Signs And Silence At Work

Picture this. It's late on a Friday afternoon. Your team is wrapping up. One person is staying behind again. You've noticed. You've been noticing for about three weeks now. She's quieter than usual. She's missed a couple of mornings. She's apologizing for things she hasn't done wrong. She's saying, I'm fine before anyone's actually asked. You've thought about saying something, you've thought about it twice this week, but every time you've talked yourself out of it. You don't want to overstep. You don't want to say the wrong thing. You don't want to make it weird. You also, and this is the bit no one likes to admit, don't really know what you'd do if she actually opened up. What if she cries? What if she tells you something you can't fix? What if she says she's been struggling for months? So you say nothing? You smile as you leave. You say, have a good evening, you go home. She stays at her desk. This is where awareness weeks fall over. We get really good at telling people they should ask. We don't tell anyone what to do next. This year, the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week is action. So this episode is about what you actually do. After the conversation. Through the conversation, once it's started. The bit awareness weeks don't usually cover. Welcome to the Hive. Hey there, welcome back to Buzzing About HR, the podcast for small business owners and HR professionals who want straight talking, plain English advice. I'm Kate, your host, HR Queen B, and someone who has had more Are You OK conversations than I can count and still gets nervous before each one. With me, as ever, emotionally available in theory, practically useless, is Hazel, our well-being officer. She is currently the embodiment of mental well-being, fully relaxed, asleep on her back, pause up, with absolutely no concerns about Q3. This week is Mental Health Awareness Week. The theme this year is action. The blog post on this, linked in the show notes, covers what to say. The opening line, the follow-up. The sentences that don't make it weird. This podcast flips it. Tonight we're talking about what to do. The conversation itself. The decisions after. The follow-through that awareness weeks usually skip past. Because here's the thing: a brilliant opening line, followed by silence for the next three weeks, is worse than no opening line at all. If you only do the conversation, you've ticked a box. If you do the action, that's where it lands. Kettle on, let's go. The buzz. Why action is the hard bit, awareness has done its job. Genuinely. Twenty years ago, mental health at work was something you didn't talk about, and stress was something weak people had. Today, almost every employer at least nods at the idea that mental health matters. Posters go up, lanyards come out, well-being emails get sent. That's all fine. None of it is bad, but none of it is action. And the legal context around this is shifting. The Employment Rights Act 2025 brings a statutory right to switch off. The implementation date is still to be confirmed, but it's coming. And from the 6th of April this year, statutory sick pay changed, waiting days have gone, the lower earnings limit has gone. Which means SSP is now payable from day one of sickness for everyone. That matters for mental health absences because they're often short, often repeated, and previously fell through the SSP gap. They don't anymore. The cost of a manager not having the conversation early just got higher. Action is what happens when someone in your team is not okay and you have to do something about it. Action looks like a follow-up conversation booked into the diary, not just a chat in the corridor. Action looks like a workload conversation with their actual workload in front of you. Action looks like reasonable adjustments documented and reviewed. Action looks like checking in three weeks later, not letting it quietly drop. Action is the unglamorous part. The bit nobody tweets about. The bit that happens between two people, often awkwardly, often messily, often without resolution in one go. But it is the bit that changes things. Awareness without action makes everyone feel a little better and changes nothing. Action without awareness is rare because if you're doing the action, you've usually got the awareness anyway. What we are short on is the middle bit, the part where you sit down, having spotted something and decide what to actually do. That's what this episode is for. The hive check, the numbers. The numbers because the case for doing this is overwhelming. The HSE's latest statistics published in November last year show 964,000 workers in Great Britain suffering work-related stress, depression, or anxiety in 2024 25. That's up from 776,000 the year before, a jump of nearly 200,000 people in a single year. 22.1 million working days were lost to work-related stress, depression, or anxiety. 22 million. And here's the line that should stop everyone in the room. Work-related stress, anxiety, and depression now accounts for 52% of all work-related ill health in Great Britain. It has crossed the halfway mark. More than half of every workplace illness is now a mental health one. The cost to the UK economy of poor mental health at work is estimated at over£56 billion a year. That's not a typo. Mines research shows that one in six workers experience a mental health problem at any given time. A 2025 CIPD survey of small business owners found that 71% had at least one team member affected by mental health issues in the last year. But only 24% felt confident they had managed the situation well. That 47% gap is the action gap. And the CIPD's most recent Health and Wellbeing at Work report puts a sharper number on it again. Average absence per employee is now 9.4 days a year, the highest in more than 15 years. Mental ill health is the leading cause of long-term absence. And only 29% of organizations actually train their line managers in mental health. But, and this is the bit I want you to hear, where they do train them, 73% of those managers feel confident having sensitive conversations and signposting support. Training works. Most businesses just haven't done it. That's the bit we're trying to close today. The sting. Why action gets dropped? Why does action get dropped? Three reasons. They're predictable, they're fixable. Reason one, the conversation is treated as the destination. Manager has the chat. Manager feels relieved that the awkward bit is over. Manager moves on. But the conversation is the start, not the end. If you don't book the next step at the end of the first conversation, you have just done a one-off check-in, and three weeks from now your team member will fairly conclude that no one really cared. Reason two, managers don't know what action is allowed. Reasonable adjustments, phased return, reduced hours, flexible start times, workload changes. Most managers in small businesses haven't had this stuff explained to them. So when someone says, I'm struggling, they don't know what they're allowed to offer. Default response: sympathetic noises, no actual change. This is exactly what the CIPD numbers show. Less than a third of organizations train their line managers in mental health. And then we're surprised when the conversations don't happen or happen badly. The action gap is not a willingness gap, it is a training gap. Reason three, fear of doing it wrong. Mental health is a sensitive area. People are scared of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, getting sued, or making it worse. So they freeze. Frozen managers are not safe managers. Frozen managers are managers who let things drift. Drift is bad for the person, bad for the business, and bad for the team around them who can see it happening. The Waggle Dance, the four-step playbook. Right. Here is what action looks like in four steps. You can run this in any small business. You don't need a well-being strategy or a budget or an EAP. You just need to follow it. Step one, the first conversation. You spotted something, you raised it. They've shared. Even a little. Don't try to fix it in this conversation. Just listen. Properly. With your laptop closed. End the conversation with two things. A thank you for telling me and a follow-up booked. Even if they say you don't need to, book it anyway. Let's catch up next week, just for 15 minutes. That follow-up is the difference between a chat and an action. Step two, the discovery conversation. This is the next one, a few days later. Now you can ask what would help. Not from a fixed menu, but open question. What's the bit that's hardest right now? You'll usually hear one of three things. Workload. Too much, badly prioritised, or unclear. Working pattern, they need different start times, breaks, hybrid, time off for an appointment. Specific support, someone to talk to. An EAP, time to see their GP. You don't need to commit to anything in this meeting. Just understand. Step 3. The agreement. Now you put it in writing, not as a formal HR document, as a short note. Here's what we discussed. Here's what we agreed for the next four weeks. We'll review on the 12th. Email it to them. Keep a copy. Why? Because memory is unreliable, and because if a small adjustment becomes a longer one, you've now got a paper trail showing you took it seriously. Step four. The review. The review is everything. This is the bit awareness weeks never tell you about. In four weeks you sit down again. Same place. Same time. Quick 15-minute meeting, three questions. Has it helped? What's working? What needs to change? That's it. You do this for as long as it needs. When the person is steady, you can space it out. Every six weeks, every quarter. But you don't drop it entirely. Because mental health, like physical health, has good months and bad months. The check-ins keep you connected to where they actually are, not where you assumed they were. The swarm. The data does not support this. Almost every study on workplace mental health finds that staff who feel their manager has noticed and asked are more engaged, more loyal, and more likely to recover. You will not make it worse. You might make it slightly awkward for 10 minutes. That is a fair price. Myth 2. I have to know what I'm doing before I start. You don't have to be a counsellor. You have to be a decent human with an open question and time to listen. The minute you start trying to be a therapist, you'll do it badly. Don't. Be a manager. Ask. Listen. Decide what to do next together. Myth 3. Adjustments are only for people with a formal diagnosis. Wrong. Reasonable adjustments are most powerful when used early, often before anything is formally diagnosed. Flexible hours, reduced workload, a quiet space for a couple of weeks. These can prevent a small wobble, becoming a long absence. You don't need a sick note to make a small change. Myth 4. If I help one person, everyone will want it. This is the worst myth, and it's also the most common. Most of the time, what one person needs is bespoke. Most people won't ask for the same thing. The fairness is in the principle. Anyone who needs support gets considered, not in the identical solution. If you treat everyone identically, regardless of need, that's not fairness, that's laziness with a costume on. The honeycomb, your quick action list. Seven actions for this week. 1. Pick one person you've been quietly worried about. Just one. Two book a 15-minute conversation with them next week. Don't call it a well-being meeting, just a check-in. 3. Listen for 80% of that meeting. Talk for 20%. 4. At the end, book the follow-up. 5. Write down, somewhere private and secure, what you discussed and what you said you'd do. Even a note in your own diary. 6. Share the four-step playbook with your other managers. Don't just have the conversation yourself. Ripple it. 7. Review what your business actually offers as support. EAP, Mental Health First Aiders, GP Time Without Questions. Make the list real, not aspirational. 8. And this one slots straight off the back of 7. If you've never trained your line managers in mental health, look at that this month, even a half-day session. The CIPD data is very clear that trained managers are dramatically more confident, and confident managers actually have the conversations. Flying the hive. Right, before I go. The theme this year is action. You don't have to be brilliant at this. You don't have to fix anyone. You don't have to know all the answers. You have to do the boring, repetitive bit. Notice, ask, listen, book the next one, write it down, come back to it. That's it. That's action. It looks small, it feels small. But over a year, that small thing is the difference between losing a brilliant employee to a six-month absence and keeping her in good shape, doing good work, feeling supported. It is also the difference between a manager who leaves work feeling guilty and a manager who leaves work feeling like they actually did the job they were paid to do. So this week, pick the person you've been worried about, not the easy one. The one you've been putting off. Have the conversation, then do the next bit. That's the whole episode in one sentence. If this hit home, share it with another manager. Ripple this stuff. Find me at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk or email buzz at kateunderwoodhr.co.uk. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you haven't left a review, it takes 30 seconds. It helps me reach more managers who need to hear this. More satisfying than a biscuit, not quite as good as cake, but nearly. Until next time, keep buzzing and take care of your people. Kettle on, standards up.