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Designing Good Work

Help your employees to understand their role in positive mental wellbeing. Help build confidence in your team and reduce stigma. These tasks can be tackled in any order to allow you to develop and embed best practice in workplace mental health within your organisation.

Designing good work starts with actively mitigating psychological risks and workplace hazards. By identifying stressors and providing secure, confidential environments, employers protect psychological safety and prevent employee burnout.

Beyond safety, businesses must structure sustainable roles that offer flexibility, fair rewards, and autonomy. Adapting jobs to fit diverse life stages ensures work remains rewarding, manageable, and balanced.

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Tasks

Task
Protect people from harm at work

This action proactively safeguards employees by mitigating workplace hazards and misconduct. By clarifying roles, managing workloads, and normalising help-seeking, employers foster a secure, transparent culture that actively prevents burnout and protects psychological safety.

Task
Create a safe and supportive environment that protects mental health.

This action fosters an open, respectful, and confidential workplace culture. By providing private spaces, encouraging safe discussions, and offering flexibility, employers build an inclusive environment where individuals feel secure being themselves and seeking support without judgment.

Task
Support flexible ways of working

This action champions work-life balance by adapting hours, locations, and roles to meet evolving personal needs. Supporting hybrid options, life-stage transitions, and phased retirement helps employees manage external pressures, effectively reducing workplace stress and boosting long-term mental well-being.

Task
Ensure work is consistent, fair and rewarding for everyone

This action cultivates an equitable and motivating workplace through fair recruitment, objective decision-making, and clear progression paths. By recognizing employee contributions and adapting roles to individual needs, employers boost confidence, build resilience, and ensure a fulfilling career journey.

Task
Adapt jobs to support good mental health

This action focuses on creating sustainable, high-quality roles that protect mental well-being. By defining expectations clearly, enabling autonomy, and setting healthy boundaries, employers ensure manageable workloads while empowering managers to champion balance and foster a safe environment for open communication.

Identify and reduce risks to mental health at work

This action proactively protects employee well-being by identifying and mitigating psychological hazards. Through targeted risk assessments, employers uncover workplace stressors such as excessive workloads or unclear roles, taking direct action to eliminate stress triggers while equipping staff with resources to manage pressure.

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Employer Spotlight

Full Circle Funerals

Working in a sector where exposure to grief, loss and trauma is part of everyday work, Full Circle recognises the importance of creating a workplace where employee mental health is proactively supported alongside the needs of the people it serves.

The Toolkit