Make A Difference Media

The closure of youth suicide prevention charity Papyrus, just days before World Suicide Prevention Day, has prompted an outpouring of grief and concern across the mental health sector – and renewed questions about how vital services are funded. The closure has brought greater attention to the importance of suicide prevention at a particularly important moment.

For organisations with people in public-facing roles, hostility from the public is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Abuse, threats and intimidation are being reported across sectors and professions, both in person and online. Behind the statistics are employees having to navigate the impact of these experiences as part of their working lives. The wider forces contributing to public hostility are complex, and no organisation can address them alone.

An interview with Katherine Billingham-Mohamed SuperWellness founder Angela Steel interviewed wellbeing & culture strategist Katherine Billingham-Mohamed in the run-up to their new webinar for senior leaders – Workplace wellbeing: what got us here… won’t get us there. After 25+ years in senior HR and operational leadership at Aviva, Ipsos, Ofcom, Greggs and Headspace, Katherine has seen first-hand that when people thrive, organisations win. The challenge is: how do we make this happen?

With the cost of living continuing to put pressure on UK households, financial wellbeing remains a very real concern for employees. In July 2026, 56% of adults in Great Britain said their cost of living had increased in the previous month, while nearly one in three reported difficulty affording their energy bills, rent or mortgage payments. For night and shift workers, these pressures can collide with another challenge: sleep.

Employee resource groups with dedicated time. Leaders who protect their people time. A focus on “calling people in” rather than calling them out. For giffgaff’s Head of Talent, Culture and Inclusion Ian Tomney-Bell, meaningful inclusion is not about awareness days or performative gestures – it is about embedding equity into the everyday experience of work. DEI has faced increasing scrutiny in recent years.

“Everyone thought I was waving, but in reality I was drowning.” If our workplaces are repeatedly depleting people’s energy, health and psychological capacity, I think we need to be willing to ask ourselves a difficult question: what happens when people no longer have enough left in the tank to cope well? Work-related stress and burnout don’t cause addiction. Addiction is far more complex than that. But the environment around us absolutely matters.

A new set of UK Duty of Care Guidelines is calling on policymakers and employers to rethink the relationship between job quality, workforce health and economic growth. Launched in Parliament by the Westminster-based Policy Liaison Group (PLG) on Workplace Wellbeing, the Guidelines argue that issues such as job design, leadership capability, workload, autonomy and workplace culture should no longer be treated as separate from the UK’s health and economic challenges.

A new set of UK Duty of Care Guidelines is calling on policymakers and employers to rethink the relationship between job quality, workforce health and economic growth. Launched in Parliament by the Westminster-based Policy Liaison Group (PLG) on Workplace Wellbeing, the Guidelines argue that issues such as job design, leadership capability, workload, autonomy and workplace culture should no longer be treated as separate from the UK’s health and economic challenges.

Recent discussions at the Make a Difference Legal Sector roundtable highlighted the growing challenge of sustaining high performance in an increasingly pressured environment. For legal professionals, the demands are familiar: accuracy at pace, high cognitive load, constant deadlines and the need to remain composed, often while navigating uncertainty and competing priorities. But sustained pressure does not simply affect how much work people can do.

In my experience, organisations often devote significant time and energy to planning and implementing organisational change. Whether the change is driven by economic factors, a shift in strategy, technological change or the need to create a more sustainable operating model, leaders understandably focus on designing the future organisation. However, what happens after the implementation is often just as important as the change itself.