According to the annual Gallup employee engagement survey, 70% of the variance in how engaged an employee is can be put down to their line manager. At Suffolk Mind, we find it’s the same for workplace wellbeing.

The biggest impact on someone’s mental health in the workplace is their line manager. You can have mental health champions and first aiders, marking World Mental Health Day, and signing up to pledges to have more conversations. But unless we enable and encourage better skills and attitudes from line managers, we’re never going to make the real shift in workplace wellbeing – or staff engagement – that we need to make.

Conversations around mental health are rightly becoming a more common feature of our day-to-day lives – opening the doors to more supportive and caring communities. But one area where those conversations aren’t quite so commonplace is in the office.

That’s what we’re committed to changing at Suffolk Mind through our workplace training arm The Mental Health Toolkit.

No matter how much we love our jobs, we know every day isn’t a walk in the park. And we know it simply isn’t possible to shut out what might be happening in our personal lives for eight hours a day.

All of us have mental health. We all find ourselves on what we call the Mental Health Continuum, a spectrum in which our position is ever changing depending on the things and feelings we are experiencing.

On one side of the continuum we feel mentally well, while on the other we are likely to experience mental health challenges. Stress opens the doors to mental ill health, which is why we refer to it as the “crossover point” on the continuum.

The way we can influence our position – and how our colleagues and line managers can too – is by taking our physical and emotional needs into account.

These are a set of 12 needs all humans share that directly impact our mental health. The extent to which we meet these needs can all be affected by our work life, and particularly the actions of our line manager.

Examples include: Achievement – getting things done; Status – that good feeling we all experience when we are recognised for the work we complete; and Meaning & Purpose –  knowing that you are working towards a shared goal with your colleagues.

The place workers and employers alike should want to find themselves on the continuum is in a state we call “stretched”. It’s a place where you feel you are motivated, are achieving and are in a safe space outside of your comfort zone.

In the workplace, feeling stretched means you are learning, growing and developing without being stressed and in danger of burn-out. It also means you are being challenged enough in a healthy way to avoid the opposite of burn-out: rust-out.

We cover all of these topics for free on our website, although those looking to put their workplace wellbeing strategy into practice should consider our workplace training.

This is delivered under The Mental Health Toolkit banner through a plethora of packages tailored to fit your needs. And you can sign up to a free half day session to try it out by emailing hello@thementalhealthtoolkit.co.uk

Let’s make 2026 the year we all make steps to improve workplace wellbeing.

Article by Jon Neal.