May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

If you want your employees to be healthy, it’s important to remember that mental health is a part of their overall well-being. Mental health includes emotional, psychological, and social well-being, meaning it impacts multiple areas of one’s life. It also impacts how individuals feel, think, act, and relate to others.

Given that each year, millions of people in the UK face the reality of living with a mental illness, it’s an ideal time to bring the topic up in the workplace.

That’s why we’ve compiled this list of 15 simple mental health awareness month activities as food for thought to support your teams and help break the taboo about mental ill-health in your workplaces.

When mental health awareness is brought into the spotlight with lighthearted yet intentional activities, it can have a profound impact on your staff. This list is only a starting point. Ask your staff how your company can better cover mental health in the workplace. Their responses are always the ones that will count the most.

Mental Health Awareness Month Activities For SMEs

1.   Host a stress reduction workshop and/or share anti-stress resources

Stress hormones trigger the body’s “fight or flight response,” which when left untreated can cause chronic physical and emotional issues. Stress can trigger health woes that include everything from headaches to heartburn and irritability to insomnia and allergies. Consider hosting a stress-reducing activity workshop this month. Your staff will benefit from knowing there are healthy ways to handle stress!

2.   Have a well-being day

Host a day dedicated to well-being activities and exploration.  Send an email to advise staff to block out a few chunks of hours specifically for a wellbeing break be they at home or back in the office.

If you’re teams are back working in the office, you can keep it as simple as a mini wellness benefits review with a light breakfast and equally light workday. Or, have a variety of well-being stations set-up for your staff. A hydration station with fruit-infused water, a colouring book station, a local gym rep in to help with nutrition and exercise planning,  a quiet meditation area, and an area for stretching are all easy ideas for a simple yet refreshing well-being day.

Crafting is also shown to reduce depression, anxiety, and increase happiness. For a fun and lighthearted Mental Health Awareness Month activity, consider hosting a series of DIY workshops. Anything from making soap and bath bombs to wood carving or painting makes for a great team activity that also works wonders for mental health. Your employees can meet up at a local craft studio or your company can hire a local artisan to teach a workshop, depending on your budget.

3.  Create an interactive notice board & share useful resources

Notice boards in the workplace don’t need to be boring. Get creative with your hallway bulletins or online forums by turning them into an engaging Mental Health Awareness Month activity. You can print resources, add fact sheets and helpful resource links, and inspirational quotes to the boards.  Additionally, you can pose questions that require employees to write their thoughts right on the board. Some ideas of questions to include: “What made you smile today?” or “What’s your favourite activity to blow off steam?”or “What are you grateful for?”

4. Encourage physical activity

Host a tai chi or karate instructor on site for the day. Throughout the day, have the instructor offer mini lessons for individuals and/or group classes. Physical sports like karate can build confidence and strength, along with a new exercise routine. If they can, see if the instructor will supply small wood boards for a “breaking boards event” that can easily be a confidence training exercise for your team members.

5.   Shorten default meeting lengths

Flying from one meeting straight into the next is physically and emptionally taxing and yet extremely commonplace.  Facilitate staff having mini mindfulness and comfort breaks between meetings by shortening your default internal meeting sessions from the standard 30/60 minutes to 25/50 minutes.  Even a micro break of 90 seconds can do wonders for well-being.  You can also use apps to display mindfulness screen savers or serve well-being tips to your employees in these breaks.

6.   Host a brew event

Bring a mental health advocate in for a morning tea or coffee event. Host a healthy breakfast and invite your staff to come in and listen to a local psychologist or mental health professional. They can host a Q-and-A session about stress, anxiety, or any number of mental health topics. Or, ask for a specific theme to be covered like stress management techniques or sleep optimisation.

7. Have an outdoor event day

Research proves that outdoor green spaces are good for mental health as is social connection. Those who spend time outdoors will find they have reduced stress, anxiety, and depression.  Consider hosting a special event like an outdoor field day. Set up a variety of team building activities — like rounders, hula hoop contests, giant outdoor jenga, egg races, and water balloon tosses — to generate laughs and encourage physical movement.

8. Discuss mental health

Mental health discussions are very inportant to help normalise and de-stigmatise. When leadership asks questions beyond, “Hi, how are you?” it starts a different dialogue. Questions like, “How are you feeling today?” or “How have you been spending your time?” are great ways to open up windows to mental health discussions.

If you’re still feeling resistance from your employees to have open mental health discussions, perhaps feeling willing to open up a little and share your own mental health journey will encourage others to as well.

9.  Gratitude challenge

A regular gratitude practice is shown to improve optimism and improve mood. Those who do it on a consistent basis tend to feel better overall. Ask your employees to take part in a gratitude challenge. This can be as simple as journaling about three things they’re grateful for each evening. Or, you can have a virtual or in-person bulletin board where individuals leave anonymous notes of what they’re grateful for.

10. Wellness gift exchange

A wellness gift exchange is a great opportunity to actively involve your employees in a wellness event. Ask your team members to purchase a small gift (e.g. under £10 ) that can help mental health. You can set it up like a Secret Santa gift exchange. Or, have individuals wrap the gifts without tags and place them on a table. Anyone who participates can stop by throughout a designated day to pick up their gift. Ideas for gifts may include stress balls, stress “play dough,” self-help books, a candle, a spa gift set, etc.

11.  Free onsite massage

Massage is proven to reduce both physical and emotional stress, and taster session free 15 -20 minute massages could be ideal.  If you are low on budget you could call a local massage school to see if your company can host students for a massage day.

If you have a remote team, consider sending them gift vouchers to visit a local massage therapist for a stress-reducing activity.

12. Giveaway wellness items

When your employees take care of their well-being, their mental health benefits.  A fun Mental Health Awareness Month activity for employers and employees alike includes giveaways. Throughout the month, randomly surprise your employees with useful wellness items or subscriptions.  Giveaway items like subscriptions to meditation apps, free pass to come in late for a whole week, a duvet day, positive self-help books or magazines, or even a spa getaway, if your budget allows.

13. Host well-being Wednesdays

Whether your team is remote or in-house, you could consider offering a day a week or even just a rotational day a month between teams for time off to invest in ones own well-being – that could be to learn a new hobby or skill, attend a class, do some exercise, sit in fresh air, read wellbeing resources, or simply catch up on sleep.

Using these days to offer self-help techniques can help improve morale and workplace attitudes.

14.   Promote random acts of kindness and appreciation

Research shows that doing a kind act for another person is beneficial to mental health. Not only does it provide a momentary happiness boost to the person receiving it, the person showing kindness also benefits. Showing kindness — whether it’s by helping out on a project or answering the phone for someone — can boost optimistic feelings, confidence, and happiness. It may also have a domino effect that encourages others to show kindness, too.

Ensure you have a recognition mechanism in place to call out and appreciate people in your teams who show kindness.

15.   Promote regular check-ins

Psychological safety at work relies upon people feeling that there is transparency, trust, openness and belonging.  Managers who shy away from giving honest, meaningful feedback at work (both praise when praise is due, and having developmental discussions) and who fail to check-in regularly on team members to understand their wellbeing and mental health; will be the ones whose team members begin to perform sub optimally.  Training your managers in how to hold effective 1:1s and to deliver feedback, and providing them with the tools to support effective performance and wellbeing conversations is a central part of many wellformed wellbeing strategies.

This post offered 15 simple — yet effective — ways to bring mental health awareness into the workplace to destigmatise the issue and encourage workers to get the help they may need.  If you would like more help planning for your Mental Health Awareness month, or developing your wellbeing strategy please do get in touch, always happy to help 🙂