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- Three interventions your business can make to support employee mental health
Three interventions your business can make to support employee mental health
Read the practical takeaways from the CBI's Front of Mind report to support employee mental health and wellbeing.
Supporting your employees’ mental health is not only the right thing to do, but it also offers huge benefits to both the UK economy and to your business. The pandemic has put additional strain on people’s lives and their mental health. Therefore, it is now more important than ever for companies to take a proactive approach to mental health and wellbeing and to support their employees as best as they can.
In 2021 the CBI published its Front of Mind guide setting out practical steps a business can take to improve workplace health and wellbeing – from making it a leadership and organisational priority, to helping people get the support they need.
While there is no one size fits all approach to improving the mental health and wellbeing of your staff, but there are three general interventions that you can adopt to support people in your business:
1. Champion mental health and wellbeing from the top and make it a shared priority
Leaders play a critical role in championing mental health and wellbeing throughout the firm. The priority that leaders place on an issue, and their behaviour, has a huge impact on organisational culture.
2. Target action towards early interventions to enable people to perform at their best
Early intervention includes giving people the tools to monitor and take control of their own mental health. There are now over 318,000 health apps available worldwide, nearly double the number available in 2015 – with more than 200 apps being added each day. Despite the significant investment connected to it, particularly for smaller businesses, it is valuable for both business and staff, by offering fast diagnosis and treatment for a range of conditions and enabling people to return to work when most appropriate.
3. Create a culture that prioritises staff mental health and wellbeing
Useful resources for your business
To help people in these challenging times, companies need to take action and support their employees’ mental health. Join those already proactively working on their mental health and wellbeing strategy. If you’d like to find out more information, you can:
Discover useful CBI resources
- Eager to learn more about supporting your employees’ mental health and wellbeing? Our factsheets on mental health and wellbeing in a crisis and supporting employees to work from home are filled with up-to-date insight, information and advice
- From my desk to yours: read AXA Health’s top tips for mental health and resilience throughout the pandemic and Facebook’s case study on prioritising your consumers’ mental health
- Visit My CBI: the CBI’s online hub is your go-to place for information on all strands of diversity and inclusion, including mental health and wellbeing, and is updated regularly. Visit the Diversity & Inclusion page on Ideas Forum for more inspiration and access to our gender and ethnicity pay gap guides: Mind the Gap and Bridge the Gap.
Explore the topic further using external resources
- Mind is a charity providing advice and support to everyone facing a mental health problem
- City Mental Health Alliance is a not-for-profit membership organisation that is working together with mental health experts and partner organisations to provide resources, events and training to support employees’ mental health.

Read the Front of Mind report