Mental Health Awareness Week provides an important opportunity to focus on wellbeing across the workforce, and within the adult social care sector and education; this focus feels particularly important.
In adult social care, the 2025 workforce survey identified stress at work as the lowest scoring work-related quality-of-life factor, with a mean score of 2.36. A similar picture is seen in education, where around 76% of teachers report experiencing workplace stress and 77% of staff report symptoms of poor mental health linked to their work.
At Flourish, we work closely with care providers, schools and local authorities, and see first-hand the pressures staff are managing and the impact this can have over time.
Awareness is not the same as understanding
The conversation about workforce wellbeing is happening more often, and rightly so. However, awareness alone does not always translate into meaningful support.
Most organisations want to do the right thing for their staff, but the challenge lies in understanding where support is most needed, how pressures are changing, and what will genuinely make a difference in practice. Without that clarity, even well-intentioned support can miss what staff actually need.
Flourish Wellbeing is our all-in-one health and wellbeing platform, helping Click Learning users access everyday support alongside their training.
Designing support that reflects real working life
Flourish Wellbeing was introduced to support the wellbeing of staff working in demanding sectors such as adult social care and education. Alongside this, it also helps organisations build a clearer understanding of workforce wellbeing, offering insight into how people are feeling and where support may be needed.
The aim was to create something that fits into everyday working life – support that allows staff to reflect on their wellbeing in a way that feels accessible rather than burdensome, while giving organisations a clearer, anonymised view of how their workforce is feeling.
What we are seeing through early engagement reflects what many will already recognise. Staff are using wellbeing support, but often at the point where pressure is already high. More importantly, the data begins to show how that pressure is experienced. Themes such as resilience, psychological safety and social connection appear consistently, alongside more practical areas like sleep, energy and day-to-day wellbeing behaviours.
This kind of insight moves the conversation forward, shifting the focus from simply providing support to understanding where it is needed most, and how it can be applied in a way that reflects real working conditions.
From insight to listening
Understanding wellbeing is only one part of the picture; listening to the workforce is just as important. If organisations are to respond effectively, there needs to be space for staff to share their experiences openly and safely.
This is something we have been developing further through the introduction of Click Pulse, designed to give people working in adult social care the opportunity to share anonymous, real-time feedback on their working lives.
Shaped in partnership with The Care Workers' Charity, Click Pulse explores areas such as pay, training, wellbeing and how staff feel in their roles, giving providers a clearer line of sight into workforce experience. Not just assumptions, but real insight that can inform decisions and guide how support is delivered.
Over time, this kind of feedback has the potential to do more than support individual organisations. It helps ensure that the voices of workers are better reflected in wider conversations about the future of the sector.
What this means in practice
If there is one thing we have learned from working across adult social care and education, it is that support needs to reflect the reality of the role.
That means moving towards approaches shaped by real experience and ongoing insight. In practice, this might involve paying closer attention to patterns of engagement rather than just uptake, identifying early indicators of pressure before issues escalate, embedding wellbeing into day-to-day working environments, and creating consistent opportunities for staff to be heard.
Looking beyond the week
Mental Health Awareness Week plays an important role in keeping these conversations visible, but for the sectors we work in, this cannot be a once-a-year focus. Supporting workforce wellbeing is not a campaign, it is an ongoing commitment – one that requires listening, understanding, and responding to what staff are experiencing in real time.
When people feel supported, heard and understood, it does not just improve wellbeing. It strengthens teams, organisations, and ultimately the quality of care and education being delivered every day.
