Big changes for the Mental Health at Work Website

There’s some big changes afoot at Mental Health at Work.

Since 2018, we’ve been championing wellbeing in workplaces of all sizes across the UK – from the largest businesses with the highest turnovers to the smallest side-hustles, and everything in between.

But now, it is time for a big change. Our website will be closing down later this year. But don’t fret – we’re working hard to ensure our work lives on, and that the resources we’ve created and collated over the years are still available for you to read and use. We will keep you updated once we know where you’ll be able to find these.

You’ll be pleased to hear the Mental Health at Work Commitment will be continuing – if you’ve already signed up, you’ll still have access to the resources, guides and emails that will help you achieve the standards. If your organisation hasn’t signed up yet, now is the ideal time!

We’d love to take this opportunity to share some of the amazing things Mental Health at Work has achieved over the years, with the help of our partners, our contributors, and supporters like you who understand the importance of mental health support in the workplace.

We know mental health is important in workplaces of all sizes – but our research found that small businesses and self-employed people often struggle to find support when they need it. As a result, we launched a dedicated campaign with Simply Business to help these small- and micro-businesses to put mental wellbeing onto their agendas.

And it’s not just small businesses that have been overlooked for too long. We know some groups – such as people from racialised backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ people, neurodiverse people, younger people and those in working poverty are more likely to experience poor mental health than the general population. That’s why we’ve taken special care to include the voices of these groups, and others who might not always have felt part of the mental health conversation.

We’ve taken part in special events such as Black History Month and Pride, and spoken out boldly on news stories that affect our lives and wellbeing, in the hope of elevating these stories and ensuring everyone is included in discussions on improving our workplaces.

We’ve worked through some difficult times for the UK. During the Coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, we worked alongside other charities to provide an award-winning resource centre for key workers, including carers, those working in healthcare, emergency services and teachers, Our Frontline. More recently, we’ve explored the cost-of-living crisis and how it has impacted the mental wellbeing of UK workers, and lobbied the government to provide better advice and support to help employers like you.

Our sister website, Blue Light Together, focused on providing specialised support and information to the emergency services – police, fire, ambulance and search and rescue. This campaign has now been successfully handed over to the Blue Light Card Foundation, ensuring the continued availability of information and support for the Blue Light community. If you work as a first responder, or know someone who does, make sure you check out this brilliant resource.

As a team, what we might be most proud of is you. By that, we mean the community that grew around Mental Health at Work, those who contributed to our successes, who took in the information we shared, and who put them into practice at their own organisations. Those who made real changes as a result of what they found on our site, or who shared their own stories of successes (and sometimes failures!) so others could learn from them.

We know from our results that your commitment has resulted in more real actions than ever before undertaken in workplaces across the UK and that the longer you are working towards the MHAW Commitment, the more progress you make and the more positive you feel about your culture. We also know that you feel more confident and capable than ever before in how to achieve change in your organisations in terms of mental health, so thank you for working with us on this.

So what’s next? We’re hoping many of our toolkits, resources and blogs can be hosted in other places, so you’ll still be able to access them and use them. We will keep you updated.

But we know there’s still more to do. We know government could play a bigger role in supporting you to make the change needed for the mental health of their people. And we know that there is more help you need, particularly around measurement and transparency and engagement with your workforce. We will continue to work for you to influence government through the Mental Health at Work Leadership Council and we will continue to support and signpost to information that can help you through our Mind@work newsletter – so do sign up to continue to be with us on this journey.

But for now, we will leave you with a heartfelt thank you, and best wishes for a happier, healthier future in the workplace. From Sarah, Iseult, Sophie, Beba and Beckett.