Educating employers about mental health for Mind

How can you raise mental health up the to-do list of busy employers? Especially small business owners who have multiple competing pressures and not enough time in the day?

Mind came to us with these problems as they were finalising the development of a new Mental Health at Work website for employers, and an e-learning tool specifically aimed at smaller businesses — both supported by the Royal Foundation through its Heads Together campaign.

We hit the road and spoke to a range of businesses big and small in the north of England and London. We buried our heads in page upon page of secondary research. Through it all, a message was coming through loud and clear, especially from smaller businesses: mental health was stuck in the box marked ‘too hard’.

We used COM-B and EAST behavioural frameworks to help Mind develop messaging to reframe the products as relieving the burden on employers, increasing their motivation to act by making it feel easier to get started – while also dialling up the urgency by helping them see the business case for prioritising it.