By Stephen Sokoler, Forbes Councils Member. Originally published for Forbes Business Council on Mar 23, 2026, 09:15am EDT
Over the past decade, workplace mental health has quietly become “an HR issue.” HR teams are expected to select the right benefits, run awareness campaigns, communicate resources, train managers, respond to crises and somehow reduce burnout, disengagement and turnover—often with limited authority and finite capacity. When outcomes fall short, the instinctive response is to look back to HR: different vendors, more communication, better utilization. But that framing misses the real issue.
Mental health is not HR’s responsibility. Not because HR doesn’t care. Not because HR isn’t capable. But because mental health cannot be owned or solved by a single function.
Four Key Principles For A Better Approach
To make real progress, organizations need to rethink how responsibility for mental health is distributed across leadership, culture and daily operations. Four principles matter most:
Executive leadership sets the ceiling.
Mental health outcomes in an organization are ultimately constrained by leadership behavior. If mental health is treated as a peripheral benefit, employees will experience it that way. If it is discussed only during awareness months or moments of crisis, it will never feel foundational. Culture follows leadership, not policy.
Executives set the ceiling through what they prioritize, model and reinforce—often unintentionally. How leaders talk about stress, respond to mistakes, handle workload pressure and respect boundaries sends a far stronger signal than any program HR can roll out. When leaders treat mental health as “something HR handles,” it communicates that it is secondary to performance. When leaders treat it as integral to performance, the entire system shifts.
The organizations I see making real progress talk about mental health alongside safety, risk, retention and long-term performance. They recognize that sustained results depend on human sustainability. Without executive ownership, even the best HR-led initiatives will plateau.
Culture is built on permission, not programs.
Most companies try to address stigma through awareness: emails, campaigns, tool kits and reminders that support is available. Awareness matters—but it doesn’t eliminate stigma.
Stigma is not primarily a knowledge problem. It’s a permission problem. Do employees believe they can speak up without career consequences? Do they trust that vulnerability won’t be penalized in performance reviews? Do they see leaders model healthy behavior under pressure? Those questions are answered every day through behavior, not programming.
Culture is shaped in meetings, deadlines, feedback conversations and informal interactions—not in benefits portals. HR can support culture, but it cannot grant permission on its own. Permission is created when leaders consistently reinforce that mental health and high performance are not in conflict. When that permission is absent, no amount of awareness will compensate.
Managers are the missing link.
If executives set the tone, managers determine the lived experience. Managers can notice changes in behavior. They can influence workload, flexibility, psychological safety and whether someone feels seen or invisible. They are also often the first line of defense—and the first point of failure—when someone begins to struggle. Yet many managers feel deeply unprepared to engage on mental health. They worry about saying the wrong thing, crossing boundaries or being expected to act as a therapist. This is where many well-intentioned mental health strategies break down.
Manager enablement cannot be a one-time training or a compliance exercise. Managers need clear expectations, practical tools and reinforcement from leadership about what their role is—and what it isn’t. Their job is not to diagnose or fix; it is to notice early signs, respond humanely and guide people to support before problems escalate. When managers are equipped and supported, mental health becomes operational rather than abstract.
Mental health is infrastructure, not a benefit.
Most organizations still treat mental health as a benefit—something employees access once they are already struggling. At scale, that model is insufficient. Mental health behaves more like infrastructure. You don’t notice good infrastructure. You notice when it fails.
Mental health affects decision-making, safety, collaboration, resilience and long-term performance. When it is embedded into how a company operates, it prevents problems that never appear on a dashboard. When it is missing, everything else feels harder. This is why organizations need to shift their mindset. Mental health is no longer just something employees “use.” It is something the organization runs on—embedded into leadership expectations, manager practices, systems and workflows. When mental health is treated as infrastructure, prevention becomes possible. When it is treated as a benefit, the response is almost always late.
Where HR Fits: Architect, Not Owner
None of this diminishes HR’s role. In fact, it elevates it.
HR is uniquely positioned to design and integrate a mental health system that aligns leadership behavior, manager capability, culture and benefits into a coherent whole. But integration is different from ownership.
When HR is asked to carry mental health alone, it becomes fragmented and reactive. When HR is empowered to act as an architect—supported by leadership and embedded across the organization—mental health becomes durable. The difference is subtle but transformative.
A Shared Responsibility
To make real progress, stop asking, “How do we get employees to use mental health benefits?” Instead, start asking:
• How do our leaders create permission and reduce stigma through behavior?
• How do managers notice and respond earlier?
• How do we embed support into the flow of work?
• How do our systems prevent escalation rather than merely respond to it?
Those are leadership questions. They are cultural questions. They are operational questions. They are not HR-only questions.
In closing, mental health at work doesn’t need more programs. It needs shared responsibility. Executives must own the ceiling. Managers must be equipped to act early and humanely. HR must design and integrate the system that supports both. When mental health is treated less like a benefit and more like infrastructure, it stops being episodic and starts being effective. Mental health is not HR’s responsibility—it’s everyone’s.
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