Mental health issues in the workplace: What can I do for my employees?

5 June 2026

Employers report that stress, anxiety, depression or other mental health problems account for 32 per cent of all sickness leave in the workplace.

Managing employees’ mental health is important to ensure people stay in work and enjoy the job that they do. As an employer, you have a duty of care to protect your employees’ welfare.

What are the relevant mental health laws/ guidelines?

Employers have a duty of care to support their workers’ mental health at work. This means they must do all they reasonably can to support workers’ health, safety and wellbeing. It is essential that employers treat mental health and physical health as equally important.

They should make sure the working environment is safe, protect staff from discrimination and carry out risk assessments.

According to the Equality Act 2010, someone with poor mental health can be considered disabled if:

• Their mental health has a substantial or adverse effect on their life. An example of this would be that they can regularly not focus on a task, or it takes them longer to complete tasks
• It lasts, or is expected to last, at least 12 months
• It affects their ability to do their normal day-to-day activities, such as interacting with colleagues or keeping to set working times

Poor mental health can be considered a disability even if they do not have symptoms all the time.

What can employers do to help employees facing mental health issues?

If an employee has a mental health issue, their employer must take it seriously and make reasonable adjustments, especially if the mental illness is classified as a disability.

Reasonable adjustments for mental health can include a change of working hours and patterns, allowing the employee to have more frequent short breaks, flexible hours, or paid time off for medical appointments.

In order to manage stress and anxiety, changing roles and responsibilities can help, though this should not result in the employee being disadvantaged, as that may count as discrimination.

Ways to do this could be by reviewing tasks or deadlines to help someone have a reasonable workload, breaking down tasks to reduce the complexity of someone’s day or reviewing responsibilities to reduce those that are more stressful.

Changes in working environments can help an employee struggling with their mental health. By allowing someone to work from home, relocating someone’s desk to a quieter area to reduce sensory demands or providing areas away from the main staff area to allow rest away from social demands, an employee can feel less overwhelmed and anxious about being at work.

Offering flexibility in policies such as paid time off for appointments, being flexible with trigger points and offering a phased return to work could lead an employee to have more time to work on their mental health and therefore return to work rather than needing time off.

An employee’s mental health problem may not be a disability, but you should still offer them support and explore if any adjustments can help.

Managing employees’ mental health at work can be tough, but we are here to support you in supporting them.

Implementing robust mental health policies in the workplace will make work a better place and will help employees stay in work while managing a mental health condition.

We can help you to review your policies and procedures, identifying areas that may need adapting to create an environment that better supports mental health.

If you need support in creating mental health policies at work, get in touch with our friendly team for expert advice.

Contact us today for support on managing employees’ mental health in the workplace.