Consider how many people in your day-to-day life influence your mental health. The people you live with. The friends you lean on. The professionals you turn to for support.

Now add your manager to that list.

Research from The Workforce Institute at UKG found that 69% of employees said their manager had an impact on their mental health, equal to the influence of a spouse or partner and higher than that of a doctor (51%) or therapist (41%). 

That’s a striking amount of influence for a role we don’t immediately associate with mental health.

Managers aren’t therapists, and their job isn’t to diagnose or treat the people they lead. But they do help shape a significant part of someone’s day: the pace of work, the expectations around availability, how pressure is handled, whether asking for help feels safe, and how much room people have to recover after a demanding stretch.

Over time, those experiences become part of the rhythm of work. And as anyone who is part of the modern workplace knows, that rhythm tends to linger long after we log off.

With Mental Illness Awareness Week happening this month, leaders have something important to consider: What kind of impact are you having on the people you lead?

Mental health is shaped in the everyday experience of work

The need for mental health support often becomes visible once someone is struggling enough to speak up, whether through a request for time off, a conversation with HR, or seeking professional care through workplace resources.

But leadership has a role much earlier in the story.

UKG found that 40% of employees were often or always stressed about work. Among employees who acknowledged that their workload was a problem, 38% said they had infrequently or never discussed it with their manager. Some felt they should be able to figure it out themselves. Others believed their manager had too much else on their plate or simply wouldn’t care. 

That gap speaks volumes about the environment surrounding these conversations.

A one-to-one that stays focused on deliverables every week teaches people something about what belongs in that room. A manager who regularly works through time off sends a signal about rest, regardless of the PTO policy written in the employee handbook. A team that treats everything as pressing eventually loses its ability to distinguish urgency from emergency.

These patterns become familiar quickly, and familiarity makes them easy to overlook.

The gap between what leaders intend and what employees experience

One of the most revealing findings in the UKG research comes down to a difference in perception.

Nine in ten HR and C-suite leaders believed working for their company had a positive impact on employees’ mental health. Only about half of employees agreed. The study also found that 35% of employees felt their manager failed to recognize the impact they had on their team’s mental health, while 70% wanted their company and managers to do more to support it. 

For leaders, closing this gap starts with paying attention. Initiate conversations about capacity before overload becomes the norm. Ask questions that encourage honesty, and create enough psychological safety for the answers. Know what resources your organization offers so you can point someone toward appropriate support when they need it.

Awareness changes the way we lead

As a leader, you don’t need to know the details of someone’s mental health to recognize when workloads have become relentless. You don’t need a clinical background to create clear expectations, respect time away, or respond with care when someone tells you they’re struggling. And you don’t need to have all the answers to be someone who listens and helps connect an employee with the right support.

The influence leaders have over mental health may sound daunting when you see it expressed as a statistic, but it’s also a reminder of how much possibility exists in the everyday experience of leadership.

This month…

We invite you to take a closer look at the rhythms your team has settled into and the signals your own behavior sends. A small shift in how you lead could change how someone experiences their entire working day.

Source: https://www.ukg.com/sites/default/files/2025-09/FY25_CV2040_Mental%20Health%20at%20Work_ResourcePDF.pdf