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Mental health and wellbeing risks in UK financial and professional service

Explore the rising mental health risks in financial and professional services sector. Implement strategies to support employee wellbeing and enhance workplace resilience.
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By Stephen Hempenstall , 

Professional Services Industry Leader, Mercer Marsh Benefits

07/10/2024 · 4 minute read

Employee mental health and wellbeing risks continue to increase, with over 60% of financial and professional services workers worldwide reporting undue stress and mental health concerns, according to Mercer’s People Risk 2024 report. In the UK, factors such as the cost-of-living crisis and record NHS waiting lists have made it increasingly difficult for employees to cope, be resilient, and perform work duties successfully. It is crucial that organisations address these risks and provide comprehensive mental health and wellbeing policies to support their employees.

Advantages of addressing mental health within the workplace

According to the Mercer report, human resources and risk or insurance leaders in the financial and professional services industry rank mental health deterioration as the fourth most pressing people risk impacting their businesses. Furthermore, within these sectors, 80% of employees feel at risk of burnout in the next 12 months.

The UK’s Health and Safety Executive has emphasised the need for organisations to make mental health and wellbeing a top priority and set out key actions they can take to address work-related stress. Many organisations have taken these recommendations on board, introducing mental health first aiders, line manager training, and digital apps to improve mental health and resilience.

However, this support may not be addressing mental health risks effectively, as mental health-related absence and healthcare claims continue to increase — contributing to growing workforce costs within organisations.

Proactively addressing employee mental health and wellbeing can provide various benefits to organisations. A robust and embedded wellbeing strategy can:

  • Increase workforce morale and job satisfaction
  • Reduce employee sickness absences and presenteeism
  • Decrease employee stress and anxiety
  • Reduce staff turnover

Additionally, from a wider business perspective, sound mental health and wellbeing strategies can improve brand reputation, customer service, and productivity within organisations.

How to improve mental health and wellbeing policies

Typically, organisations that effectively support their employees promote collaboration between their risk, insurance, and human resource functions to facilitate the sharing and analysis of data. This helps leaders identify, measure, and target key health risks before investing time, effort, and resources into initiatives that may not succeed in mitigating risks. This approach helps ensure policies have a greater impact on employees, while maximising return on investment (ROI) for organisations.

The implementation of a data-driven, evidence-based approach has shown significant success in improving mental health outcomes for the workforces of our clients. As demonstrated in a Public Health England study, applying this strategy and methodology can help clients reduce both mental health-related absences and healthcare claims. 

How to improve mental health and wellbeing within your organisation

There are a number of key steps business leaders can take to improve the mental health resilience of their workforce, including:

  • Establish a clear strategy — actively promoted by the leadership team — to break the stigma surrounding mental health in the workplace.
  • Conduct an assessment of the organisation’s existing mental health and wellbeing best practices and initiatives that includes an evaluation of how well they are integrated and promoted and participation.
  • Use a data-driven approach to identify and monitor key health risks.
  • Support line managers with training on empathy, resilience, recognising early warning signs of poor mental health, and signposting the organisation’s benefits and resources.
  • Collect and integrate employee feedback from surveys, focus groups, and feedback sessions into policies and tailor available benefits and resources to address their needs.
  • Customise internal communications to ease access to available resources.
  • Review and ensure clinical pathways to treatment are in place.
  • Ensure support is aligned with the organisations’ purpose, values, and wider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies.

Marsh McLennan provides advisory services that can help your organisation establish policies and strategies to protect your workforce.

To discuss how to mitigate employee mental health and wellbeing risks within your organisation, please reach out to your Marsh McLennan contact.

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