Celebrating three years of Working Minds - Work Right to keep Britain safe

This week marks the third anniversary of the Working Minds campaign and the release of HSE’s latest work-related ill-health and injury statistics.

The campaign aims to raise awareness of how employers can prevent work-related stress and support good mental health. It provides practical tools and step-by-step guidance for businesses to use to make it routine and make a difference.

Published just this week, the 2023/24 work-related ill-health and injury statistics show that around half of those reporting ill-health is related to stress, depression or anxiety, with an estimated 776,000 cases. Each case takes an average of 21.1 days off work.

Kayleigh Roberts, Work-Related Stress and Mental Health Policy Lead at HSE, said: A total of 16.4 million working days were lost in 2023/24 which impacts both individuals and businesses. Employers can make a difference by understanding and fulfilling their legal duty to include stress in risk assessment and act on it.”

Working Minds calls on employers to proactively follow the five Rs. They are:

Reach out and have conversations
Recognise the signs and causes of stress
Respond to any risks you’ve identified
Reflect on actions you’ve agreed and taken
and make it Routine.

Andrew Berrie, Head of Corporate Partnerships and mental health charity Mind (a campaign partner since launch), said: “We’re delighted to continue to support HSE’s Working Minds campaign. Mind has long been working with employers of different sizes and sectors to help them create mentally healthy workplaces, but as these insights show, this has never been more important.

“While many of us will face pressure in our working lives, unchecked and unmanageable pressures can lead to strain and can have a debilitating effect, resulting in stress. Stress can cause mental health problems, and make existing problems worse. For example, if you often struggle to manage feelings of stress, you might develop a mental health problem like anxiety or depression.

“It is vital that employers take steps to mitigate against work-related stress and create an environment in which employees can have open and honest conversations about triggers of stress and poor mental health. This can start with just a simple, person-centred conversation between managers and their teams.”

Jenny Scott, Head of Communications at NEBOSH, said: “The statistics show a worrying picture of the mental ill health that people experience because of their work. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We are delighted to continue our support for the Working Minds campaign, which provides great resources for employers who want to foster good mental health and prevent work-related stress.”

Marking the anniversary, this week’s messages focus on the three reasons why employers should take a proactive approach:

Employers taking positive steps

Here are just a handful of practical ideas that employers who’ve used the free Working Minds materials have implemented at work:

“It’s a work in progress in our office – we’ve made some structural changes to manage people’s time better and reduce stress.”

“I’ve developed a training plan to roll out to all line managers and senior managers and included the tools provided which is being well received”

“It’s an agenda item for our 1 to 1’s – we use PDPs to identify stressors with an action plan to address the issues.”

“We completed a comprehensive survey of all our workforce, produced a board report and action plan detailing the results in respect of stress and fatigue experienced”