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Designing good work

Adapt jobs to support good mental health

Suggested Actions

Shape and adjust workloads, work pace and job demands to keep them sustainable

Examples of these demands can be emotional demands, conflicting priorities, difficult interactions and long hours

Design good quality jobs that support mental health
Enable autonomy and self-direction at work where appropriate
Define roles, responsibilities and expectations clearly and accessibly
Make it safe and expected for people to speak up when workload feels unmanageable
Set clear boundaries around working time and expectations to support a healthy work/life balance
Ensure managers put good job design into practice through how they lead and support people day to day

Resources & Downloads


Wellness Actions Plans are an easy, practical way of helping you support your own mental health at work.

And if you're a manager, they allow you to support the mental health of your team members.

Reasonable adjustments are changes an employer makes to remove or reduce a disadvantage related to someone's disability. They are specific to an individual person and they can be for physical or mental health conditions. They can also cover any area of work.

If a worker has poor mental health, it's important their employer takes it seriously and with the same care as a physical illness. Stress is not classed as a medical condition. But it can still be serious and cause, or make worse, other mental health conditions.

This is an independent research paper produced by Dr Joanna Yarker, Alice Sinclair, Dr Emma Donaldson-Feilder and Dr Rachel Lewis of Affinity Health at Work, a workplace health and wellbeing consultancy and research group.

Research shows that many of us would like to work more flexibly. Lack of flexibility can even prompt some employees to look for a new job or even leave a sector altogether. Quality flexible working can help:

Kelly and Hester Grainger are the co-founders of Perfectly Autistic, and have years of experience of different workplace cultures and are both neurodivergent. Kelly was diagnosed as autistic at 44 and with ADHD at 45. Hester was diagnosed with ADHD when she was 43.

October is ADHD Awareness Month with the 2024 theme of ‘Awareness is Key’. In honour of the awareness month, Leeds Mindful Employer Network is highlighting a free new resource by the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and Touchtone.

ADHD can be a disability under the Equality Act 2010, if the condition has a substantial and long-term negative effect on an individual’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
This guidance provides a summary of information for employers to help increase their understanding of disability and enable them recruit and support disabled people and those with long term health conditions in work
Employer Spotlight

Leeds Beckett University

Leeds Beckett University has worked hard to create a strong business case for mental health as evidenced by their long-standing external commitments to mental health as a Mindful Employer

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