Why employees shouldn't have to ask for mental health support
Written by George Stevens, founder of Soother, therapist with a first class BSc in Psychology and Level 4 Diploma in Counselling Studies.
A lot about how workplace mental health support is set up isn't working. Having to ask for it is a big part of that.
Almost all workplace mental health support requires people to, and assumes they will, ask someone for help. The actual process an employee has to go through before they speak to their therapist is key. According to a recent Vitality poll, only 5% said they’d approach their line manager if they were struggling with their mental health. 32% of workers in the West Midlands wouldn’t feel comfortable talking to anyone at work about their mental health and only 15% would feel comfortable approaching HR about it.
If support depends on people asking someone, a really significant number of them are ruled out already.
Why don’t employees ask for help at work?
Our mental health is private. Some people are happy to talk about theirs. Some people aren’t. There are lots of reasons people might not want to discuss their mental health at work and that is entirely up to them.
Bearing these percentages in mind, if employees have to ask a line manager, HR or anyone else at work, too many of them just won’t. And therefore they won’t access support.
And the people least comfortable talking about their mental health are often the ones we most need to reach.
Mental health support is confidential for a reason. If someone doesn’t want anyone else to know, that is entirely up to them. They shouldn’t have to disclose anything to anyone if they don’t want to, let alone someone they feel uncomfortable doing so with, to access support.
People want support, they just can’t reach it
When engagement is this low, you might think people just don’t want support through work but the stats say something different. According to PAM Group Health at Work Report, 2025, demand for workplace counselling rose from 45% in 2021 to 57% in 2025, but actual access fell over the same period. In the same West Midlands survey, only 7% of employees have used their EAP. And the stats from the Employee Assistance Programme Association show that only 1.8% of employees covered by an EAP were even offered therapy sessions.
We also know that nearly 1 in 4 working-age adults in England has a common mental health condition like anxiety or depression at any one time (Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, NHS England, 2025).
Those numbers don’t add up. Nearly a quarter of people are struggling and demand is rising, but hardly anyone reaches a therapist. That, to me, points to a problem with how people are expected to access support, and how providers are set up to deliver it.
What does support without asking look like?
On the positive side, there is a really straightforward solution to all of this.
Bizarrely, support that works without having to ask is much simpler to execute and much simpler to use. It requires fewer people, fewer processes and makes the user experience significantly more straightforward, making access to therapy sessions much easier and employee engagement much higher. In the first six months, 29% of employees at our very first client accessed therapy sessions voluntarily, without needing to ask.
The whole process can be simplified by removing a number of the barriers currently in place, people can access therapy without having to talk about their most vulnerable stuff with multiple people, often over the phone, with strangers, without the opportunity to build a relationship with them first. They are not the optimal conditions for someone to talk about things they may never have spoken about before.
How do you implement support that doesn’t need to be asked for?
Onboarding sessions are crucial. In person as often as possible. Make the support completely clear for employees to understand. An explanation of what the support actually is and a clear demonstration of how to use it, as well as some education around what therapy actually is and isn’t, to continue to humanise therapy and help alleviate elements of stigma but also bust some myths. We don’t need to wait until crisis point to talk things through in therapy.
On top of that, providing reminder resources that people can keep, easily find or be reminded of through the year.
Explanation of just how confidential therapy is. When work are paying, it can feel like they own it in some way and therefore we must almost ask for permission to use it.
Setting up in an Opt-Out way, where everyone is automatically opted in to get therapy, so that the permission piece is done and clarified at the start, very clearly that each person can access their number of sessions per year helps.
What can employers do now?
The number one thing is to partner with a provider that makes it possible to implement support that doesn’t need to be asked for. Support that doesn’t require a phone call with a stranger in a call centre. Support that doesn’t pass off phone calls in-the-moment as therapy. Support that doesn’t assess and then decide how many, or how few sessions an individual is allowed to access.
Support that is there, ready and waiting, when employees want to access it, without feeling like they have to wait until they need to access it.
Be so clear on the actual step-by-step process an employee has to go through before they speak to a qualified therapist in confidential therapy. If that isn’t abundantly clear, ask your provider. Hold them to account, they have a duty to you, as a paying customer, to deliver what they say they deliver. If there are multiple hoops for individuals to jump through and if there is no route to support that doesn’t depend on asking someone, consider how much better it might be to provide support that doesn’t need to be asked for.
Mental health support through work has to be designed so your most apprehensive employee feels able to use it. If it feels safe enough for them, it will for everyone else. Support that waits to be asked for leaves too much of your workforce out. It’s a big reason engagement stays so low while demand keeps rising, and why mental health related costs continue to leak out of British businesses to the tune of £51 billion per year, according to Deloitte.
Frequently asked questions
Do employees have to tell their employer to use workplace counselling?
Not always. Some providers require referral from a manager, HR or a GP. Others, like Soother, let employees book confidential therapy directly, so their employer never needs to know who used it. That’s often what makes people feel safe enough to use it.
Is workplace counselling confidential?
Yes, it always should be, with the usual safeguarding exceptions designed to keep everyone safe. Employers may see usage numbers but these should always be anonymised to protect the confidentiality of the employee. Whether employers fund the sessions or not, they shouldn’t know who uses it or what’s discussed.
What is psychological safety at work?
It’s feeling safe enough to speak up, ask for help or admit you’re struggling. When it’s low, people stay quiet out of fear it could jeopardise their work or career, and support that relies on asking doesn’t get used.
How can employers make mental health support easier to access?
Remove the need to ask. Partner with providers that allow employees to book directly and confidentially. Explain the support clearly from day one, with help from your provider, remind people throughout the year, not just in awareness weeks, and treat everyone as opted in.
If you want to see how support without asking works in practice, here's how we go about it at Soother, get in touch here!