With millions of days lost each year due to workplace stress, depression, and anxiety,
Stress Awareness Month offers a timely opportunity to increase understanding, encourage practical action and create more open conversations around how we manage stress at work.
Observed every April since 1992, Stress Awareness Month is dedicated to raising public awareness of the causes, effects, and management of stress.
This year’s theme, #BeTheChange, builds on last year’s #LeadWithLove and represents a call to action emphasising personal agency and collective responsibility.
In this article, Matt Balfour, our subject matter expert and Founder of Let’s Go Wellbeing, explores how organisations can reduce stress and create healthier, more resilient working environments., to better understand how organisations can reduce stress and create healthier, more resilient working environments.
With this in mind, the following explores what workplaces and individuals alike can do to reduce the negative effects of stress and create healthier, more resilient working environments.
What workplaces can do to reduce stress?
Many people feel they have to suppress or hide their emotions at work in order to be seen as professional.
As a result, emotions are often something we’re encouraged to manage, control, or ignore, rather than understand.
At the same time, research suggests that the greater a person’s emotional granularity - the ability to use different words for different emotions - the more precisely they’re able to experience themselves and the world around them.
That matters, because the ability to accurately name what we’re feeling reduces uncertainty, increases clarity and in turn, helps to reduce stress.
It does this by equipping the brain to handle a wider range of emotional experiences. In addition, having a broader emotional vocabulary has been linked to a reduced likelihood of turning to unhelpful coping strategies, such as alcohol, when under stress.
So what does this mean for the workplace? How can we translate this research into something practical; something that helps organisations reduce the drivers of stress while using emotions as a source of performance, rather than something to be suppressed?
The Global Workplace Happiness Report draws on insights from over 81,907 respondents across 115 countries, creating one of the largest real-world datasets on employee experience (collected between February 2025 and January 2026).
I had the opportunity to attend the launch of this inaugural report back in March and later sat down with co-founder and CEO Matt Phelan to discuss some of the findings in more detail.
A couple of things stood out.
Matt talks about how different systems in the brain (instinctual, emotional, reflective and rational) process information in different ways.
In many workplaces, there’s a disconnect. Decisions at the top are often made using rational, data-led thinking, while the experience of employees - particularly when psychological safety is low - is driven more by instinct and emotion.
When people don’t feel safe, the brain naturally defaults to threat-based responses tied to survival.
Which means that, in practice, one of the primary responsibilities of any leadership team is to create an environment where people feel psychologically safe.
Secondly, the report highlights that the strongest predictors of happiness at work are inspiration and belonging, while workload management and role clarity rank among the weakest predictors of how people feel about work day to day.
That doesn’t mean workload and role clarity don’t matter. The CIPD’s Health and Wellbeing at Work Report makes clear that heavy workloads remain one of the biggest drivers of stress-related absence.
Rather, it suggests that while organisations may be investing in the operational factors that help prevent stress, they may still be underestimating the emotional and cultural factors - such as connection, meaning, and shared purpose - that help people feel engaged, supported at work.
And while the workplace can either support or undermine our ability to manage stress, it doesn’t remove the role of the individual.
There are still things we can do to build resilience in how we respond.
What individuals can do to reduce stress?
Exercise
Some call it a “runner’s high”, others describe a kind of euphoric feeling post-workout, along with a sense that things that weighed heavily on your mind beforehand somehow matter less.
Call it what you will, but on some level I’m sure most of you could share an anecdote that highlights the positive effects of exercise (even if it’s a distant memory).
But is it just an anecdote?
Or is there empirical data showing how exercise improves our mental health and, with it, our relationship with stress?
As it happens, a 2024 systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials, including 218 studies and 14,170 participants with depression, concluded that exercise is an effective treatment.
Walking or jogging, yoga, and strength training were all found to be more effective than other forms.
The effects were comparable to psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy, and exercise tended to work better when performed at higher intensity.
The data also suggests that social interaction, immersion in green spaces, mindfulness and increased self-efficacy are all associated with reductions in depressive symptoms, but no single form of exercise covers all of these mechanisms.
For example, running may satisfy many of these factors, yet it’s unlikely to directly promote the mindful self-awareness developed through practices like yoga or qigong.
Both of which, by the way, are often practised in groups, but seldom offer the fast, objective feedback loops that can improve self-efficacy in the same way strength training does.
That being said, exercise doesn’t just help the body handle stress, it also changes how the brain responds to it…
Neuroplasticity
Life, as a rule, is stressful. No matter how big or small, there’s always some change in our environment that we need to adapt to - whether that’s managing workload during a week with a presentation deadline looming or having to find a new recipe last minute because the supermarket hasn’t got that one ingredient.
Generally speaking, with these “run-of-the-mill” stressors, we can draw on previous experience to adapt and keep going.
But what happens when there’s no reference point, when the situation is completely new or unexpected?
In these scenarios, the brain is forced to adapt and form new connections. (Ever tried rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time?)
That initial “404 error code” feeling reflects your brain working to form fresh neural pathways so you can learn and execute a new skill.
The next time you’re faced with a similar scenario, it often feels slightly less stressful, because the brain has already begun to map a pathway to help you navigate the challenge.
This process is ongoing. There’s always some degree of change in our environment, and the unexpected is never too far away.
In a process known as Neural Darwinism, the brain strengthens the neural pathways that are most useful for adapting to its environment, while those used less often tend to weaken over time, hence the idea: use it or lose it.
For example, during early development, if the brain does not receive the necessary visual input, the neural pathways required for vision may not fully develop, leading to long-term impairment. Highlighting how experience quite literally shapes the brain over time.
This is why actively challenging yourself to learn and maintain new skills is not just beneficial for personal development, it’s also important for stress management.
The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat helps explain why. It suggests that how we experience stress depends on how we evaluate the situation; specifically, whether we believe our resources meet the demands placed on us.
When resources meet or exceed demands, we experience challenge; when demands outweigh resources, we experience threat.
Crucially, when we voluntarily take on new challenges, we are far more likely to interpret the experience as a challenge rather than a threat. In these states, increases in adrenaline and vasodilation help us rise to the occasion and return more quickly to baseline (homeostasis).
In contrast, when we feel threatened, the body is more likely to respond with vasoconstriction, higher blood pressure, and elevated cortisol, which has a longer-lasting effect, meaning it can take longer for the body to recover.
Over time, this distinction matters. Choosing to engage with new experiences - rather than avoid them - can shift how the body responds to stress, helping us recover faster and build greater resilience in the long run.
But it’s not just the connections in the brain that matter, the connections we build with other people play a huge role too…
Relational Connection
The connections we form and maintain throughout our lives (social fitness), while not given nearly enough attention as physical fitness or mental health, have actually been shown to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term health outcomes.
In a recent episode of the Wellbeing Talk Podcast, I sat down with Verity Glasgow, CEO of OnePlusOne, who helps people understand relationships and develop the social fitness skills that support wellbeing at home and in the workplace.
We discussed the importance of being intentional and paying attention to all of your relationships, not just when things are great or when they’re completely broken, but everything in between.
“We talk about when we get together with people, ‘It’s amazing. Everything’s great. It’s wonderful.’ And then we do talk about when it’s completely broken… ‘I hate the person. They’re awful.’
But that stuff in the middle, your day-to-day, when you’ve had an argument and it carries on, or something’s happened, we don’t talk about that bit in the middle.”
We also discussed findings from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, summarised in The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Study on Happiness. One experiment highlighted how poor we can be at predicting our own future experiences.
Two separate groups were asked whether their morning commute would be better or worse if they:
a) kept to themselves, or
b) actively engaged in conversation with a stranger.
Around 80% predicted that their journey would be worse if they spoke to someone.
The groups were then split, one kept to themselves, while the other struck up conversations with fellow passengers.
The result? Around 80% of those who engaged said their journey was either improved or not made any worse.
It’s a useful reminder that our cognitive biases can sometimes steer us away from experiences that may actually benefit us, and that even small moments of human connection can go a long way.
New Stress Awareness Module
Closing argument - Stress isn’t something we eliminate; it’s something we learn to understand and work with.
If this resonates, our new Stress Awareness Module is designed to help you and your team turn awareness into action, equipping individuals and teams with the tools to better understand, manage, and work with stress.
The module focuses on helping your team:
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Build practical coping strategies to prevent stress from escalating into burnout
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Gain an understanding of how they work under pressure
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Reframe their relationship with stress to support both wellbeing and performance
Get in touch to learn how the module can help your workforce #BeTheChange during Stress Awareness Month 2026 and beyond.
Learn more about our full wellbeing content library and how we can support your workforce.
Matt Balfour, Founder of Let's Go Wellbeing, is a Mental Health & Wellbeing Expert dedicated to empowering workplaces to have open, accessible conversations about mental health.
Drawing from his personal experience and extensive work as a mental health speaker, MHFA instructor, and Samaritans listening volunteer, Matt provides practical guidance for building supportive environments.