In 1974, as Parliament debated the Health and Safety at Work Bill, Secretary of State for Employment Michael Foot made the intention clear:
“We understand that mental distress or affliction arising from work will be as much covered as other items in the Bill.”(1)
More than 50 years later, many professionals are still trying to establish where responsibility for psychological health belongs. Meanwhile, those leading workplace wellbeing are frustrated by the effort required to connect colleagues whose responsibilities should already bring them together.
A duty we must put in to practice
GMB’s 2024 review of the Act’s first 50 years highlights a revealing detail: work-related mental ill health was investigated during the Robens review, yet the final report made only passing references to it. Mental health was understood to matter, but that understanding did not become a sufficiently clear foundation for practice.
The scale demands our attention. HSE estimates (2) that work-related stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 22.1 million working days lost in Great Britain in 2024/25, representing 62% of days lost to work-related ill health.
Employers already have a legal duty to assess work-related stress risks and act on their findings (3). Mental health is health. Employers’ duty under the Act to protect health at work, so far as is reasonably practicable, includes mental health. It has always been part of that duty. Over the past 50 years, workplace culture has too often separated it from everyday health and safety practice, leaving professionals to reconnect responsibilities that belong together. We need to make that responsibility work consistently inside organisations.
Adding wellbeing requires more than changing a title
I welcome wellbeing becoming more explicit within HR, occupational health and health and safety roles. Each profession has expertise that can contribute to healthier working conditions. That expansion needs to come with clarity about responsibilities, professional development and the authority to act.
A health, safety and wellbeing manager needs to understand how wellbeing fits within their remit. An occupational health professional needs opportunities to connect clinical insight with prevention. HR needs to connect people policies and management practice with the conditions affecting health.
A wider job description does not automatically create the competence, capacity or organisational backing required to lead prevention. We need to recognise what professionals already bring, then identify the additional learning and relationships their expanding remit requires.
For wellbeing leads, the frustration often sits between those functions. They may be expected to coordinate a strategy while decisions about workloads, staffing and management sit elsewhere. Progress then depends on repeatedly negotiating cooperation, alongside delivering their own responsibilities.
We cannot expect professionals working separately to resolve problems created across the whole experience of work.
Prevention needs a shared understanding
The GMB report also challenges the tendency to treat mental health difficulties as personal matters that workers should manage themselves. We have seen many organisations become very good at responding to individual distress while leaving the working conditions contributing to it untouched.
Consider an organisation where HR monitors absence, occupational health advises on adjustments, health and safety assesses risks and the wellbeing lead coordinates support. Each holds useful insight. Bringing those insights together can help identify recurring pressures and agree what needs to change.
That means bringing absence patterns, employee feedback and risk assessment findings into the same conversation. Workers and their representatives need a voice in understanding the problem and shaping the response.
Within that collective approach, employers remain accountable. Senior leaders must authorise changes to working conditions and provide the resources to deliver them. Professionals need agreed responsibilities, a way to escalate concerns and time to review whether action is reducing harm.
Start with one shared priority, such as excessive workload in a particular team. Agree who will examine the causes, who can change the conditions and how employees will know their concerns have led to action. Then review progress together with the people affected.
Collaboration becomes credible when it improves people’s everyday experience of their work.
Start with clarity about your contribution
On Monday 23 November 2026, from 12–1pm GMT, I’m delivering a free online CPD masterclass, Reframing Wellbeing as Part of Occupational Safety and Health.
Designed for occupational safety and health professionals, it will explore where wellbeing fits within their roles, practical first steps and collaboration with HR, occupational health and wellbeing colleagues.
The session includes a 45-minute keynote, Q&A and a 28-page eBook. CPD certificates are provided to those attending the full hour.
Register for your free place and share the invitation with the colleagues whose contribution can help turn shared responsibility into meaningful prevention.
References:
(1) https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1974-04-03/debates/18364ad4-ae9e-4a2c-aeea-9a5e85478fb9/HealthAndSafetyAtWorkEtcBill
(2) https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causdis/stress.htm
(3) https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/risk-assessment.htm
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