COMPANIES should recognise the economic cost of failing to provide mental-health support in the workplace, CCLA Investment Management has said.
CCLA published its fifth Corporate Mental Health Benchmark UK 100 on Wednesday. The company manages responsible investments for charities, religious organisations (including the Church of England), and the public sector.
Its benchmark seeks to understand how businesses are addressing employees’ mental health. CCLA reported an improvement in companies’ engagement with its benchmarking process from 77 to 82 per cent over the past year.
Most companies “universally provide mental well-being support”, CCLA reports, and nearly 99 per cent offer at least one form of support. Only 41 per cent, however, “are using data and insights to inform their mental health strategy”.
The UK benchmark “continues to drive improvements in company performance, although progress is beginning to slow”. The average benchmark scores have achieved a “minimal increase between 2025 and 2026”, it says.
Of the 100 companies assessed in the 2026 benchmark, 20 improved their performance tier, 26 rank in the top two performance tiers, 55 have increased their score, and 15 sit in the lowest performance tier.
Mental well-being issues brought to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic “remain firmly on the agenda”, CCLA says. “Organisations are now facing a new wave of challenges, including economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, rapid technological shifts, and the escalating effects of climate change. In this increasingly complex environment, the pressures on employees’ mental resilience continue to grow, making it essential for businesses to maintain a strong focus on supporting the mental health and well-being of their people.”
In England alone, he company says, “mental ill-health at work is estimated to cost nearly £110 billion each year through staff turnover, presenteeism, economic inactivity, and sickness absence. Across Great Britain, 22.1 million working days were lost to work-related stress, depression, and anxiety in 2024/25.”
It refers to the consultancy firm Deloitte’s 2024 report, Mental Health and Employers, which said: “Employers see an average return of £4.70 for every £1 invested in employees’ physical and mental well-being — equivalent to a 370% return on investment — driven by higher productivity and lower levels of absenteeism and presenteeism.”
CCLA says that “strong leadership and robustly designed well-being programmes can play a crucial role in reducing both the human and the financial impact of poor mental health at work.” It also recommends that firms “publish a robust mental health policy”, “set measurable objectives, “promote good practices”, “engage employees”, and “support line managers”.