Jodie Carris
Founder & CEO, Self Space
Organisations that prioritise human wellbeing through proactive, everyday mental maintenance reduce volatility, strengthen retention, protect growth and drive competitive advantage.
Workplaces are under strain, with employees feeling tired or burnt out, managers fire-fighting and digital overload causing stress and anxiety. We also spend so much time at work that the boundaries between personal and professional become blurred.
None of this is good for mental health, but it’s also bad for business. In fact, Deloitte estimates that poor mental health costs UK employers £51 billion a year.1
A staggering £24 billion1 comes from ‘presenteeism,’ where employees are physically present but emotionally absent. When mental health is managed reactively, managers struggle quietly, performance falters, growth slows, culture fractures, and everyone pays.
“Then the workplace becomes a symbol of negativity, so the cycle continues, resentment builds and you feel disillusioned,” explains Jodie Cariss, Founder & CEO, Self Space, which delivers mental health support to organisations via one-to-one therapy and coaching, therapist-led workshops, training and cultural consultancy.“Whereas if you can turn up to work as yourself and know that support is in place, it helps you engage.”
When therapy feels like a conversation, and leaders fix the way work works, people use it, and everyone wins
Everyday maintenance for individuals, managers, leaders and the business
Workplace mental health support is often too fragmented, too ‘tick box’ and too reactive; and mental distress is often treated as ‘an individual resilience problem,’ rather than an issue shaped by workload.
Instead, Cariss insists that the strongest organisations don’t wait for a crisis; they move from reactive support to proactive mental maintenance with “human-first” interventions such as therapy and coaching, led by clinical experts and immediately accessible.
“Across mental health, people often treat the symptom but not the cause,” she says. “We need to treat the cause, so there’s longevity to change.” This is mental maintenance in action.
Crucially, it must operate across every layer of an organisation, including individuals, managers, teams and culture. This is systemic change, so leadership is central to its success.
“Are leaders adopting and participating in what we’re offering?” asks Cariss. “It all filters down from the top. When therapy feels like a conversation, and leaders fix the way work works, people use it, and everyone wins.”
[1] Deloitte. (2024). Poor mental health costs UK employers £51 billion a year for employees. https://tinyurl.com/56zp9rys.
