The results of the study, which were published in PLOS ONE, showed a strong association between mental health training for line managers and improved staff recruitment and retention, better customer service, and lower levels of long-term mental health sickness absence.

The study was led by Principal Investigator Professor Holly Blake from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham and Dr Juliet Hassard from Queen’s Business School.

Dr Hassard said: “Encouraging employers to invest in employee mental health can be challenging. Knowing that improving line managers’ knowledge, skills and confidence in managing mental health at work is linked to better business outcomes will help to highlight the strategic value of this approach to employers.”

Professor Blake commented: “Mental ill-health at work is costly to organisations in terms of sickness absence and lost productivity. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that training line managers in mental health is linked to better business outcomes. This is an important finding that strengthens the business case for why employers should invest in mental health at work.”

In the UK one in six workers experience mental health challenges, with 12.7% of all sick days attributed to mental ill-health. The estimated cost of poor employee mental health to UK employers is over £50 billion, annually.

The research team analysed anonymised survey data from several thousand companies in England collected between 2020 and 2023 by the Enterprise Research Centre at Warwick Business School as a part of a larger programme of research on workplace mental health and productivity. The survey included questions about the companies’ mental health and well-being practices, including whether they offered mental health training to line managers. To avoid errors in their analysis, the researchers statistically controlled for the age, sector, and size of the companies. 

Based on their findings, the researchers recommend that organisations provide mental health training to line managers and establish workplace policies clarifying the role of line managers’ in supporting employee mental health, with ongoing research exploring whether such training increases the knowledge, skills and confidence of managers. However, few studies have addressed its potential business value for companies.

The research team outline the need for further research in this area, including looking into different approaches to delivering mental health training for line managers.

The full research paper can be found here at: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306065

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