crises
    Trauma-informed teams are better equipped to adapt to unexpected challenges, maintaining productivity and morale during difficult times.
  • Increased engagement and morale
    Employees feel supported and valued in a trauma-informed workplace – higher motivation and job satisfaction are unavoidable!

5. Higher employee retention rates

If your employees feel that you’re actively creating a psychologically safe environment, they’re more likely to be happy at work and not be looking elsewhere. Keeping brilliant employees is great for business…

  • Lower absenteeism and presenteeism
    Addressing trauma effectively ensures employees are mentally and emotionally prepared to contribute fully, improving attendance and focus.
  • Cost savings on recruitment
    Recruiting new employees can be expensive. For instance, using a recruitment agency may cost between 10% to 30% of the new hire's first-year salary. For a £30,000 salary, this equates to £3,000 to £9,000 in agency fees alone.
  • Reduced training time and expenses
    Onboarding and training new staff require significant investment – of manager’s time and money.
  • Enhanced productivity
    Experienced employees are typically more efficient and require less supervision, leading to higher overall productivity. This efficiency contributes to the organisation's success and profitability.

Implementing trauma response training with the right partner

At Resilient People, we want to help you establish a trauma-informed strategy that’s specifically designed for the people of your organisation. Cookie-cutter training isn’t enough to create the psychological safety net necessary to include everyone in your workforce.

We offer a variety of support and continued consultations after the initial trauma response training – so that you’re able to adapt to any future traumatic events as a team.

As your expert partner, we’ll help you make the most of your investment by ensuring that you have all the tools you need to create a psychologically safe workplace environment – during the training sessions and beyond.

Give us a call and we’ll figure out what’s best for your team.

Everything you need to know about our mental health first aid training

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How trauma response training can transform workplace culture

Thankfully, workplaces today are beginning to recognise the profound impact trauma can have on employees' well-being and productivity. Now that this is more commonly recognised, more companies are also taking steps to proactively address trauma.

This article explores how trauma response training can help you create a supportive, resilient culture where your team feels safe, valued, and empowered to thrive—no matter what.

TW: There are references to events that cause trauma and statistics referencing accident rates. Please take a moment to consider if this is the best time for you to read this information before you continue.

What is trauma response training?

Effective trauma response training in the workplace is essential – and it goes far beyond a quick, surface-level toolbox talk.

True trauma-informed training is delivered by experts, customised to meet the needs of your team, and makes a real impact on your workplace culture.

High-quality trauma-informed training takes the power of compassion and weaves it through your workplace to create a strong, psychologically safe environment. Your entire team learns the tools to support one another during and after traumatic events by creating:

  • A shared language to discuss hugely difficult experiences and emotions
  • Real understanding of the causes, signs and effects of trauma
  • Actionable strategies to create a more resilient and supportive work culture

During your search for trauma training, you’ll find different types of training programmes, ranging from:

Of these options, TRIM is by far the most comprehensive – and it’s what we recommend to workplaces wanting to be equipped to deal with potential employee trauma.

TRIM is a 2-day training programme designed to establish a peer-to-peer support system. There’s also a third day for managers to develop their abilities to lead trauma support with a wider lens.

TRIM training focuses on building empathy, understanding the psychological and physiological effects of trauma, and learning best practices for creating a safe and supportive environment.

Participants are taught how to handle situations with sensitivity, minimise re-traumatisation, and provide appropriate resources for further support.

When is trauma response training required? (with industry examples)

Trauma response training is essential in any workplace where employees are likely to encounter, witness, or experience distressing situations.

While it might seem most relevant to industries like healthcare or emergency services, the reality is that trauma can affect workers in virtually any field.

Whether triggered by a workplace incident, societal crises, or personal experiences, trauma impacts well-being and performance. If your workplace culture is infused with compassion and trained in trauma response, you’re always ready with vital support at the right time. For example…

Example: How trauma response training benefits the healthcare sector

Professionals in the NHS face emotionally charged situations every day – dealing with patient deaths, medical emergencies, or aggressive behaviour.

In such high-stakes environments, trauma response training helps staff manage their own emotional health while supporting colleagues through shared challenges.

A nurse who experiences verbal abuse during a shift, for instance, may need immediate peer support as well as a safe space to process the incident. Trauma response training makes sure these mechanisms are in place.

Example: How trauma response training benefits office-based employees

Even in office settings, trauma response training is valuable. Companies navigating collective challenges like layoffs, the sudden death of a colleague, or global crises benefit from a workforce prepared to offer mutual support.

For example, after a workplace accident, having employees trained in trauma response ensures those directly or indirectly affected receive the understanding and care they need.

Example: How trauma response training benefits the housing sector

It’s easy to overlook the staff that support service users in difficult circumstances to access housing. But they’re often faced with experiences that may be traumatising, like clients with illnesses or addiction.

Having comprehensive TRIM scaffolding in place means that everyone knows their regular exposure to traumatising situations is expected, acknowledged and planned for by the leaders of the housing association.

Example: How trauma response training benefits the construction industry

The construction sector in the UK is notably perilous, with a fatal injury rate 4.2 times higher than the average across all industries.

In the 2022-23 period, there were 45 fatal injuries to construction workers, with falls from height accounting for 51% of these fatalities. Additionally, between 2020 and 2023, there were 53,000 non-fatal injuries, 28% of which required more than seven days off work.

These incidents not only result in physical harm but can also cause significant psychological distress to the injured and their colleagues.

Implementing trauma response training can equip workers with the skills to support themselves and each other following such events, fostering a safer and more supportive work environment.

Example: How trauma response training benefits the railway industry

Railway employees are often exposed to traumatic incidents, including accidents and fatalities involving passengers or trespassers.

A survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that 41% of rail employees had experienced a traumatic event, with 74% of these incidents being work-related. 10% of all participants reported symptoms consistent with clinical post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a rate over double that found in the general population.

These statistics underscore the necessity for trauma response training to help employees manage their mental health and maintain operational safety in such a dangerous work environment.

Example: How trauma response training benefits the engineering sector

While specific statistics on trauma in the engineering sector are less readily available, the industry shares similarities with construction and railways regarding exposure to hazardous environments and high-risk activities.

Employees may witness or be involved in serious accidents, equipment failures, or other critical incidents that can lead to psychological trauma. Proactively providing trauma response training in engineering can prepare employees to handle such situations effectively and reduce the long-term impact of traumatic events.

Incorporating comprehensive trauma response training in these high-risk industries is not merely a regulatory compliance measure but a crucial investment in the well-being and productivity of the workforce.

By fostering a trauma-informed workplace, all employers can mitigate the adverse effects of traumatic incidents and support their employees' mental health.

Use Resilient People for TRiM training to improve your culture

Investing in resilience through initiatives like trauma response training is critical for ensuring that individuals and teams remain strong and effective, even in demanding circumstances.
At Resilient People, we don’t just present you with a list of courses you can buy. We want to become your long-term mental health training partner, to make sure you have exactly what you need to create a psychologically safe environment in your specific organisation.

What does this look like? Well, that depends on what you tell us, but it can include:

  • Guidance on how many people should become TRIM practitioners
  • A TRIM framework to scaffold support through your organisation
  • Help creating policies to document your trauma response practice
  • Annual refresher training
  • Online and physical resources
  • Consultancy for managers dealing with complex incidents

You don’t have to know exactly what you need at the start – we’ll discuss it together. Let’s talk about the best trauma response training for your people.

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How to address concerns about a colleague’s mental health

As a manager, you’ll need to talk to an employee about concerns around their mental health at some point. Perhaps you’ve already been there. It’s not a comfortable position for anyone.

You know the person’s potentially vulnerable, you know you’re not a mental health professional, and you don’t want to say the wrong thing or make anything worse. But you have a duty of care that’s a heavy responsibility.

Here, we’ve listed some of the warning signs of poor mental health and a general guide to having that initial conversation in a considerate but useful way.

Recognising warning signs of poor mental health

If you notice that someone isn’t how they usually are at work, it’s a good idea to trust your instincts and tune in a bit further. Physical, emotional or behavioural changes can be the early warning signs of a decline in mental health.

By spotting a possible issue and acting promptly, you can help that individual get the right support before their mental health deteriorates any further. It’s crucial to remember that different people can show different symptoms for the same mental health issue.

Common early warning signs include:

Behavioural changes

Changes to behaviour at work include things like:

  • Someone who’s never late has a problem with punctuality
  • An individual’s engagement with their work, and subsequent performance, is dropping off
  • Someone who’s usually enthusiastic develops an air of resignation or apathy
  • A usually social person withdraws from team activities, social events, or everyday social interactions (for example, choosing to eat lunch alone)
  • Irritability, anger, or even aggression towards colleagues
  • Different work patterns, like leaving early, arriving late and taking extended breaks
  • And the opposite – working extra hours than normal
  • Taking more risks than usual
  • Over-reacting to problems they would previously have managed fine

Physical symptoms

Physical symptoms of mental ill health can be quicker to spot and may include:

  • Change to appearance by neglecting personal grooming
  • Appetite and weight fluctuations, or digestive troubles that may necessitate more frequent toilet breaks
  • Fatigue – beyond usual tiredness
  • Joint and back pain, or more frequent illnesses
  • Visible signs of tension, like trembling
  • Nervous, strained speaking voice

Psychological indicators

These psychological factors are often those that people are best at masking. No one wants to feel out of control of their emotional state, especially at work. So these signs may be more obvious indicators:

  • Mood changes
  • Tearfulness and other signs of sadness
  • Loss of humour during usual daily interactions, which often goes hand-in-hand with increased sensitivity
  • Expressions of hopelessness and a distinct lack of motivation
  • Being indecisive, confused and/or distracted by usual work expectations

These signs can be picked up from verbal or non-verbal cues that will be unique to the individual.

Decline in work quality

As a manager, it’s most likely that a dip in work performance will initially cause concern. This might look like:

  • Someone struggling to take in or remember information
  • Lack of ability to focus on the task at hand
  • Standard of work slips
  • Missed deadlines, or taking it right to the wire

Mental health issues can be caused by an ongoing medical condition, grow incrementally over time, or occur suddenly due to a life event.

It can be difficult to see the signs, regardless of the cause. This is partly because social stigma makes people reluctant to discuss their mental health and partly because individuals all present different combinations of indicators.

Approaching the individual to address your mental health concerns

So, you have concerns about an employee. What do you do now?

You know you have a legal duty of care to fulfil and the HSE guidance states: “As soon as you notice that an employee is having difficulties, talk to them – early action can prevent them becoming more unwell…Managers should concentrate on making reasonable adjustments at work, rather than understanding the diagnosis.”

Even when you fully agree with all of this, it doesn't help you broach this delicate subject or keep a very personal conversation professional.

Dr Nicole Lipkin describes the difficulty of the situation for both sides: “It can be extremely isolating to be at work while privately dealing with a mental health issue, afraid of being found out, but desperately wanting support. By the same token, it can be uncomfortable, awkward and confusing trying to navigate how to help or support someone who is struggling, even if every molecule in our body wants to help.”

Does this ring true for you? You’re not alone. Here is some practical advice to use as a starting point for raising your concerns.

1. Privacy

Make sure you have conversations about any kind of health issues in a private space. This might be in your office, if it’s not an open-plan design. Or the person you want to talk to may prefer to be somewhere other than their workplace to express their difficulties. This might mean visiting a local cafe or going for a walk.

It’s more likely that people feel they can share their honesty if they’re comfortable. Explain you won’t share their private information with anyone unless they give their permission. They may actually want you to tell particular people for them because they’re finding it hard to communicate.

At this point, it’s crucial to point out any parts of your Health and Safety policy that state when you won’t keep information confidential.

For example, ‘I’m not going to tell everyone what we discuss. But if I feel that you’re not safe, I may have to tell specific people.’ This means that you can maintain trust, even if you have to inform medical professionals or other staff members, because you’ve been upfront about that possibility.

2. Express concern, not judgement

Social stigma around mental ill health prevents people from seeking help. Particularly when you’re initiating a first conversation, it’s really important to make it clear that you’re coming from a place of concern.

To avoid sounding like you’re judging negative behaviours or performance, start questions with ‘I’, rather than ‘you’ and use open wording. For example:

  • A simple, ‘How are you?’
  • ‘I noticed you seem a bit stressed/angry/down recently, and I just wanted to check in with you.’
  • ‘I spotted that your work was filed late and you’re usually great at meeting deadlines. Is everything alright?’
  • ‘What can I do to help?’
  • ‘What would you like to happen?
  • ‘Have you spoken to anyone else who can support you with this?’ (Like your GP, or other mental health professional?)

3. Be an active listener

The CIPD has a useful ‘conversation checklist’, but in essence, active listening involves several key things:

  • No interruptions from outside the conversation like phone calls, people ‘popping in to ask something’ or pre-arranged meetings
  • Give them the time and patience to explain in their own way
  • Allow the individual to direct the conversation outside your prepared questions
  • Validate their feelings by accepting them as true
  • Lead with calm empathy

This isn’t always easy. But before anything can be solved, the individual needs to feel heard and understood. You need to hold back your need to give advice or develop an action plan – and just listen.

4. Avoid diagnosing or assuming

It’s best to avoid trying to define a possible mental health illness diagnosis. For example, ‘You’re feeling worried all the time. Maybe you’ve got anxiety, so maybe that means you can’t be client-facing any more.

Of course, you’re considering how you can make reasonable adjustments to their work if necessary. But assuming a particular condition and speculating about how it impacts their job will only make people feel insecure about sharing their mental health challenges again.

5. Hold boundaries

The very nature of the causes and symptoms of mental health issues is personal. Your role is to be supportive – but you also need to maintain professional boundaries.

If an individual is upset in the moment or at a crisis point, they may be asking you for the kind of help that’s way out of your remit. Of course, human instinct is to try and help, but in the workplace, this needs to be within your policies and structures.

For example, you can arrange for them to have weekly time off to see a mental health professional. You can’t be that counsellor, therapist or psychiatrist.

And it’s OK to say that you’re going to help them find the right person to help them with the situation because that’s not you. Not because you don’t want to help, but because you’re not qualified.

Providing mental health resources and support as a manager

One of the most useful ways to support someone with mental health issues is to help them find the right resources. Often, just locating the right support is a step too far for people already exhausted by their current state of mind.

Suggest resources

There are all types of resources available to help with mental health issues. The first point of call should be a GP’s appointment because that’s the gateway to a variety of NHS experts that they might not be able to access otherwise. Then you can suggest things like:

  • Local or online counselling services
  • Mental health hotlines
  • Wellness apps, that often focus on one area, like sleep disruption
  • Employee assistance programmes within your organisation
  • Occupational health
  • Educational online courses that offer self-paced learning about different mental health and wellness issues

Offer practical support for their role

This is all context-specific, but perhaps you can do things like:

  • Adjust their workload
  • Push deadlines
  • Remove some responsibilities associated with their role
  • Flexible timetable - maybe with some working from home
  • Arrange time off, so they can do some initial recovery
  • Have a phased return-to-work plan

These kinds of arrangements needn’t be a permanent change to their work life. But a temporary supportive structure while they recalibrate their mental health.

Create an open, supportive culture

Creating a supportive work environment is more complex than it seems. It’s shaped by the diverse personalities and perspectives of each employee. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to define and foster a truly supportive culture.

Ideally, all staff trust that being vulnerable enough to seek help is expected, encouraged, and not detrimental to their career. They also need to believe their private mental health information is treated with full confidentiality and won’t become the next gossip topic in the break room.

Part of creating a supportive work culture is having carefully worded policies in place that deal with mental health issues and the procedures managers should follow. It’s also crucial that if individuals feel victimised because of their mental health issues, that action is swift, fair and decisive.

Follow up

Make sure you check back in with any employee who’s shared any mental health issues with you. Nothing intrusive, just a conversation about how they’re feeling and how the support is working for them.

This keeps communication open and strengthens your connection with them. It also means that you can adapt their role with any practical changes needed.

Get specialist mental health training to further support your team

In 2022, an ERC insight paper called ‘Line managers: The emotional labour of managing workplace mental health issues’ came to some interesting conclusions.

  • “...for some managers, dealing with workplace mental health is a significant emotional burden”
  • “...managers feel the weight of expectation to manage those with mental health issues in an appropriate and professional way, but that they also experience anxiety and unhappiness because they feel unprepared and unsupported”
  • “Employers are often over-reliant on these individuals to manage workplace mental health issues, and the study suggests that they should recognise the potential emotional toll it can have. This is an important first step in the development of resources (e.g., training and counselling) to help and support these individuals.”

Who’s looking after the managers in your organisation? Listening to and supporting employees through mental health issues requires emotional energy. But your managers also need specific training to do this part of their job successfully.

Getting an expert partner on board helps take the strain off your managers and build their knowledge, skills and confidence. We offer a holistic approach, so you can get the right training for your managers, well-being champions, and the entire staff.

Contact us to talk about how we can help support all your employees – including managers.

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What to do if your employee is experiencing burnout

Even though burnout is a common experience for many people, it’s only recently been defined as a concept. This is great news because it removes its misdiagnoses as anxiety, depression, and mental health breakdowns.

For you as a manager, burnout should be easier to discuss compared to other mental health issues because it’s less stigmatised.

Let’s get into what burnout means, the signs employees might be suffering burnout, and how to provide effective support.

What is ‘burnout’?

The World Health Organisation defines burnout as “an occupational phenomenon…not classified as a medical condition”.

Burnout is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been managed successfully. It is characterised by three things:

  1. Feelings of exhaustion
  2. An increased mental distance and negativity towards work
  3. Reduced professional efficacy

Burnout is often confused with mental illnesses like anxiety and depression because they may cause similar feelings and symptoms. However, burnout is specifically related to the workplace and is not considered a mental illness.

In contrast, depression and anxiety have varying causes, pervade all areas of life, and need professional treatment. It’s worth bearing in mind that individuals can be suffering from burnout and mental illness simultaneously.

Look for these common signs of burnout in employees

Employees may exhibit some or all of these common signs of burnout. It’s important for you to be aware of these signs, so you can recognise when employees need support.

Decreased productivity

The usual level of performance takes a nosedive, with employees struggling to complete previously manageable tasks and meet deadlines.

Chronic fatigue

Constant tiredness is a hallmark sign of burnout. Even after a full night’s sleep, someone suffering from burnout is always tired. To you, this may come across as sluggish energy or disinterest in their work.

Emotional detachment

Another telltale sign of burnout is a withdrawal from the social aspects of work. Employees may be less willing to involve themselves in conversations with colleagues, are increasingly reserved in teamwork activities and simply don’t attend work social events.

This is because burnout can result in feelings of emotional detachment from all areas of work, even from people they’ve been close to.

Irritability and mood swings

When you know people well, it’s easy to pick up on when their moods are substantially different to their usual demeanour. People with burnout often exhibit frequent mood changes, are more easily frustrated, or are unusually short-tempered.

Decreased creativity and problem-solving ability

Burnout hampers both decision-making and creative thinking. Look out for employees who are struggling to apply their usual creativity and make a decision on work problems.

Increased absenteeism

Watch out for more frequent sick days, especially if it becomes a recognisable pattern. People with burnout often hope a short break will make things better and take time off in an attempt to ‘sort themselves out’.

Physical Symptoms

Our bodies and minds are one whole unit of being. Many people are surprised to learn that burnout can have physical symptoms like headaches, gastrointestinal issues, increased susceptibility to germs because of a weakened immune system, and the consequences of sleep deprivation.

Pay attention to staff that mention assorted ailments that increase in volume over a period of time. Physical and mental health are inextricably linked, so we need to consider employees holistically.

Lack of motivation

It’s likely that you’ll see employees lose their previous enthusiasm for work, possibly to the point where the motivation for even the most routine tasks disappears. This symptom can be misinterpreted as laziness and care needs to be taken to discuss it with compassion. Burnt-out employees are not deliberately trying to shirk their work onto someone else.

Cynicism or negative attitude

Someone who’s burnt out may express this through a generally negative attitude or cynical comments towards their specific job, their colleagues, management, or the organisation as a whole.

Feelings of inadequacy

Burnt-out employees may lose self-confidence in their work and abilities. They can continually feel that, regardless of the amount of effort they put in, they’re not achieving anything worthwhile.

How to support burnt-out employees as a manager

As a manager, your response to burnt-out employees needs to operate on two levels:

1. Immediate actions against burnout

If burnout triggers an incident at work, you need to be able to provide immediate support.

For example, an employee abandons their work and comes to you to express their difficulties. What are you going to do and say in the moment? It’s important to think this through and discuss it with senior leaders, hopefully, before it ever happens.

Consider what this person needs from you in this vulnerable position of exposing their difficulties. Firstly, they need to feel heard by someone who’s not sitting in judgement.

Secondly, they need reassurance that they don’t have to tackle this workplace burnout alone. That you’ll help them and there’s a range of support available.

2. Long-term actions against burnout

That initial interaction is important. And help like ‘take the rest of the week off’ is most likely welcome, but it’s not the whole answer employees with burnout need. It’s like using a plaster to cover a wound that needs stitches. It covers things up, but it's not going to heal properly.

Organisations are increasingly looking at the range of support they can offer employees who suffer from burnout. If you recognise the signs of burnout in an employee, it’s time to think about and discuss what you can do together to dig out the root causes for that individual.

This includes things like:

Encourage open communication

Actively create a safe environment where employees like them can discuss their stress levels, workload and concerns – without fear of negative consequences. They need to know they can discuss feelings of burnout in the workplace with the people who can help change things for the better.

Promote work-life balance

Take notice of how much work-life balance your employees achieve and:

  • Enforce taking breaks
  • Ensure all vacation days are booked and taken
  • Don’t pile on additional work, if the expected workload has been achieved. This behaviour from management leads to overworking and the uncertainty of ever-changing parameters.

If you don’t step in when their work-life balance is off-kilter, it’s a tacit agreement that work should be prioritised over all else.

For example, if you see someone consistently working late, ask them why. Tackle the issues that make them feel they can’t leave things until the next day. Maybe offer help to prioritise their tasks.

This demonstrates to staff that you don’t expect them to behave this way – that you’d prefer them to have a healthy balance.

Offer flexibility

As much as possible, offer flexible working hours or remote work options. Of course, this isn’t possible for lots of businesses, simply because of how they operate. But sometimes just flexible start and finish times to the working day can make a huge difference to your employees.

For example, reducing stress for those doing the school run by saving them money on breakfast and after-school clubs, and decreasing the rising tension of ‘getting there on time’ during the daily commute.

Showing empathy and giving a practical solution in this way helps bring stress levels down and helps prevent burnout. Really the question should be, ‘Is there any reason not to offer flexible or remote working?’

Redistribute workloads

Keep an eye on how workloads are distributed across and within teams. Be particularly vigilant for individuals who are taking on too much. Tasks need to be delegated fairly and with realistic expectations of outcomes.

If workloads are consistently too much for the number of employees, either reduce the workload or take on more staff.

Set clear expectations

You can’t know you're being successful at work if you’re not sure what you’re aiming at. Make sure employees are crystal clear on their roles, responsibilities and the outcomes you expect from them. Clarify priorities within their task list. This helps them understand where to direct their focus, especially if things get overly busy.

Provide resources for stress management

It’s a great idea to include a resources section within your Mental Health Policy. Some companies provide internal support, like:

  • Counselling services
  • Wellness programme
  • Stress management workshops
  • Meditation classes
  • Gym memberships

It’s also a good idea to include external sources of support that are available, that you don’t pay for. Things like: wellness apps, online learning, local classes, and numbers for various helplines that tackle specific issues.

Different people have different ways of managing stress. So it makes sense to curate the broadest range of available resources possible. That way all employees will find something useful.

Encourage professional development

Do your employees often stay in the same role, doing the same job for long periods of time? Some people are totally happy with that position. Others begin to feel like they’re stagnating, which is often the start of burnout.

To make sure everyone has a sense of purpose and feels like they’re growing at work, facilitate professional development. Training and mentorship are obvious options, but also ask them if they’ve seen anything they’d like to pursue that you can help make happen.

Foster a positive work culture

No, this isn’t as easy as it sounds, we know. But the culture of an organisation starts at the top. Promoting a positive work culture means you:

  • Celebrate achievements
  • Thank people for their effort, as well as their work product
  • Value people’s individual skills and personalities by openly acknowledging their ‘soft skills’ contributions
  • Always use respectful language and appropriate tones of voice
  • Collaborate with other colleagues and recognise the part teamwork plays in the organisation's successes

You are the example to everyone else in your organisation. If you regularly do these things, others will take your lead and you’re more likely to create a positive work environment that keeps workplace stress and burnout at bay.

Lead by example

One way to bolster honest communication is to talk about your struggles with work-life balance, previous colleagues, clients, your mental health, or recurring physical health issues. You also need to model healthy work habits, like taking breaks and leaving at a reasonable time.

This is not the time for ‘do as I say, not as I do.’ Show the importance of balance by sticking to the same rules as everyone else, maintaining your own boundaries, and truly leading by example. If you’re leaving when you said you would, it’s OK for them to leave at the appointed time, too.

Provide time for recovery

Have a recovery plan specifically for burnout. Encourage the individual to recharge during some time off, then perhaps have a staggered return.

This might look like part-time hours for the first couple of weeks before they go back to full-time hours. Or perhaps they return to full-time hours, but you adjust their workload to avoid instant overwhelm.

Regularly check-in

Make sure you regularly check in with employees who have returned after being burnt out. Things rarely resolve immediately, overnight. Keep the dialogue open and make any necessary changes for long-term support.

Professional burnout and mental health training for employees

You’re not on your own. Managers everywhere are implementing strategies to prevent burnout and support systems for employees who are suffering from the syndrome.

Resilient People can help with various training packages and continued support that’s specific to your organisation's needs.

These are just some of the options you can choose from:

  • Aware: Half a day, for all staff, to raise awareness of mental health issues in the workplace
  • Thrive: Half a day, for all staff, equip everyone with the knowledge to spot the signs of potential mental health problems and know what steps to take
  • Respond: Full day, for managers and team leaders, delivers a foundation of mental health, psychology and well-being knowledge for you to take back and apply in a holistic approach to mental health in the workplace.
  • Mental Health First Aid: 2 days, accredited, trains designated people to be mental health first aiders
  • Trauma Risk Management: 2 different courses, 1 for practitioners that lasts 2 days. 1 for managers that takes 3 days. Specific training on how to deal with trauma in the workplace.

Give us a call today and we’ll figure out what’s best for your team.

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How to carry out a mental health risk assessment for employees

It’s a given that taking care of people’s physical health is an important part of making sure employees realise their full potential and companies thrive, yet many businesses are still unaware of how to carry out a mental health risk assessment.

And while most organisations are on their way to accepting that mental health is just as crucial, there's a big difference between being committed to the idea of mental health support and actually putting it into practice.

That’s where a mental health risk assessment comes into play to boost your business through happier, healthier employees. It gives you an opportunity to support, understand, and make reasonable adjustments to people who are dealing with mental ill health.

In this blog post, we go into how you can identify potential mental health risks, evaluate their impact, and how you can implement measures to mitigate these risks in your workplace such as Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training.

What is a mental health risk assessment and why is it important?

A mental health risk assessment is your internal procedure to identify, evaluate, and address risks to the mental health of the people in your organisation.

The prospect of defining your organisation’s mental health risk assessment can be somewhat daunting. There are several legal obligations to meet and the issues themselves are of a delicate, personal nature.

But this can be an incredibly positive experience because, at its very core, you’re finding the best way to look after your employees.

It’s not just individual employees who benefit from robust mental health risk assessments and supporting policies. Healthier staff usually means a healthier bottom line too!

Benefits to your business include:

  • Less sickness absenteeism
  • Reduced staff turnover
  • Increased productivity

Step 1: Identify potential mental health risks for your employees

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) Management Standards is a framework designed to help employers gauge their mental health risk system against a ‘good practice’ example.

It divides the experience of work into 6 key areas that are connected to:

  • Increased absences due to sickness
  • Higher accident rates
  • Lower productivity
  • Poor health

It’s your good management of these 6 areas that make sure your workers have the opposite experience.

What are the HSE 6 key areas of work design?

1. Demands

When employees have high-pressure roles with big demands, it can cause a strain on their mental health. People feel like they are constantly failing and under pressure if they’re overloaded with too much, or the wrong type of, work.

When you properly manage employee demands, they feel that they can cope with the workload, work patterns and work environment of their job.

How to ensure demands are not causing poor mental health:

  • Ensure employees understand what they have to do and how to do it
  • Regularly assess if the demands and deadlines of the work are achievable
  • Update training as required
  • Match your staff’s abilities and skills to the requirements of each role
  • Evaluate the idea of flexible working hours as a way to manage demand on employees

2. Control

If people lose autonomy and control over their work, they become disengaged and less productive – especially if there’s no obvious way to grow and advance.

You should avoid micromanaging and ensure that employees feel they have a say in how they do their work.

How to give employees adequate control:

  • Involve employees in decisions about work patterns, breaks, and workloads
  • Encourage employees to use their existing skills and take initiative, and to learn and apply new skills that put them in the position to advance to more complex jobs

3. Support

If employees feel that they have no one to talk to about workplace issues, they can’t see any resolution to those problems. This lack of support likely leads to an increase in sickness absence, as people can no longer tolerate a situation they see no way out of.

Instead, you want employees to feel that they get the right level of information and support from both their immediate colleagues and senior leaders.

How to offer the right support:

  • Your organisation has policies, procedures, and systems in place to support employees – particularly in terms of what support is available and how to access it
  • Your management team have clear systems to support their teams
  • Your employees know how they can look after each other
  • Regular formal and informal feedback helps to identify any resources employees may need to do their job to their best

4. Relationships

Anything relating to poor relationships is a high cause of workplace stress. Discipline issues, frequent grievances between staff and bullying exist when there hasn’t been enough investment in building a positive working environment.

To create a good workplace culture with healthy relationships, you need all colleagues and managers to act professionally and shut down unacceptable behaviour immediately.

How to maintain good workplace relationships:

  • Zero tolerance of any bullying or harassment behaviours in your organisation
  • Active promotion of positive workplace behaviours to promote fairness and cooperation
  • Clear systems for reporting and dealing with unacceptable behaviour, for employees and managers

5. Role

People feel nervous and anxious about their job if you don’t set clear expectations about their role. Everyone in your organisation needs to understand their role and responsibilities and be kept in the loop if anything changes.

How to set clear employee roles:

  • Make sure every role has a clear set of requirements and responsibilities: job description, induction checklist, and new employee job specification statements
  • Make it clear who employees should go to if they have questions about their roles and responsibilities
  • Explain how each role fits into the success of the wider organisation
  • Update your team if any roles change and how it impacts them

6. Change

Any changes at work can be incredibly stressful for employees, particularly if there’s a risk to their job security. The worry of uncertainty in the organisation’s future reduces people’s ability to focus on their work.

You want employees to feel that they’re kept in the loop during times of change, though regular, clear communication.

How to positively approach change:

  • Explain the reasons behind changes to employees, ideally with time to process what they mean for them
  • Consult with staff about prospective changes to get their ideas and so they feel invested in the new thing, rather than just someone that has to deal with the fallout
  • Give clear timetables for when any changes are becoming reality and support for any job changes this causes.

A key factor for all these 6 areas is that there’s a well-understood system in place to hear and address employees' concerns with any of these issues.

Being listened to and seeing action taken around individual issues is essential to mitigating workplace stress.

How to measure mental health risks at work

These 6 factors – and any other elements that are important in your organisation – can be measured in a number of ways, such as:

  • Questionnaires and surveys
  • Focus groups
  • Observations
  • 1:1 interviews
  • Reviewing employee records – employee turnover rates, exit interviews, and absenteeism rates

Using the data insights from both qualitative and quantitative research is a powerful way to get an accurate picture of your organisation's current risks to good mental health.

Step 2: Evaluate the impact of those identified risks

Let’s be honest, you were probably muttering ‘Yes, we already do that’ as you read through that list!

Of course, you’re already taking care of your employees’ mental health and making sure you’ve reduced the level of workplace stress for as many people as possible...

But even when you already know the inner workings of your organisation, using the HSE framework gives you a panoramic perspective on your employees’ experience and spot any workplace risks to employee mental health.

You can now evaluate the impact of those risks and put control measures in place to reduce or remove them.

Assessing severity and likelihood

You need to consider the likelihood of each risk happening and your proposed controls.

It’s easier to see the big picture by using a table, grid or other visual framework to map out your risk matrix for mental health. You’ve probably already got something similar for physical risk assessments.

However you decide to present it, your mental health risk matrix has all the key information in one place, including:

  • Risk: All the risks to employees mental health
  • Impact: Their impact on individuals, other staff, and the organisation, if they occur
  • Likelihood: What are the chances of them actually happening?
  • Controls: What you put in place to mitigate or eradicate the risk

Prioritising risks

It makes sense to focus resources and attention on the highest-impact risks that either affect the highest number of employees or have the most severe consequences.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t recognise the importance of other risks, but it indicates where to start as you tackle the risks to employee mental health you have identified.

Legal compliance considerations

Legal compliance underpins all your policies, and mental health is no exception. Just as with physical health, you have a legal responsibility to help employees with mental health. This applies whether work is causing workplace stress or exacerbating an existing mental illness.

It’s also your responsibility as an employer to minimise the risk of work related stress by identifying any risks and mitigating them as much as possible.

The current UK laws relevant to your management of your employees’ mental health at work are:

Step 3: Implement measures to mitigate mental health risks

Risk assessments are one thing, but it’s action that makes the real difference. You’ve moved through a lot of important steps already:

  • A full mental health risk assessment to identify areas of risk in your organisation
  • Considering the impact of each identified risk
  • Evaluating the likelihood and severity of each identified risk
  • Prioritising the order in which to tackle the risks

Now you’re at the action plan stage. You need to plan what you’re going to do, who’s responsible for this action point, and the timeline for getting things done. This needs to be clearly articulated for each of the risks you identified during your mental health risk assessment.

Organisations often invest in professional training to support whole staff mental health awareness development. Sometimes issues can be resolved with simple adjustments to work patterns or communications.

Mental Health First Aid Training

At Resilient People, one of our core services is delivering Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) training – an internationally recognised 2-day course.

It’s a great way to kick off education around mental health awareness, spotting signs and symptoms of mental ill health, and workplace stress management techniques.

Mental Health Policy Development

It’s important that your documentation is fully interconnected. This means using the information from your risk assessments to inform your DEI policy, bullying and harassment policy, and any other policies where you see relevance – not just creating or updating a specific Mental Health policy.

You need to make sure your policies don’t just sit in a Health and Safety folder until something goes wrong.

Your mental health policy needs to be a working document that people in your organisation understand and feel they can contribute to.

Just like your policies for physical health and safety, when things change – either within your organisation or externally – update the policy accordingly.

Employee support services

Many organisations include employee support services that offer professional support for good mental health. For example:

  • Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs): Providing access to counselling and mental health resources. This might be simply signposting all the locally available support there is and curating it in one place for your employees to easily access. Other organisations may be able to invest in actual on-site, or paid-for counselling services for their staff.
  • Wellness Programs: Promoting physical health activities that can improve mental well-being. This might look like free yoga classes at the end of the working day, or subsidised membership to the local gym. Again, even just doing the ‘finding out’ and putting all the available local activities into one list is positive input from an employer.

Workload management

Workload management can be tricky because it can be quite nuanced. But it’s essential to hear how your staff are feeling about their workload, and type of work, in order to avoid burnout and eventual resignation.

Even slight adjustments, like flexible start and finish times, can make all the difference to productivity and good staff mental health.

Improve employee communication and involvement

Honest communication is at the heart of understanding your employees. You need to know:

  • What will help them avoid workplace stress?
  • How you can support them in times of mental ill health?

These are difficult things to talk about, so trust needs to be built by regular check-ins and employees being involved in developing solutions. They need to know that you will listen empathically, maintain confidentiality, and together find practical and effective ways forward.

Regularly review your mental health risk assessments

A mental health risk assessment isn’t a ‘one and done’ thing. Like any other risk assessment, time for review and adjustment needs to be put in the diary.

Situations change, people experience unexpected trauma or mental ill health, work environments need to adapt to a new challenge, so ongoing mental health risk assessments need to incorporate all those things.

Whatever review structure you already have in place for other areas of your business are likely to be helpful with this. Figure out how you’re going to measure the success of your risk management measures, how you’re going to get feedback from employees, and embed the expectation that this will be reassessed on an ongoing basis.

Take a proactive approach to mental health risk assessments

As managers, you have a brilliant opportunity to add another layer of protection for your staff through your mental health risk assessment process. It will become another reason why your people love working in your organisation.

Hopefully, this has helped you envisage a framework to build out your mental health risk assessments. Resilient People are here to back up your bold leadership with expert training and support – for you and your employees.

Let’s have a chat about how we can help you support good mental health in your organisation.

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Trauma-informed workplace training to support your employees

Your interest in trauma-informed workplace training is to be commended. It’s not an easy topic for anyone to discuss, much less lead. But expert support is there to help you and your staff navigate this serious and sensitive subject matter.

In this article we’ll take you through:

  • Advanced trauma support training options
  • UK government’s 6 core principles of trauma-informed care
  • Impact of leadership on trauma response in employees
  • Integrating trauma-informed practices into daily working life

The importance of trauma-informed training in the workplace

Training to deal with trauma in the workplace is crucial. And not just a quick half an hour’s toolbox training. Real trauma-informed training, delivered by experts and tailored specifically to your employees’ needs in your work environment.

The central concept is to put compassion at the heart of people’s workplace experience. It’s not something just the senior management can do, or the appointed ‘mental health ambassador’.

Good trauma-informed training gives everyone the tools they need to support each other during and after a traumatic event: a shared language, proper understanding, and practical strategies.

Trauma-informed training helps employees to:

Spot signs of trauma

Trauma-informed training is not a medical or professional counselling or therapist qualification. But it does mean that everyone has a heightened awareness of what reactions to traumatic incidents might look like.

Discussing what trauma is and the signs they, or others, may exhibit after a traumatic event is the foundation. Recognising that how you feel is the result of a traumatic event is the first step to dealing with it.

And sometimes we don’t see these changes in ourselves. We need those around us to gently point it out if they think we’re acting differently and maybe there’s a reason beyond ‘just being a bit tired’.

Support others through traumatic experiences

Trauma-informed training is another way to create an empathetic workplace where there’s an understanding of how to appropriately respond to traumatic workplace events.

It’s one way for leaders to make sure that judgement of trauma-induced behaviours won’t be tolerated. There’s no, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ derogatory attitude. But instead, ‘What happened to you? How do you feel and how can I help?’ This reduces the stigma that can surround asking for help with mental ill health.

It’s difficult to broach personal subjects involving emotional reactions to horrible things. Professional training embeds the confidence that you won’t be too clumsy, or say the wrong thing, or make it worse. It helps leaders and employees to know what to say and how to say it – even in the worst-case scenarios.

The earlier distress is recognised, the quicker support can be given and, hopefully, prevent the more extreme reactions to trauma mentioned above.

Do no harm

A workplace with a working understanding of trauma will avoid feelings of institutional betrayal and prevent unintentional re-traumatisation of workers who have experienced a traumatic workplace event.

Trauma-informed training is being proactive about your people’s psychological safety.

Advanced trauma support training options

There are different types of trauma-informed training programmes available to organisations, such as:

  • Online courses
  • One-off workshops
  • Expert-led, in-person sessions
  • Mental-health first aid training
  • Trauma Risk Management course (TRIM) – for practitioners and managers

TRIM is a recognised training programme that’s designed to create a peer-led system of support for traumatic events.

We offer a 2-day course for TRIM practitioners that gives you the tools to support your colleagues. And a third day to develop management capabilities to monitor and take a wider view of how to handle traumatic events in the workplace.

Core principles of trauma-informed care

It’s crucial to select the right course for your work environment and employees. They should all be grounded in the 6 core principles of trauma-informed care, as defined by the UK Government:

1. Safety: There are policies, practices, and safeguarding arrangements in place to protect physical, psychological, and emotional safety.

2. Trustworthiness: Trust is built through the transparency of everyone explaining clear expectations and doing what they say they’ll do.

3. Choice: People are supported in shared decision-making, choices and goal-setting to determine the plan of action they need to heal and move forward from a traumatic event.

4. Collaboration: Between organisations and their workers, and between peers.

5. Empowerment: People feel heard, validated, and supported to make shared decisions – their voice is important to the organisation.

6. Cultural consideration: Treat everyone as an individual, not as a cultural stereotype based on their gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, geography, race or ethnicity.

During the TRIM training, your staff will gain knowledge about things like characteristics of traumatic events, trauma psychology, and risk factors for traumatic stress. They’ll also practise key skills like active listening, de-escalation techniques, and creating psychologically safe spaces.

How leaders can improve trauma response in employees

Leading an improvement in trauma response goes way beyond crisis management. It’s a commitment to a more compassionate attitude.

Leaders model the attitude and behaviours they expect of their employees, as trauma-informed training broadens everyone’s understanding of how to recognise the impacts of trauma and give appropriate support.

The fact that you’re investing time, resources, and money into expert trauma-informed training is a strong signal in itself. But it’s your language and continued actions that reinforce your commitment to a trauma-informed approach. That includes things like:

Be there and listen

Rebecca Brown is a professor of social work specialising in trauma. She explains,
“When people are struggling, they often just need someone to bear witness to their pain, to acknowledge their experience, and to sit beside them in the mess of it all. This is part of the recovery process…

Sitting with this discomfort alongside an employee can be a powerful step towards moving forward and feeling supported by leaders and the organization as a whole.”

No giving solutions – tempting as that may be – just listening, acknowledging and being there with people.

Have the difficult discussions

Find out how a traumatic event in the workplace has altered people’s perceptions about their jobs. What’s changed for them? Reveal if something’s changed for you. And figure out the way forward together.

Workplace culture is led by management, but it only changes if everyone embraces a new collective meaning. So create it together.

Get real about work-life balance

This doesn’t mean offering freebie yoga sessions and fruit deliveries. It means you model real work-life boundaries, discuss how you disconnect from work, and remove any barriers you’re responsible for that get in the way of your people doing the same thing.

Enabling your workforce to properly attend to self-care ultimately makes them more productive at work.

Highlighting what you do, verbalising the difference it makes, and showing that you value this in others tells everyone they should be proud of how they’re managing their mental health. It normalises just having the conversation, which makes it easier to discuss the impact of traumatic events when they happen.

Integrating trauma-informed practices into daily operations

In her Harvard Business Review article ‘We Need Trauma-Informed Workplaces’, Katharine Manning says:

“A trauma-informed organization is one that operates with an understanding of trauma and its negative effects on the organization’s employees and the communities it serves and works to mitigate those effects.

It may not be possible to predict or avoid the next crisis our organizations will face. However, with forethought, planning, and commitment, we can be prepared to meet the next challenge — whatever it may be — and come through it stronger.”

This is not ‘do a course, write a policy, put it in a folder and forget about it’ territory…

It’s more like this:

  • Start with a course such as TRIM
  • Discuss your specific aims and challenges
  • Put them and the practical ‘how’ into an official policy document
  • Evaluate
  • Act on your conclusions – maybe do some more training, or train more employee practitioners
  • Keep the evaluation cycle going. Test and learn. Listen to your people. See what other improvements can be made
  • Repeat…

Your commitment to your employee's mental health is unshakeable. Putting these principles into practice can be tricky to define and shouldn’t be ‘set in stone’.

You also need to remain dynamic so it can change to encompass every individual and traumatic event you may endure as a workplace.

Phew, that's a lot, isn’t it?

Health and Safety issues are always a heavy responsibility.

But you don’t have to create this trauma-informed strategy yourself.

Resilient People helps leaders establish and maintain a trauma-informed approach by offering continuous support and regular check-ins after the initial training sessions.

Everything’s about what you and your staff need – not just an off-the-shelf programme. We use our expertise to tailor the right trauma-informed training sessions and continued support for each organisation.

Expert trauma-informed workplace training with Resilient People

Take your first step towards a trauma-informed workplace today. Get in touch for a chat to discuss the best trauma-informed training for your organisation.

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Understanding trauma in the workplace and how it affects employees

Before we can protect our employees from physical danger, we must understand the threat and assess the risks involved. Then we can provide effective protection.

Likewise – before we can create a trauma-informed workplace environment, we must understand what trauma means and evaluate its impact on our workforce.

A quick look at ‘trauma’ as a Google search term, demonstrates the rise in interest in the topic from an interest value of 31 in the UK in 2019, to 63 in 2024. That means there’s over double the amount of people searching for ‘trauma’ today than 5 years ago.

While this indicates there are more discussions and awareness around trauma, it can also result in the diffusion of meaning. That’s why establishing the definitions of what we mean by ‘trauma’ and ‘trauma-informed training’ is so important.

In this article, you’ll find:

  • Definition of trauma and it’s context
  • Experiences that can cause trauma – including specific workplace trauma
  • Effects of trauma on your employees
  • How widespread trauma is among your employees
  • The importance of trauma-informed training in the workplace
  • Expert trauma-informed workplace training with Resilient People

TW: In this article you’ll read a list of different events that can cause trauma, and references to emotions and behaviours that can be induced by experiencing a traumatic event, this includes suicide.

It also includes statistical information about fatal workplace accidents and non-fatal workplace injuries. Consider whether this is the right time for you to read this, before you go any further.

Understanding the impact trauma has on your employees

Words matter. You need everyone to have a shared understanding of what ‘trauma’ means, before you can build a trauma-informed workplace.

What is trauma?

In a 2022 article for Vox, ‘How trauma became the word of the decade’, Lexi Pandell explores how, “The very real psychiatric term has become so omnipresent in pop culture that some experts worry it’s losing its meaning.”

She discusses the various research done through the 1990s into the specifics of different traumatic experiences – like ‘generational trauma’ and ‘collective trauma’.

And then the world went online. As she says: “It didn’t take long after researchers began to grasp the concept of trauma for the nation to reach a flashpoint: trauma as trend.”

Now, we hear the word ‘traumatic’ used to describe a really long tailback on the motorway. Or someone telling you about their recent trip to the supermarket exclaims, “What a trauma that was!”

Trauma has become a term to overstate an everyday inconvenience – often for comic effect.

But it's also used more seriously in news reports, particularly around stories involving someone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

What’s your employees’ existing understanding of ‘trauma’?

Your employees arrive at any trauma-informed workplace training with a confused definition, where only the most extreme symptoms of trauma response are common knowledge.

Building a genuinely trauma-informed environment begins with a clear, shared understanding of what ‘trauma’ actually means – with all its nuances.

It doesn’t help that even mental health professionals don’t have one clear definition. So we look to our policy makers for clarity. In its 2022 guidance, ‘Working definition of trauma-informed practice’, the UK government defines trauma as:

“Trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as harmful or life threatening.

While unique to the individual, generally the experience of trauma can cause lasting adverse effects, limiting the ability to function and achieve mental, physical, social, emotional or spiritual well-being.”

This definition is our foundation.

What experiences cause trauma?

The mental health charity, Mind, highlights the personal nature of trauma:

“There's no rule about what experiences can be traumatic. It's more about how you react to them.

What's traumatic is personal. Other people can't know how you feel about your own experiences or if they're traumatic for you. You might have similar experiences to someone else, but be affected differently or for longer.”

They list all feelings that a traumatic event can generate, like fear, shame, humiliation and invalidation.

Importantly, Mind also defines the different ways that trauma can happen – it’s not always caused by a one-off tragedy.

You may experience trauma from ongoing situations, childhood experiences, living or working in a traumatic environment, or from historical trauma in your family or community.

A traumatic event includes things like:

  • A near-death experience
  • Witnessing someone else’s death
  • Serious accidents
  • Complications during childbirth
  • Serious illness diagnosis
  • Physical or sexual assault
  • War or conflict
  • Natural disasters, like flooding or fire
  • Terrorist attacks

Workplace trauma

Workplace trauma can also start from one incident or from enduring repeated stress over time.

Situations that can cause workplace trauma are:

  • Moral injury: When you’re put in a position that goes against your sense of integrity – that’s in opposition to your values, beliefs or morals. This can happen when there are poor safety practices, a lack of resources, rules that don’t look out for everyone’s best interest, you’re part of a failing system that you aren’t in a position to fix, or you witness regular immoral or dangerous behaviour from other colleagues or senior leaders.
  • Financial insecurity: You’re only contracted from project to project, you’re concerned about losing your job, you see no pathway to promotion – all of these things create a constant lack of job security.
  • Bullying or harassment: This takes many forms – including extremely subtle tactics – and causes severe distress.
  • Witnessing criminality: Seeing regular criminal acts, including violence, in your workplace is incredibly stressful.
  • Unfairness: Treatment that persistently discriminates against, or ignores, an individual or group of people - in practice or policy.
  • Absence of support: Lack of support from colleagues, immediate supervisors, senior management or the company as an entity.
  • Physical injury or fatal accident: Having an accident, or witnessing harm to someone else, is a common source of workplace trauma in several industries.

To fully support all your employees, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are certain groups of people who are considered more likely to experience trauma than others, or experience it more frequently, including:

  • LGBTIA+
  • Part of an ethnic minority group
  • Serving members of the military
  • Military veterans
  • Serving a prison sentence
  • Ex-offenders
  • Refugees
  • Asylum seekers
  • People living in poverty

Effects of trauma on your employees

People react to traumatic events in their own way, so the effects of that trauma can vary enormously person-to-person. They include a range of physical and emotional reactions that affect how people behave.

Physical reactions to trauma

Our body can have physical reactions to a traumatic event like, headaches, shaking, tiredness, randomly placed aches and pains, changing appetite, memory issues, dizziness.

Emotional reactions to trauma

Traumatic events can cause a range of emotional reactions, including:

  • Self-blame, shame, guilt
  • Anger, fear, panic, shock, horror, betrayal
  • Grief and sadness
  • Hypervigilance
  • Confusion, loss of memory
  • Disconnected and numb to any emotions, including positive ones

A workplace trauma can leave people questioning not just their own purpose in life, but how they perceive who they work for.

Behavioural changes after a traumatic event

According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, new behaviours resulting from trauma may include:

  • “Not doing or being interested in things you used to enjoy
  • Feeling detached from other people
  • Acting in ways that are reckless or self-destructive
  • Being angry and aggressive towards people or things
  • Being hypervigilant, or ‘on guard’”

All of these may become apparent in the workplace, as well as at home – especially if the traumatic event happened at work.

For example, a train driver being involved in a suicide, or construction workers that witness the fatal accident of a colleague.

Productivity at work after a traumatic event

If your sleep is plagued with dreams, you’re constantly worried about having another flashback, you’re struggling to contain difficult feelings and your memory is fuzzy – it’s unlikely that you’re going to be working to your full potential.

An individual’s productivity level may well decrease as they tackle their trauma. But the right trauma-informed training within your organisation ensures that they are safe while they heal and get back on form.

Each of your employees will try and deal with their personal reactions in their own way. Some people use drugs and/or alcohol to self-medicate the physical and emotional effects. Others might use self-harm to self-soothe their pain.

Trauma can leave people unable to meet their own basic needs, like personal hygiene, clothes and home cleanliness, and eating properly. Suicidal thoughts can become constant for people dealing with trauma – including thinking about ways to take your own life.

How widespread is trauma among your employees?

‘Trauma experience’ isn’t usually something that’s often measured. But what we can do is look at what causes traumatic events in your industry and see how likely they are to impact your employees.

Trauma in the construction industry

Based on the HSE’s ‘Construction statistics in Great Britain, 2023’ report:

  • Rate of fatal injuries in the construction industry is 4.2 times that of all industries
  • 45 fatal injuries to construction workers in 2022-23, 3 fatal injuries to members of the public on sites
  • 51% of fatalities resulted from falls from heights, 12% trapped by collapse or overturned vehicle, 10% hit by a moving or falling object, 10% hit by a moving vehicle, 6% electricity
  • Between 2020-2023, 53,000 non-fatal injuries, 28% required 7+ days off work
  • Total cost in 2021-22, £1.3bn, which accounts for 6% of the total cost of all work-related ill health and injury
  • Reasons for self-reported work-related ill health: 54% musculoskeletal disorders, 24% stress/depression/anxiety, 23% other

Trauma in train workers

From the Office of Rail and Road’s ‘Rail Safety’ report for 2022-23:

Fatalities

  • Mainline train workers: 2
  • Mainline passengers/public: 10
  • Trespassers: 10
  • London Underground passengers/public: 2

All reportable injuries

  • Mainline train workers: 4,251
  • Mainline passengers/public: 5,588
  • Trespassers: 62
  • London Underground workers: 947
  • London Underground passengers/public: 3,625
  • London Underground trespassers: 18

Shock and trauma

  • Mainline train workers: 799
  • London Underground workers: 199

Looking at just those two industries’ figures for non-fatal and non-reportable injuries shows how regularly employees are experiencing or witnessing just that one type of traumatic event.

What’s the HSE report for your industry? The starkness of the numbers really illuminates the potential scale of the trauma suffered by your employees as they go about their everyday job.

Just as you diligently mitigate physical risks, the right training helps you build structured support for those impacted by trauma.

The importance of expert trauma-informed workplace training

By investing in trauma-informed workplace training, you’re leading your team towards a compassionate and psychologically safe environment. It helps your people confidently look out for each other after a traumatic event, which means that individuals can access the help they need more quickly.

And your business benefits by having less staff turnover, increased productivity from healthier staff, and an atmosphere for real growth and innovation.

If you want to understand more about how to support employees with any potential workplace trauma, the TRIM courses we provide are perfect. Get in touch for a chat about the best trauma-informed training for your organisation’s needs.

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Mental Health Awareness Week 2023

 

Anxiety is the focus of Mental Health week in 2023 and here we explore how it impacts on the Workplace

Background

Anxiety is a widespread and serious issue facing millions of UK employees today. It often goes undiagnosed and unsupported, leading to negative impacts on both mental health and work productivity. In the workplace, employees suffering with anxiety can experience a broad range of issues, including difficulty concentrating, increased stress levels, and decreased job satisfaction.

The Problem

For those suffering from anxiety, even simple tasks can become overwhelming, significantly impacting their ability to accomplish their job responsibilities. As a result, employees may feel isolated from their colleagues, leading to a sense of detachment and disengagement from the workplace. Furthermore, anxiety may cause employees to become fatigued, especially regarding decision-making, which can lead to poor job performance, low morale, and even job loss.

Improving the Situation

It’s becoming more of an accepted fact that employers today need to prioritise workplace wellness by taking proactive measures to support their employees' mental health. By investing in initiatives that prioritise mental health, such as Line Manager Training and Mental Health First Aid, employees are provided with the necessary resources to manage their anxiety more proactively. Additionally, workplaces that foster a supportive work environment that allows for open communication about mental health issues can help reduce the stigma surrounding anxiety and encourage employees to seek help when needed.

Next Step

If you would like to learn more about how Resilient People can support your organisation’s mental health plans simply use the website’s contact box and we’ll be back in touch pretty quick!   

We also have a free poster to download and share with your colleagues, if you would like  https://tinyurl.com/4mryveh2

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