May is Mental Health Awareness Month. And if I’m being completely honest? I have some complicated feelings about it.

It’s not that the conversations aren’t vital; they can be life-saving. But it’s incredibly easy to pin a banner to the intranet, blast a resource list, and check “mental health” off the comms calendar for the year.

Then we’re left wondering why burnout is still high, why engagement scores aren’t improving, or why saying “I’m not okay” still feels like a forbidden sentence at work.

One month of awareness doesn’t build a psychologically safe culture. But it can be the place where more intentional conversations begin.

So, in this edition, we’re looking at the micro-moments that actually move the needle and some data that, quite frankly, should probably make all of us pause for a second.

© Walt Disney Studios

We often talk about mental health as an “HR issue,” but the reality is much bigger than that.

More than 1 in 5 U.S. adults lives with a mental health condition, and most of those people are showing up to work every day without saying a word about it. (National Alliance on Mental Illness, 2025)

That means quiet struggles are sitting inside your meetings, your Slack channels, your Zoom calls, and your office hallways every single day.

This isn’t separate from business performance, but deeply connected to it.

• Burnout and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion annually in lost productivity.
  (World Health Organization, 2025)

• 58% of employees have considered quitting specifically because of their mental health. Often, they’re not leaving the work itself; they’re leaving environments where they don’t feel supported.
  (The Workforce State of Mind in 2025)

• Nearly 2 in 5 adults worry they’ll be judged or even fired if they ask for mental health support at work.
  (Center for Workplace Mental Health, 2026)

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The encouraging part is that workplaces are also one of the biggest opportunities for change.

When organizations create environments where people genuinely feel supported, the impact goes far beyond well-being: it improves retention, engagement, trust, and long-term performance too.

🧵    A REFLECTION PROMPT FOR YOU

If someone on your team was quietly struggling right now, would they feel safe telling you? And if the honest answer is “probably not,” what’s one small thing you could change to make that conversation easier?

One thing we’ve noticed working with organizations across industries is that psychological safety rarely comes from policy alone.

It’s built in the everyday micro-moments: how a manager responds when someone says they’re overwhelmed, how leaders talk (or don’t talk) about stress, and whether internal communications make people feel included or invisible.

Here are 3 things we’re seeing make a meaningful difference right now:

1. MAKE YOUR RESOURCES VISIBLE AND NORMAL TO USE.

A lot of organizations already offer strong mental health benefits, whether that’s EAP programs, counselling support, wellness stipends, or flexible resources.

The challenge is that employees either don’t know they exist or worry about the stigma attached to using them.

Talk about mental health resources the same way you’d talk about open enrollment or benefits updates: consistently, proactively, and in the channels employees already use.

Pin them in your employee experience platform. Include them regularly in internal newsletters. Make them easy to find on your intranet.

The goal is to make accessing support feel as normal as booking a dentist appointment, not as loaded as admitting something is wrong.

2. TRAIN YOUR MANAGERS, NOT JUST YOUR EMPLOYEES.

Research from the Center for Workplace Mental Health found that employees who receive mental health training at work are significantly more likely to be engaged, passionate, and excited about their jobs compared to those who don’t.

But training employees alone only goes so far if managers don’t know how to respond when someone reaches out.

Managers don’t need to become therapists.

But they do need to know how to recognize when someone may be struggling, respond with empathy, and guide people toward support without making the conversation uncomfortable or performative.

A thoughtful manager can completely change how safe a workplace feels.

3. BUILD CONVERSATIONS INTO THE CULTURE YEAR-ROUND.

The organizations I see getting this right aren’t waiting for May to address mental health.

They’re weaving it into the employee experience throughout the year through things like ERGs, anonymous pulse surveys, manager check-ins, leadership vulnerability, and internal communications that consistently reinforce: your wellbeing matters here.

One simple practice I really like is adding a quick “mental health moment” into regular 1:1s. It’s not a formal process, but a genuine check-in beyond project updates and deadlines.

One practice we’ve been using at LineZero that I genuinely love is building connection rituals into our team rhythm! Before we dive into project updates, we take 5 minutes for a genuine check-in.

Try this this week:

• Ask one non-work question at the start of your next 1:1.

• Share one personal resource (a podcast episode, an article, a practice) in your internal comms channels with a human, first-person note about why it helps you.

• Celebrate a team win, no matter how small, in your next all-hands.

It sounds small, but the impact is hard-coded into the data: connection is one of the strongest protective factors against burnout.

When people feel like they belong, they perform.

It’s that simple. 

The thread running through all of this? People need to feel like they belong, like they’re seen, and like their humanity matters at work.

Everything else grows from there.

© Walt Disney Studios

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me this month. If you take one thing from this issue, I hope it’s this: you don’t need a perfect mental health program or strategy to make a difference.

Sometimes it starts with one honest conversation that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.

That’s usually where it begins.

Until next time 👋

Victoria Duran

DIGITAL MARKETING SPECIALIST

Connect with me on LinkedIn
📧 vduran@linezero.com