What Employers Are Getting Wrong About Mental Health – And the Fix That Actually Works

You don’t fix mental health with awareness campaigns. Your team already knows what anxiety feels like. They’ve lived it. Many are living it right now.

Posters and platitudes don’t help when someone is too numb to get out of bed, or too wired to shut off at night.

What they need isn’t another generic program. What they need is permission to stop pretending they’re OK, and systems that don’t punish them when they do.

Most workplaces mean well. But too often, the support on offer only adds pressure. Your people are told to ‘speak up’ – but the rewards go to those who push through. There’s a general instruction to ‘take care’ – but the promotions go to those who work out of hours and weekends.

That mixed message? It’s costing you. In trust, in retention, and in culture.

Even the People and Culture team – the very people meant to help – are often running on empty. They haven’t worked out how to protect their own mental health. They’re exhausted too. They hear the pain, but they’re numb to it. If someone does speak up, they get a blank look and a bland question like: ‘What can we do about that?’ … meaning ‘What are you going to do about that?’

But asking someone who’s at breaking point what they can do to change things is like asking someone who’s about to fall off a cliff what they can do mid-air to make their landing softer.

It leaves people walking away, feeling more alone than before. And next time? They’ll stay silent.

If your people don’t feel safe to rest, they’ll leave. Or worse, they’ll stay – but switch off inside.

The fix starts by seeing the truth behind the silence.

Let’s be clear: people aren't lazy. They’re tired. They’re wired. They’re stuck in systems that drain them. And the more they push to meet the job’s demands, the further their own wellbeing slips.

It’s not about cutting performance; it’s about removing the price tag attached to it. If being great at your job means sacrificing your health … then that’s not sustainable, and it’s not leadership either. It’s a one-way ticket to a breakdown.

So, then what’s the most powerful thing any employer can do?

Answer: make space for people to be human. That doesn’t mean lowering standards. It means building smarter ones. Standards that protect energy, not drain it. Standards that make room for recovery – not shame people for needing it.

Mental health isn’t a side conversation anymore. It’s the heartbeat of high-functioning teams. Ignore it, and things fall apart. Get it right, and everything works better.

Repair What’s Broken – Not Just What’s Visible

1.      Start With Workload — Not Wellness Days

Workload is the fire. Wellness days are the ‘band-aid’. If your people are stretched too thin, no mindfulness app will fix that.

Start by looking at how work is distributed. Who’s constantly online? Who’s taking leave to recover from the job, rather than enjoy life? Who can’t take leave because there are too many demands and not enough time to deal with them? These are signs that the workload is breaking your people down.

Set clear, realistic priorities. Cut the noise. Create breathing room inside the job, not just outside it. The most powerful mental health move? Giving people enough time and space to do their work well.

2.      Stop Rewarding Overwork

You might say you value rest. But who gets praised? Who gets promoted? If it’s always the one working late, answering emails on weekends, or pushing through illness, then you’re rewarding the very behaviour you claim to avoid.

People watch what you celebrate. When overwork is seen as heroic, asking for help looks like failure. So … flip that. Shine a light on boundaries. Praise recovery. Talk about rest as strategy, not weakness. The message must match the reward.

3.      Train Leaders to Spot Real Signs of Struggle

A poster can’t see when someone’s withdrawing. A manager can. But only if they know what to look for.

Too often, signs of burnout go unnoticed – or worse, they get labelled as performance issues.

Train your leaders to ask better questions. It’s not enough to simply ask ‘Are you OK?’ Instead, ask ‘What’s making things hard right now?’ Teach your leaders to read between the lines. Build their confidence in having real, human conversations. This isn't about becoming therapists, it’s about knowing your people and noticing when the mask slips.

4.      Stop Making People Build Their Own Safety Net

Don’t ask burnt-out people how they can feel better. Don’t hand them a workbook. If someone’s barely holding on, they can’t carry the weight of fixing the system too.

Make support visible, make it active, and make it simple. If someone’s struggling, they should know what happens next, who they speak to, what options exist, and what will change. Every layer of uncertainty adds to the strain. Build a safety net strong enough that people don’t have to build one for themselves.

5.      Hold Space — Don’t Just Offer It

Mental health doesn’t always look like silence. Sometimes it looks like frustration, cynicism, or disengagement. If people don’t feel safe to bring that to work … then they’ll carry it alone.

Hold space for real talk – for messy truth. Create rooms where people can say ‘I’m not OK’ without fear it will haunt them at review time. Trust starts in those small, quiet moments – and so does change. People won’t reach for help unless they believe it’s safe to be human.

Don’t Make It Their Problem to Solve

What many Aussie workplaces still get wrong is this: they treat mental health like a personal issue. Something for individuals to ‘manage.’ So, the pressure stays hidden. The guilt grows. And the people who need support the most are left carrying the full load, with no shift in sight.

That’s not care, that’s deflection and it’s costing lives, not just performance.

The truth is this: the system itself creates the strain. Constant urgency. Unclear expectations. Lack of recovery time. You can’t ask someone to ‘be more resilient’ while giving them no room to breathe. If the system breaks people, the system must change. That’s the work. And it starts by owning the impact – not pushing the burden back on the team.

The new path forward is simple: stop asking people to adapt to broken systems. Instead, fix the system. Make your workplace somewhere that protects energy, honours limits, and builds safety into the structure. Not as an add-on, but as the way things are done.

That’s not just mental health strategy. That’s leadership.

Written by Bronwen Sciortino, CEO & Founder OF sheIQ Life and proudly based in Perth, Western

Australia. Bronwen Sciortino is an International Author & Simplicity Expert and provides in-depth insights into simplifying health and wellness solutions.

If you're a busy, stressed and overwhelmed individual you'll benefit from Bronwen's knowledge on how to create simple, practical and easy steps to live life in a very different way.

As a leader in the health & wellness industry, Bronwen’s books and programs have received international critical acclaim and 5-star reviews and she is sought as a media expert globally.

Get 15% off the purchase of ‘Keep It Super Simple’ or ‘The Economy of Enough’ e-Book purchases by using KISS123 at the checkout: https://www.sheiqlife.com/books/  Claim a free 15 minute Executive Coaching call by emailing bsciortino@sheiqlife.com and quoting ‘The Industry Leaders’

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