Businesses must take steps to support worker mental health this Mental Health Awareness Month.
By Jenna Richardson, Senior Program Manager, National Safety Council
Each May, Mental Health Awareness Month brings renewed attention to the importance of supporting mental health at work. Organizations share resources, host webinars and encourage open dialogue. Awareness, however, is just the beginning. As safety professionals, we don’t just raise awareness of hazards, we identify them, assess them and put systems in place to prevent them. It’s time we approach mental health the same way.
For years, workplace mental health resources have often been positioned as an HR initiative or employee benefits. Meanwhile, workplace safety efforts have mainly focused on physical hazards, compliance and incident prevention. As we do our best to make the workplace a safer place, we have to start acknowledging mental health’s critical role in keeping us safe — from the workplace to anyplace.
Fatigue, stress, substance use and burnout: These aren’t just wellbeing concerns, they directly impact fitness for duty, decision-making and reaction time. Mental health shouldn’t sit adjacent to safety; it must be embedded within it. This is where many organizations get stuck. They could have great resources and programs — but those efforts aren’t always apparent in everyday safety practices.
If mental health is a workplace risk factor, what does implementation look like? Based on what we’re seeing across industries, a few shifts make a meaningful difference.
1. Integrate, don’t isolate
When mental health is treated as “extra,” it gets deprioritized. When it’s integrated, it becomes part of how work gets done. Mental health shouldn’t live in a separate program. It should be embedded into:
2. Focus on what impacts safety
Not every aspect of mental health needs to be owned by safety, but some should be. Prioritize factors that influence:
Prioritizing the support of these conditions can make employees safer and helps champion the work of safety professionals.
3. Move beyond one-time resources
Toolkits, webinars and awareness campaigns are important, but targeted action is needed to champion the true potential of their impact. The goal isn’t just to inform, it’s to change how decisions are made on the job.
Organizations need:
4. Use a systems approach
Mental health challenges don’t exist in isolation; they’re shaped by how workflows are designed. Grounding efforts in frameworks like Total Worker Health can help organizations with:
This shifts the focus to improving workplace systems in a way that prioritizes the wellbeing of everyone.
Put Mental Health into Practice with the NSC Workplace Wellbeing Hub
For organizations ready to move from awareness to implementation, the NSC Workplace Wellbeing Hub offers practical tools and guidance to help employers address mental health as part of a broader safety and wellbeing strategy. The Hub helps safety professionals identify gaps, strengthen policies and benefits, support supervisors and connect mental health efforts to everyday workplace practices. Rather than treating mental health as a standalone initiative, the Hub is designed to help organizations incorporate wellbeing best practices into the EHS systems that protect workers every day.
A Constantly Evolving Space
Much of this work is still evolving. Most organizations are not following a clear, established blueprint, and there is no single solution that neatly addresses mental health in the workplace. Instead, many employers are learning by real-time testing approaches, refining strategies and figuring out what meaningful implementation looks like within their own environments. We are seeing now a shift away from standalone programs and one-time initiatives, and toward more integrated strategies that connect mental health to broader workplace systems, safety practices and organizational decision-making.
The conversation is also moving beyond awareness alone. More organizations are beginning to focus on implementation — asking not just how to talk about mental health, but how to build policies, practices and guardrails that reduce risk and strengthen worker wellbeing in practical ways.
Mental Health Awareness Month is an important observance and a valuable motivator, but it should not be the endpoint. Real progress depends on what happens after the campaigns, the newsletters and the conversations. It requires organizations to take a closer look at how mental health risks are showing up in the workplace and how those risks may influence safety, performance, retention and overall wellbeing. It means asking harder questions:
Ultimately, this is about more than raising awareness or signaling support. It is about building workplaces that are better equipped to both protect employees from hazards and prioritize wellbeing so employees can feel and do their best in and outside the workplace.
With a century-long legacy, the National Safety Council is a global center for safety expertise. Let's work together to align resources. We look forward to learning about ways we can join efforts to expand safety everywhere!
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