FM’s role in addressing mental ill health within the workplace

Mental Health UK’s Burnout Report revealed 91 per cent of workers report high or extreme levels of pressure or stress, with one in five needing to take time off in the last year. Mental Health Awareness Week takes place 11 – 17 May 2026, so for this month’s FM Clinic we’re asking, what can the FM sector do to help address mental ill health within the built environment and the wider workforce?

THE HSE’S VIEW
JON WELLS,
HSE WORKING MINDS CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS LEAD

Work-related stress is a serious health and safety risk, and facilities management can make a real difference. In 2024/25, 964,000 UK workers suffered from work-related stress, depression, or anxiety, resulting in 22.1 million lost working days (HSE, 2025). Health and safety law applies to all workers: employees, agency staff, apprentices, zero-hours workers, and outsourced teams alike. Stress should be managed like any other workplace hazard, through risk assessment, targeted interventions, and ongoing monitoring and review.

Facilities management professionals are ideally placed to put HSE guidance into practice. By shaping workplace design, operational processes, and overall business performance, FM teams can directly influence the factors that drive stress and improve worker wellbeing.

HSE’s Management Standards framework provides a practical approach for stress risk assessment. It focuses on six key areas that, if poorly managed, are linked to poor health, lower productivity, and increased sickness absence: Demands, Control, Support, Relationships, Role, and Change. Many of these can be influenced through FM decisions, from contract structures and shift patterns to workspace design, lighting, ventilation, quiet areas or flexible working arrangements. Supporting healthy interactions between teams and managers is equally important.

Senior management commitment is crucial. Leaders set the tone for how seriously stress is treated. When executives visibly prioritise mental health, allocate resources, and model healthy working practices, stress prevention becomes embedded in everyday decision-making rather than reactive. Without this visible leadership, efforts are often inconsistent and short-lived.

Worker involvement strengthens prevention. Staff can help identify specific stressors and suggest practical solutions. Interventions should be evidence-based, drawing on sickness absence data, surveys, or observations, and reviewed regularly for effectiveness.

HSE’s Working Minds campaign offers practical tools for organisations of all sizes, including free eLearning modules and guidance on identifying the root causes of stress. While aimed at SMEs, any organisation can use it to carry out meaningful risk assessments and implement effective solutions.

Supporting data from Mental Health UK shows 91 per cent of workers report high or extreme levels of pressure, with one in five needing time off in the past year. These figures underline why HSE guidance, combined with proactive FM-led interventions, is essential to protect mental health in the workplace.

The key message is simple: make stress prevention routine. By embedding risk assessment, worker involvement, and regular monitoring and review into daily health and safety management, FM professionals can protect workers’ mental health, boost productivity, and create workplaces that genuinely support wellbeing. 

MENTAL HEALTH CHARITY’S VIEW
SAM DOWNIE,
MANAGING DIRECTOR, MATES IN MIND

At its simplest form, the answer is: make work good for workers’ mental health. Create a culture of prevention, one that focuses on eradicating excessive stress, ending the stigma that surrounds mental ill-health, educating everyone to understand their own and their colleagues’ mental health, and providing support to those who need it. But for many, creating a culture of prevention is not always that simple or straightforward. For a start, what is the first step?

Before I share some effective interventions for building positive mental health in and across the facilities management sector, we should be clear that effective stress management in the workplace is required by law.

“Employers have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. This is the same duty you have to protect people from other health and safety risks” (HSE).

This is important, because in December 2025, the University of Birmingham was found to have material breaches of the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999 for not having effective arrangements in place to manage the risk from work-related stress. This action demonstrates the HSE’s clear intention to investigate potential breaches of HSE legislation.

Investing in workers’ wellbeing is not only necessary for avoiding potential prosecution, it also improves the organisation’s bottom line by supporting workers’ mental health.

At Mates in Mind, we work with organisations of all sizes, to help them create and embed cultures of prevention by implementing comprehensive programmes of education and support. Through our effective approach we make work safer for everyone so that no-one reaches crisis point and looking after the mental health of workers becomes everyone’s responsibility.

So how do you do that?

• Get management buy-in and lead by example (in terms of talking about your own mental health and demonstrating it is ok to ask for help).
• Assess where you are on your mental health journey and develop a tailored action plan to fill any gaps. This includes policies (especially a mental health policy), regularly conducting and acting on individual stress risk assessments and performance, by ensuring those with responsibility can fulfil this role.
• Set targets, monitor outcomes and record evidence. Know what success looks like regarding the mental health of your workforce; plan in what and by when you will fill the gaps identified in your assessment; and keep records of the outcomes and evidence of actions you have taken.
• Educate your whole workforce so they have the skills, clarity and confidence to spot the signs of mental ill-health, start conversations, signpost support and make reasonable work adjustments if needed.
• Provide support – be that through Mental Health First Aiders, HR Team, Occupational Health, an Employee Assistance Programme, peer mentors, and ensure the information is communicated regularly with staff.

Put simply, ask yourself: do we satisfy our duty of care to our employees? If you answer ‘no’, then it’s time to act. A quick next step is to visit our website where you can download free resources and watch a series of short videos on stress awareness: https://www.matesinmind.org/training-and-resources/information-and-resources.