Upskilling Managers to Support Mental Health

Ask employees who shapes their mental health the most and you might expect them to say “my therapist.” 

Nope! In a recent study, 69 % said their manager has a bigger impact on their mental health than their doctor or even their therapist.

That should make every L&D and Ops pro sit up straight. Gallup has been telling us for years that about 70 % of team engagement swings on the manager’s behavior — and disengagement is a burnout accelerant. When leaders get it right, people stick around, learn faster, and perform better. When they don’t… well, you begin to see the resignation letters.

Mental Health Training for Managers 

The business case (a.k.a. “Show me the money”) 💰

• Mental-health-related absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover still drain roughly $300 billion a year from U.S. employers.

• Deloitte’s latest research found that every £1 (about $1.25) spent on workplace mental-health programs returns £4.70 in savings and productivity gains — a 370 % ROI.

  
  

Put bluntly: teaching managers a few new skills costs peanuts compared with the price of doing nothing. 🥜

Four quick wins to upskill every manager on mental health 🎖️

Win	What it looks like	Pro tips for L&D
1. Mental-health literacy snackables	5-minute videos on spotting burnout, anxiety, or depression.	Drop them into your LMS homepage during Mental Health Awareness Month.
2. “Let’s talk” conversation scripts	Step-by-step phrasing for tough check-ins (“I’ve noticed you seem overloaded lately…”).	Turn scripts into printable cards or a Teams/Slack bot the manager can call up on demand.
3. Reinvent the 1-on-1 template	Add a “How’s your workload & well-being?” line right next to KPI updates.	Bake the question into whatever performance system you already use so it’s impossible to ignore.
4. Leaders model self-care	Managers block focus time on their calendars and actually take PTO.	Ask leaders to share their own boundary-setting hacks in town-halls or internal podcasts.

Rolling it out without breaking a sweat

1. Audit what you’ve already got. You may have resilience or EQ modules hiding in other programs — surface and re-label them as “manager mental health essentials.”

   
   

2. Buddy up with HR/EAP. Make sure every training mentions your Employee Assistance Program or local support resources, so managers know exactly where to send people who need more help.

   
   

3. Measure loudly, iterate quietly. Track pre- and post-training manager confidence, EAP referrals, and team engagement scores. Show the wins in your next exec report, tweak what isn’t landing, and keep going.

   
   

4. Keep the conversation alive. Quarterly refreshers, peer huddles, and Slack channels let managers swap real-world tips (“Here’s how I handled Zoom-fatigue on my team…”) and keep skills fresh.

   
   

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Mental Health Awareness Month is a great excuse to kick things off, but sustainable results happen when “manager + mental health” becomes part of your learning culture year-round. 

Equip leaders to notice signs of strain, talk about them without awkwardness, and point people to help. Your teams will thank you, your retention metrics will improve, and your CFO will love the ROI math.

Ready to get started? Grab that first micro-module, invite your managers, and watch the ripple effect spread.

Need help designing those snackable modules? CK Digital Learning has your back — let’s chat!