Part of creating a safe workplace is showing employees you care about their wellbeing, and that means taking meaningful steps to create a workplace that supports employee well-being.

Take a look at what mental health experts say businesses should understand about designing a safe workplace culture — from recognizing causes and signs of mental health issues like burnout to identifying ways to support employee mental health.

Common Sources of Workplace Stress

Workplace stress isn't always tied to a single deadline or difficult period. Ongoing pressures can build over time.

“It’s not just the acute stress of a high-stakes deadline or a single bad quarter,” explains a report by mental wellness platform Headspace.

“It’s now a persistent hum of work that is always on, competing demands, shifting priorities, and the pressure to keep pace with AI tools and changes that keep coming.”

For some employees, the mental and cognitive pressure they feel from workplace stressors — like unclear priorities or job insecurity — builds into chronic strain, according to Headspace’s 2026 Workforce State of Mind report.

How Workplace Stress Can Affect Employees

Feelings of chronic stress can impact a person’s physical and mental health in negative ways, not just at work but off the job too.

In the Headspace survey, 76 percent of employees said chronic strain had negatively affected their sleep, 73 percent said it hurt their ability to focus and 70 percent said it negatively affected productivity.

When chronic workplace stress isn't successfully managed, it can contribute to burnout, an occupation-related syndrome involving emotional exhaustion, increased mental distance or negativity toward work and reduced feelings of effectiveness, according to the American Psychological Association. 

When an employee is experiencing burnout, it doesn’t always express itself as a dramatic breakdown, explains Dr. Y Pritham Raj, chief medical officer at Active Path Mental Health in an article for the Portland Business Journal.

“It can build through months of heavy workload, limited flexibility, and little room for the unexpected,” writes Raj, also an associate professor of Internal Medicine and Psychiatry at OHSU, in the article, sponsored content by Active Path Mental Health.

A workplace survey earlier this year by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) showed 53 percent of employees felt burned out in the past year.

While overall employee stress levels have remained steady since 2024, NAMI says, the intensity has grown. This year, 30 percent of workers said they were feeling "very stressed," compared to 19 percent in 2024, reports NAMI.

There’s a growing need for organizations to create workplaces that promote mental health, cautions the World Health Organization (WHO).

“Poor working environments – including discrimination and inequality, excessive workloads, low job control and job insecurity – pose a risk to mental health,” it says.

Create a More Supportive Workplace Culture

To build a healthier work culture, understand possible stressors at your business, implement actions aimed at prevention, and advocate for protection and support of employees experiencing mental health issues.

When it comes to workplace stressors, employees in the Headspace poll ranked unclear priorities at the top, with 47 percent citing it. Other stressors included job security concerns (37%), pace of organizational change (29%) and adoption of AI and new technologies (24%), according to an article by EBN Editor Lee Hafner.

“If you want to support someone … you have to strengthen their ability to effectively recover and restore and regulate, so think about where there are gaps in your strategy in terms of employees practicing and learning those skills,” writes Hafner.

Reduce Barriers to Mental Health Support

It may be awkward for employees to come forward to talk about being stressed or ask for help with mental health issues.

Reasons for the hesitance stem from a fear of jeopardizing their job to perceived stigma attached to mental health conditions. Even if your company offers mental health benefits.

“There’s a critical difference between offering a benefit, and making sure your employees feel empowered to use it,” writes Raj in the Business Journal article.

In the NAMI-Ipsos poll, 48 percent of employees said they worried they would be judged if they shared mental health struggles with colleagues.

Of those who said they’d be uncomfortable talking about mental health at work, 41 percent cited stigma as the reason and 39 percent said because no one else discusses mental health at their workplace.

Further, the survey says, 33 percent said they didn’t want to appear weak and 23 percent said they feared retaliation if they discussed mental health issues at work.

Preventing Burnout

Business owners should make an ongoing effort to keep an eye on workplace conditions and stressors that may be sources of employee burnout. 

The American Psychological Association advises businesses to take a hard look at their practices “to ensure that they are giving workers the control, flexibility, and resources needed to manage workload and job stress.”

Also, it says, check in with employees periodically for signs of burnout, whether via employee surveys or individually.

“Keep track of workloads, regularly check in with workers on how they are doing, and encourage taking advantage of time off.”