Your Duty of Care, Explained

What are an employer's responsibilities for mental health at work?

UK employers have a legal duty of care to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees, and that includes mental health. Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 you must assess and manage risks to mental wellbeing, such as work-related stress. Under the Equality Act 2010, a mental health condition can count as a disability, which means you must make reasonable adjustments and must not discriminate.

That's the legal answer. Now here's my honest one.

The law is the floor, not the ceiling. I've worked with organisations who could tick every compliance box and still had teams quietly falling apart, and I've worked with small businesses with no formal policy at all where people genuinely looked out for each other. The difference was never the paperwork. It was the culture.

Your real responsibilities look like this. Make it safe for people to say they're struggling before it becomes a crisis. Train your managers, because they are the first people your employees will turn to, or avoid. Take stress seriously as a workplace risk, not a personal weakness. And when someone does open up, respond with support, not suspicion.

Get those right and the legal duties largely take care of themselves. Get them wrong and no policy document will save you.

Want your managers equipped? Email hello@peterlarkum.com to find out about the half-day Mental Health Skills for Managers Course, which gives leaders the skills and frameworks to build a preventative mental health culture.