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Mental Health Awareness Modules

Mentally Healthy Workplace Training

Practical, manager-focused training that helps organisations understand mental health at work, strengthen everyday management, respond more confidently when someone is struggling and address workplace factors that can contribute to stress and poor mental health.

Enquire about this course
For Managers, supervisors and people leaders
Delivery Interactive group training
Focus Mental health, management and work-related stress
Adaptation Workplace examples can be adapted to your organisation or sector
Overview

About this course

A mentally healthy workplace is about more than responding when somebody becomes unwell. It is also shaped by everyday working conditions: workload, communication, relationships, change, role clarity, management behaviour and whether people feel able to raise concerns or ask for support.

Mentally Healthy Workplace Training helps managers understand those connections. Participants explore mental health and wellbeing in a workplace context, consider how their own attitudes and management practice can affect others, and develop practical ways to recognise concerns, begin supportive conversations and respond appropriately.

The course does not ask managers to become counsellors or diagnose mental health conditions. It focuses on the things managers can realistically influence: listening well, managing people fairly, considering appropriate workplace support, understanding work-related stress, involving employees in decisions and knowing when HR, Occupational Health or professional support may be needed.

Is this course right for your group?

Designed for

Line managers, supervisors, team leaders, operational managers, business owners and other people with responsibility for managing employees, teams or working conditions. The principles are relevant across private, public, voluntary and community-sector workplaces.

Particularly useful if

  • Managers want greater confidence talking about mental health without feeling they need clinical expertise.
  • Mental health activity has focused mainly on awareness, while everyday management and working conditions have received less attention.
  • Workload, change, role clarity, relationships or other workplace pressures may be contributing to stress.
  • Managers need a clearer approach to recognising changes, listening and considering practical support.
  • Your organisation wants more consistent thinking around reasonable adjustments, recovery and return to work.
  • People managers would benefit from reflecting on how their own communication and management style affect employee wellbeing.
Role and boundaries

The manager's role — and where it stops

Managers can

  • Notice changes in behaviour, performance, attendance or working patterns and start an appropriate conversation.
  • Listen without judgement and ask what workplace support may be helpful.
  • Consider practical adjustments, management changes and other steps within their responsibilities.
  • Address workplace factors such as workload, communication, role clarity, relationships and change.
  • Encourage employees towards appropriate organisational, professional or specialist support when needed.

Managers aren't expected to

  • Diagnose a mental health condition.
  • Provide counselling, therapy or clinical treatment.
  • Assume that two people with the same diagnosis will need the same support.
  • Take sole responsibility for another person's mental health or recovery.
  • Replace appropriate HR, Occupational Health, medical or specialist advice.
For your organisation

What this can help your organisation achieve

Stronger everyday management

Help managers understand how communication, workload, role clarity, support, relationships and management behaviour can influence mental health across a team.

Earlier, better conversations

Build greater confidence in noticing when something may have changed, raising concerns appropriately and listening before jumping to conclusions or solutions.

A more practical approach to workplace stress

Give managers a structured way to think about work-related stress, workplace risks, reasonable support and changes that may be within the organisation's control.

Outcomes

What you’ll learn

Understand mental health in a workplace context

Explore the mental health continuum and the difference between mental wellbeing and diagnosed mental illness, helping managers avoid assumptions and focus on the individual.

Recognise the influence of attitudes and culture

Consider how personal frames of reference, workplace habits and unwritten expectations can affect whether people feel able to speak honestly, ask for support or challenge unreasonable pressure.

Recognise when someone may need support

Identify possible changes in concentration, attendance, behaviour, relationships or performance without treating them as proof of a particular mental health condition.

Have a more useful supportive conversation

Use a practical observe, engage and support approach: gather information, raise concerns sensitively, listen without judgement and consider appropriate next steps.

Understand work-related stress more clearly

Explore the relationship between pressure, performance and stress, and use the Health and Safety Executive's six Management Standards areas to consider workplace risks.

Consider practical workplace support

Think more confidently about recovery, Wellness Action Plans, reasonable adjustments, return-to-work support and when additional organisational or professional advice may be needed.

Course content

What we’ll cover

Mental health and the mental health continuum

The course begins with the principle that everybody has mental health. Participants explore how mental wellbeing and diagnosed mental illness relate to one another, and why a manager's role is to understand the person rather than diagnose a condition.

Attitudes, frames of reference and workplace culture

Participants consider how personal experience can shape attitudes towards mental health, then apply the same thinking to workplace culture: the expectations, habits and unwritten rules that influence whether people feel able to speak up or ask for support.

What makes a workplace mentally healthy?

We explore practical features such as clear communication, supportive management, supervision, role clarity, appropriate resources, involvement in decisions, positive relationships, reasonable control over work and a culture where concerns can be raised.

The manager's role

The course looks at mentally healthy management in practice, including communication, support, supervision, clear expectations, appropriate development and recognising that different people may need different kinds of support.

Recognising changes and having supportive conversations

Participants explore possible workplace signs that someone may be struggling and use a three-stage approach: observe and gather information, engage and listen non-judgementally, then consider appropriate support.

Recovery and Wellness Action Plans

Recovery is explored as an individual process rather than a fixed outcome. The course introduces Wellness Action Plans as a practical way to discuss what helps someone stay well, possible triggers or early warning signs and what support may be useful.

Work-related stress and the HSE Management Standards

Participants consider the difference between pressure and stress, use the Human Function Curve to explore how performance can change as pressure increases, and examine the six HSE Management Standards areas: Demands, Control, Relationships, Change, Role and Support.

Reasonable adjustments and return to work

The course considers individual workplace support, including possible changes to hours, workload, duties, ways of working, supervision or the working environment. It also explores return to work as an ongoing process involving communication, confidentiality, appropriate support and review.

Management style and practical action

Managers are encouraged to reflect on how they communicate, respond to mistakes, allocate work, manage pressure and change, and listen to staff. Participants consider realistic actions they can take back into their own workplace.

Course format

What to expect

Interactive rather than lecture-based

The training uses discussion, reflection exercises, practical activities and case studies alongside taught content.

Grounded in workplace situations

Participants apply the learning to realistic management situations rather than discussing mental health only in the abstract.

Space for reflection

The course asks managers to consider their own attitudes, workplace culture and management practice as well as the behaviour of other people.

Adaptable to your organisation

Examples and discussions can be adapted to reflect the realities of a particular workplace or sector.

Green Ribbons

Why Green Ribbons?

Green Ribbons was founded by Jean Pryde after 30 years working in mental health settings. That experience sits behind a practical, plain-speaking approach to training that takes difficult subjects seriously without making them harder to talk about than they need to be.

Based in Moray and working across Scotland, Green Ribbons has delivered training for organisations including Diageo, Macallan and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, alongside professional bodies and community groups.

Booking

What happens next

1

Tell us what you're looking for

Tell us about your organisation, who the training is for and the workplace issues or priorities you would like the course to address.

2

We'll talk it through

We'll discuss the group, your objectives and any sector or organisational context that would help make the training relevant.

3

Arrange the training

If you'd like to go ahead, we'll agree the format, date, location and practical arrangements with you.

Enquire

Interested in this training?

Tell us a little about your group and what you’re looking for. We can talk through whether this course is the right fit and the practical arrangements.

You’re enquiring about Mentally Healthy Workplace Training

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