Wednesday is National Stress Awareness Day. Most people won’t tell you they’re stressed. They’ll show you, usually weeks before they say anything, and sometimes before they’ve admitted it to themselves.
It matters. The Health and Safety Executive estimates that 964,000 workers in Great Britain had stress, depression or anxiety caused or made worse by work in 2024/25.
In our workshops we talk about the red system and the blue system. The red system is the fast, protective part of the brain that takes over when we sense a threat. In short bursts it’s useful. Under sustained pressure it can stay switched on, and you can often see that from the outside.
HSE’s guidance points to changes in behaviour as one of the clearest signs. Someone who was always early starts arriving late, or a usually steady colleague becomes snappy or tearful. Across a team it can show up as more arguments and more sickness absence.
The key word is change. You don’t need to diagnose anything. Noticing that someone is different from their usual self is enough to start a conversation.
How you start it matters. A quiet word in private works better than a question in front of the team. Keep it simple: “You’ve not seemed yourself the last couple of weeks. How are things?” Then give them time. People often offer a small answer first to see what you do with it.
Look at the work as well as the person. If several people are showing the same signs, the cause is more likely to sit in the workload or in a change that’s landed badly than in anyone’s resilience.
Treat stress as information about what someone’s carrying. Leaders who do that tend to hear about problems early, while they’re still easy to help.
If you’re finding things hard yourself, talk to someone you trust or your GP.