Mental Health Awareness Week 2026
I want to start with something that happened on a Monday morning last month.
A group of corporate volunteers arrived at a primary school with that particular mix of readiness and self-consciousness you often see at the start of a volunteering day. Lanyards on, briefing notes in hand, genuinely wanting to be useful but not entirely sure what the next few hours would ask of them.
By mid-morning, one volunteer was sitting cross-legged on the floor, helping a child find words for something she had clearly been carrying for a while but had never quite been able to name. Another was supporting a group of Year 5s discussing with real thoughtfulness the difference between feeling sad and feeling lonely.
Nobody was thinking about their inbox. That much was clear.
I’ve been reflecting on that morning a lot this Mental Health Awareness Week, because what happened in that classroom wasn’t just meaningful for those children. Something in the experience reached the volunteers too, in ways that are worth understanding.
The wellbeing paradox: Investment is rising, but so are the pressures
Businesses across the UK have invested seriously in employee wellbeing over recent years. Mental health apps, resilience workshops, mindfulness programmes, EAP schemes, awareness campaigns – the range and ambition of wellbeing provision has grown considerably, and much of it comes from a genuine desire to support people better.
Which makes the following numbers genuinely difficult to interpret. Poor mental health now costs UK employers £51 billion annually, with presenteeism alone accounting for £24 billion of that (Deloitte, 2024). Average employee sickness absence has reached 9.4 days per person, the highest level in over fifteen years. Sixty-three percent of UK employees are currently showing signs of burnout, up from 51% just two years ago.
These figures don’t suggest that the wellbeing agenda is wrong or misguided. They do suggest that something about how it’s being delivered may need rethinking.
What a major piece of research found
In 2024, Oxford University researcher Peter Fleming published findings from one of the most comprehensive studies of employee wellbeing programmes conducted in the UK. His team analysed data from 46,336 employees across 233 organisations, examining the measurable impact of the most commonly used wellbeing interventions.
The findings were not what many expected. Across a wide range of programmes including mindfulness apps, resilience training, stress management classes, coaching and time management tools, the study found no measurable improvement in employee mental health or wellbeing outcomes. The study was deliberately designed to detect even modest effects, which makes the result genuinely significant rather than simply inconclusive.
One area stood out as an exception: corporate volunteering. Employees who participated in structured workplace volunteering reported meaningfully better wellbeing outcomes. In a study built to be rigorous and sceptical, it was the single intervention that held up consistently.
This isn’t an isolated finding. A separate 2024 UK study concluded that volunteering may be the most effective wellbeing intervention available to employers across the full range of current programmes. Research from the Mayo Clinic links volunteering to improved mental health, lower stress levels, and stronger workplace relationships. The UK Government (DCMS, 2025) has valued the wellbeing gained through volunteering at £673 per volunteer per year.
None of this is to say that other wellbeing investments should be abandoned. Context matters, and different organisations will have different needs. But the evidence does make a compelling case for looking more seriously at corporate volunteering as part of the mix.
A crisis in our classrooms, and why it matters to business
Running in parallel with the workplace wellbeing picture is a significant and growing challenge in children’s mental health. Referrals of children to NHS-funded mental health services rose 11% in a single year, reaching 829,308 in 2024/25. At the last count, over half a million young people were waiting to start treatment, half of them for more than a year. New urgent referrals to crisis care for under-18s have more than tripled since 2019.
Seventy-four percent of teachers believe poor mental health is negatively impacting their pupils. Most schools simply don’t have the capacity, specialist resource, or time to address it consistently, however much they want to.
Two Conversations That Belong Together
What strikes me about these two situations is how rarely they appear in the same conversation. Workplace wellbeing tends to sit within HR. Children’s mental health is discussed in education policy and health commissioning. When businesses engage with the second issue at all, it’s often through charitable giving rather than direct involvement.
But there is a real opportunity here to connect the two. Businesses looking for more effective ways to support their people’s wellbeing, and schools in urgent need of support with children’s mental health, can find something genuinely valuable in the same programme, in the same room, on the same morning. That’s not a theoretical proposition, it’s what we see happen in practice.
What corporate volunteering in schools can look like
It’s worth being specific about what this means in practice, because corporate volunteering covers a very wide spectrum and the quality of design makes an enormous difference to outcomes.
The work we do with schools is built around a structured, evidence-informed programme developed by education specialists. It focuses on the areas of mental health and wellbeing where children most need support, and where schools most often lack the capacity to deliver it consistently.
The Design Philosophy
The programme rests on a principle that is simple to state but takes real care to deliver: wellbeing isn’t a subject to be taught, it’s a set of skills to be practised. There are no good or bad emotions. Every feeling is valid. What we’re working to build, in children and in the adults alongside them, is the ability to notice what they’re feeling without judgement, and to develop practical tools for responding in ways that help rather than harm.
Volunteers work with children in small groups across a series of stations, each exploring a different dimension of wellbeing: understanding emotions, physical health, connection, and self-regulation. Crucially, before any of this begins, volunteers are properly prepared for the content, the children, and the moments that might call for more than good intentions.
What volunteers take away
I want to speak directly to anyone who has volunteered in this kind of setting or is thinking about it.
The impact on children is real and documented. But what often surprises first-time volunteers is what they bring back with them. The colleague I mentioned at the start of this piece had been navigating a genuinely difficult few months before that Monday morning. She didn’t go to that school to work on her own wellbeing. She went to help. And something in the directness of that, being present, being useful, being the adult a child needed in that moment, gave her something that had proved hard to access in other ways.
What I’ve enjoyed most about today is a complete change of scenery and trying something new and doing something I wouldn’t normally do, little bit out of my comfort zone but actually really enjoying it and being out with my colleagues at the same time. – Volunteer
It’s not the kind of outcome that fits neatly into a line manager’s objectives. But it’s the kind that changes how someone shows up the next morning.
The business case
For HR directors and business leaders, the social impact case for this kind of work tends to be clear. The business case is also substantial, and worth setting out.
Analysis from the Royal Voluntary Service (2025) estimates that employee volunteering could unlock £32.5 billion in productivity gains for the UK economy annually. The majority of firms that engage meaningfully in volunteering report a more motivated, healthier and better-engaged workforce. Employees who experience high levels of wellbeing are three times more likely to stay with their employer and three times more likely to go the extra mile (Great Place to Work, 2024). Nearly 90% of employees say they are more loyal to a company that actively supports social or environmental issues.
One well-designed volunteering day per employee per year delivers better wellbeing outcomes than many programmes that cost considerably more. It also builds skills, deepens team relationships, and demonstrates something that internal communications alone cannot: that the organisation genuinely cares about its people and its community.
Three questions worth asking this week
Mental Health Awareness Week’s theme for 2026 is Action. With that in mind, here are three questions I’d encourage any HR or business leader to reflect on this week.
1. Is your wellbeing spend delivering measurable outcomes? If your budget is weighted towards apps, one-off awareness sessions, and passive programmes, the Fleming research should prompt a genuine review. The question to ask your people is a simple one: do you feel better supported than you did two years ago?
2. Does your volunteering programme have genuine structure, or just good intentions? One day per year per employee, connected to a properly designed programme with a real community need at its heart, consistently delivers better outcomes than many wellbeing programmes that cost considerably more. But the design matters as much as the intent.
3. What does your community actually need, and do you have the capacity to help? The schools near your offices are navigating a mental health challenge that they don’t have the resources to address alone. Your people have skills, time (if you give it to them), and very often more appetite for this kind of work than current volunteering policies tend to assume.
A final thought
I’ve been running employee volunteering programmes long enough to have heard every version of the sceptical question: is this really about the community, or is it really about the company?
My honest answer is: it’s both, and that’s exactly the point.
The children who sat in that school hall on a Monday morning needed what our volunteers brought. The volunteers needed what those children gave back: the particular clarity that comes from being genuinely useful to someone who needed you. The school needed the capacity. The business needed the outcomes. And the community needed evidence that the companies operating within it see their responsibilities as extending beyond their balance sheets.
None of those things are in competition. They’re the same morning, in the same room, doing the same work.
That’s not a corporate wellbeing strategy. It’s something more interesting than that. And if you’d like to understand what it could look like for your organisation, I’d welcome the conversation.
Dewi Thomas is CEO of Employee Volunteering, which works with businesses to design and deliver meaningful corporate volunteering programmes, including our structured Wellbeing Workshops for primary and secondary schools.
To find out more about bringing a Wellbeing Workshop to your community, or to discuss building a corporate volunteering strategy for your organisation, get in touch.
#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek #EmployeeVolunteering #WorkplaceWellbeing
Sources: Fleming, W.J. (2024), Industrial Relations Journal / Oxford University Wellbeing Research Centre; Deloitte Mental Health Report 2024; Great Place to Work Workplace Wellbeing Report 2024; Royal Voluntary Service (2025); DCMS Volunteer Wellbeing Valuation (2025); MHFA England Workplace Mental Health Statistics 2024; Child of the North / University of York (2025); Mind: Care Before Crisis Report (2025); Mayo Clinic; YoungMinds UK (2025).
FAQs
Does corporate volunteering improve employee wellbeing?
Research increasingly suggests that it can. A major 2024 study published in the Industrial Relations Journal found that corporate volunteering was one of the few workplace wellbeing interventions associated with meaningful improvements in employee wellbeing. Employees who take part in structured volunteering programmes often report lower stress levels, stronger social connection, improved sense of purpose and better engagement at work.
Employee Volunteering’s programmes also create opportunities for employees to step away from day-to-day pressures, connect with communities and experience meaningful human interaction outside their usual work environment.
How can schools benefit from corporate volunteering programmes?
Schools can benefit significantly from properly structured corporate volunteering programmes, particularly in areas linked to wellbeing, confidence, mentoring and enrichment activity. Many schools are facing increasing pressure around pupil mental health and wellbeing, while also managing limited time and resources.
Among our bespoke Employee Volunteering programmes, volunteers can support workshops, wellbeing activities, environmental projects, reading programmes and employability initiatives that give pupils additional support and positive adult interaction. When programmes are carefully designed, prepared and facilitated, they can create meaningful outcomes for both pupils and volunteers.
What makes a successful employee volunteering programme?
Successful employee volunteering programmes are built around real community need, not one-size-fits-all activity. The strongest programmes are carefully planned with charities, schools and community organisations to ensure the support being delivered is genuinely useful and aligned to local priorities.
With Employee Volunteering, preparation, facilitation, safeguarding, project management and measurable outcomes all matter. Employees are far more likely to have a positive experience when volunteering is structured, purposeful and connected to something meaningful. For businesses, that also leads to stronger wellbeing outcomes, deeper employee engagement and more measurable social impact over time.
