In the UK, mental ill-health is the leading cause of sickness absence, costing employers approximately £2.4 billion each year with 70 million workdays lost. Despite this crisis, mental health and wellbeing programmes in the workplace are often determined by anecdotal evidence rather than research, and are dependent on each individual company’s commitment to their staff.

At this crucial time in the lives of the UK’s workforce, where the disruption of the pandemic has thrown many working practices into flux, it’s now more than ever that we need robust, research-led programmes and interventions to identify the key elements of mentally healthy workplaces in order to build back stronger for the future.

Lea Milligan, CEO of MQ: Mental Health Research, the UK’s leading mental health research charity, joins us to talk about MQ’s innovative new Workplace Mental Health Research Programme. He’ll talk about the launch of MQ’s Workplace Mental Health Challenge Fund and share how the programme hopes to both guide employers on how to most effectively track and monitor the mental health of their workforce, as well as identify key factors that businesses should put in place to create working environments that enable staff to thrive.