Prioritising mental health at work

Our people work in demanding environments. Early shifts, late finishes, public-facing roles and complex sites across hospitals, schools, airports, government buildings. We create the conditions in which others can thrive. Working in these types of roles can carry real pressure, and for many years the culture across industries like ours didn't make it easy to talk about that. 

Changing culture

Changing that culture has been the work of recent years. We launched a programme called Creating Safe Spaces Together, a deliberate effort to create the conditions where people feel they can speak openly about their mental health without fear of judgement. That shift doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen through a policy document. It takes consistent, visible commitment from leadership, the right language, and support that works for the reality of how our people actually work.

In practice, that has meant a few things. 

• We've trained colleagues at all levels, including around issues like violence and aggression, something that can have a significant and lasting impact on frontline mental wellbeing but is rarely spoken about in this context. 
• We've embedded mental health into the rhythm of everyday working life: toolbox talks, leadership conversations, engagement visits. 
• We've worked hard to make support easy to find, with clear routes to our employee assistance programme and a dedicated hub where people can access resources at any time.

Our partnership with the Mental Health Foundation has been a genuine asset in all of this. It gives us credibility and practicality, resources that carry weight because they're built on real evidence, and materials that speak plainly rather than in corporate health and wellbeing language. The co-branded toolkits, guides and digital booklets we've developed together are built for the realities of shift work and dispersed sites. That matters enormously when you're trying to reach people across hundreds of different locations.

Simplicity and consistency

It hasn't always been straightforward. Breaking down stigma takes time, especially in environments that have historically prized getting on with things. Reaching people who work unsocial hours or across multiple sites requires more thought than a head-office email. And the gap between a well-intentioned initiative and something that actually lands at site level is a challenge every large employer faces. What's worked best for us is keeping things simple, keeping them consistent, and making sure our people feel relevant.

Real progress 

The progress we've seen is real and encouraging. People are speaking up earlier. Peer support has grown stronger. Colleagues are telling us they feel more valued and more able to raise a concern before it becomes a crisis. Stress-related absence has reduced in several areas. These aren't dramatic overnight transformations — they're the result of sustained, ordinary effort, repeated across the business over time.

That's what Action means to us. Not a campaign or an announcement, but a commitment that carries through the whole year. Mental Health Awareness Week gives us a moment to pause, reflect and recommit to that.

Ultimately, for ISS, we believe that people make places. And the people who keep workplaces running deserve to feel supported in their own journeys. That's a simple idea, and it's the one we keep coming back to.