Mental health awareness training: a free pack for your staff
A staff session, a quiz and training record, and a rollout guide on mental health and stress at work, built on HSE's guidance and NICE's guideline on mental wellbeing at work, and free by email. Or have us tailor it and run it for your staff and managers, on a branded company site, £9.99 + VAT per employee.
No law names mental health awareness training. You must protect your staff from work-related stress by assessing the risk and acting on it, and NICE recommends including mental health awareness in manager training.
Take the free pack and run it yourself, or have us tailor it and run it for you: a branded company site with your training content, every member of staff invited and reminded by email, and a dated certificate for every completion, £9.99 + VAT per employee.
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| Is training required? | No law names it. The law makes you assess the risk of work-related stress and act on it. |
| Who needs it? | All staff: NICE recommends increasing mental health literacy across your workplace, and mental health awareness in manager training. |
| What should it cover? | For managers’ training, its guideline suggests topics such as how to talk about mental wellbeing, early warning signs, where to get help and stigma. |
| How often? | No law sets an interval. The guideline recommends regular refresher training for managers in line management and communication skills. |
| What else should you do? | Tackle the causes of stress at work, and consider mental health in your first aid needs assessment. |
What the law expects of your training
No law names mental health awareness training. Your duties come from health and safety law and the Equality Act 2010:
- Assess and act on stress. Employers have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it, HSE says, the same duty as for any other health and safety risk. Its Management Standards cover six areas of work design that affect stress levels: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change.
- Treat mental ill health like any other risk. Where work causes or worsens a mental health problem, assess the risk to your staff, and remove or reduce it as far as is reasonably practicable.
- Make reasonable adjustments. A mental health condition can be a disability under the Equality Act when it has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on someone’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, and the duty to make reasonable adjustments applies to you as an employer once you know, or could reasonably be expected to know, that the person has a disability and is likely to be put at a substantial disadvantage.
HSE also advises that your first aid needs assessment considers the need to support workers who might become ill at work because of a mental health issue.
In England, NICE’s 2022 guideline for employers on mental wellbeing at work sets out good practice on training. Its recommendations aren’t mandatory:
- Build mental health literacy across your workplace, as part of a supportive culture.
- Train managers, with regular refreshers, in line management and communication skills: listening, communicating clearly, understanding and empathising.
- Cover the conversation. For managers’ mental health training, the guideline suggests topics such as how to talk with someone about their mental wellbeing, including in a crisis, early warning signs, where to get help, and stigma.
- Check it works. Evaluate how managers’ mental health training affects staff, for example through surveys or focus groups, and use what you learn in future training.
Thriving at Work, an independent review the government commissioned in 2017, recommends six core standards for every employer, whatever its size or industry, among them developing mental health awareness among employees and effective people management through line managers. The Equality Act and the 1999 health and safety regulations cover England, Scotland and Wales.
Two ways to get your staff and managers trained
Run the free pack yourself, or have us tailor the training to your organisation and run it for you.
Free
Complete the general training template: staff slides with speaker notes, a quiz and a rollout guide, to deliver however suits you.
Not included
- Tailoring to your organisation
- A branded company site
- Emails, reminders or chases to your staff
- Dated certificates or a list of who has completed it, kept for you
- Manager training
PowerPoint slides and Word documents.
Request received
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£9.99 + VAT per employee
We tailor the training content to your organisation, its processes and likely scenarios, and run it for all your staff.
Included
- Distinct manager and employee training
- A branded company site with your training content loaded for all staff to complete
- Every member of staff emailed for you
- Reminders and chases automated for you
- A dated certificate for every person who completes it
Audio or video, or a format to upload into your own learning or training hub.
Request received
Thanks. Our team will be in touch within one working day with follow-up questions to tailor the training to your organisation.
Could not send that request
Something went wrong on our side. Please try again, or use our contact form and our team will be in touch.
What the training covers
Staff session:
- Mental health and mental wellbeing: what they mean, and common conditions such as anxiety and depression
- Stress: what it is, how it links to mental ill health, and the six areas of work that affect it
- Spotting the signs that someone may be struggling, in yourself and in colleagues
- Starting a conversation about mental health: listening, and being clear about confidentiality
- Stigma, fair treatment and reasonable adjustments
- Suicidal thoughts: the warning signs and how to encourage someone to get help
- Where to get support, at work and outside it
- Looking after your own mental wellbeing at work
What Skills for Care and the Care Certificate expect
In health and social care in England, three sets of guidance are relevant:
- Skills for Care’s training guide. For adult social care employers, it puts each worker’s own mental health and personal wellbeing in the health and safety awareness training every care worker needs, with a minimum refresher period of three years.
- The Care Certificate. Its standards set out what health and social care workers who are new to care need to know and do. Standard 9 covers awareness of mental health and dementia in the people they support, including common mental health conditions, early signs that someone’s mental health is getting worse, reasonable adjustments to their care, and where to signpost them for support.
- CQC’s guidance on regulation 18. It expects staff to take part in statutory training and the mandatory training you set for their role, and asks you to monitor what they complete and act quickly when someone falls behind.
The staff session covers mental health at work: it leaves out dementia and caring for people who use your service. An assessor checks what each worker knows and does, so neither option awards the Care Certificate.
After the training
Tackle the causes of stress. NICE advises against using individual approaches in place of organisation-wide action on the causes of stress at work. Your stress risk assessment is where that action starts: our stress risk assessment guide shows how to run one.
Make support easy to find. Tell staff who they can talk to, such as their line manager, a trade union representative, their GP or occupational health, HSE suggests. NICE advises smaller employers to consider free access to an employee assistance programme and occupational health, and to make sure staff know about them.
Measure what changes. Monitor and evaluate the support you provide at least once a year, with a relevant evaluation tool, the guideline recommends.
Plan refreshers. No law sets an interval for mental health training. Our training management software escalates refreshers before they lapse.
Our bullying and harassment and equality and diversity training guides each come with a free pack.
Common questions
Is mental health awareness training a legal requirement?
No law names it. Employers have a legal duty to protect staff from work-related stress by assessing the risk and acting on it, HSE says, and the Equality Act's duty to make reasonable adjustments can apply to staff with a mental health condition. NICE recommends including mental health awareness in manager training.
Who should have mental health awareness training?
All staff. NICE recommends increasing mental health literacy across the workplace, and the Thriving at Work review recommends that every employer develops mental health awareness among its employees. For managers, NICE adds mental health awareness to their training.
What should mental health awareness training cover?
Our staff session covers what mental health and wellbeing mean, common conditions, stress and its causes at work, the signs that someone may be struggling, how to start a conversation, and where to get help. For managers' training, NICE suggests topics such as how to talk with someone about their mental wellbeing, including in a crisis, early warning signs, where to get help, and stigma.
Is stress a mental health condition?
No. HSE says stress can make people ill: prolonged stress can lead to anxiety and depression, and it can make an existing mental health problem worse. The two often go together, and their symptoms can look alike.
Can a mental health condition be a disability?
Yes, under the Equality Act 2010, when it has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on someone's ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Long-term means it has lasted, or is likely to last, at least 12 months, or for the rest of the person's life. The Act's duty to make reasonable adjustments applies to you as an employer once you know, or could reasonably be expected to know, that the person has a disability and is likely to be put at a substantial disadvantage.
Does the training cover suicide awareness?
The staff session covers the signs that someone may be struggling and how to encourage them to get help, from HSE's guidance on suicide prevention, which suggests their GP, an employee assistance programme, Samaritans or someone they trust. It isn't a full suicide prevention course.
How often should staff refresh mental health training?
No law sets an interval. NICE recommends regular refresher training for managers in line management and communication skills. In adult social care, Skills for Care's guide puts each worker's own mental health and wellbeing in the health and safety awareness training every care worker needs, with a minimum refresher period of three years.
What's in the free mental health awareness training pack?
Three editable files: a staff session (PowerPoint, with speaker notes), a quiz with answers and a training record to sign (Word), and a rollout guide (Word). Manager training comes with the tailored training.
What's the difference between the free pack and the tailored training?
The free pack is the template: three editable files you fill in, present and record yourself, with one staff session for everyone, no manager training and no certificate of completion. We build the tailored training for your organisation and run it for you: distinct manager and employee training, a branded company site with your training content, every member of staff invited by email and reminded until they complete it, and a dated certificate for every completion.
References
- HSE: Work-related stress and how to manage it
- HSE: Mental health conditions, work and the workplace
- HSE: Suicide prevention
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, section 2: general duties of employers to their employees
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, regulation 3: risk assessment
- Equality Act 2010, section 6: disability
- Equality Act 2010, schedule 1, paragraph 2: long-term effects
- Equality Act 2010, section 20: duty to make adjustments
- Equality Act 2010, schedule 8, paragraph 20: lack of knowledge of disability
- Equality Act 2010, section 39: employees and applicants
- NICE: Mental wellbeing at work (NG212), recommendations
- Thriving at Work: the Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers (2017)
- Skills for Care: Statutory and mandatory training guide for adult social care employers (December 2025)
- Skills for Care: Care Certificate standards (updated March 2025)
- CQC: Regulation 18, staffing
General information, not legal advice. It reflects our understanding of the law and official guidance as of November 2026, so check the sources above for the current position.