Mental health at work refers to an employee’s ability to mobilize their psychological resources in response to the demands of their job, without permanently compromising their personal balance. According to the Qualisocial-Ipsos barometer, one in four employees reports experiencing psychological distress. This stable yet high level has shifted the topic from the realm of human resources to that of operational management.
Primary prevention and DUERP: what the PST 2026-2030 changes for managers
The Occupational Health Plan 2026-2030, launched in June 2026 by the Ministry of Labor, shifts the focus of prevention. The approach no longer relies solely on the individual support of employees in difficulty. It targets the organizational causes of discomfort: workload, clarity of roles, decision-making autonomy, quality of relationships within the team.
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The DUERP (Single Document for the Assessment of Professional Risks) becomes the starting point for any initiative. For a manager, this means actively participating in the identification of psychosocial risks within their scope, not just reporting an individual case afterward.
Specifically, a manager who notices an increase in absenteeism or recurring tensions within their team now has a regulatory framework to address the issue from an organizational perspective. This logic of primary prevention requires looking at the work itself, not just the presumed fragility of an employee. Some companies complement this approach by offering well-being workshops in the workplace on Max Trucs to equip their managers on these topics.
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Manager and team mental health: the boundary with the role of therapist
The most common trap for a manager aware of psychosocial risks is to slip into a posture of individual psychological support. Listening to a struggling employee, trying to understand their personal difficulties, proposing emotional solutions: this is not part of the managerial function.
What the manager can do
- Identify weak signals in the collective: unusual delays, gradual isolation, decline in the quality of work produced, persistent irritability during meetings
- Adjust the organization when it is within their scope: redistribute temporary workload, clarify priorities, space out requests on an overloaded employee
- Direct to the right resources without making a diagnosis: occupational health, HR services, listening devices set up by the company
What exceeds their responsibility
A manager who begins to receive regular confidences about an employee’s personal life takes a risk. The risk is not only legal (overstepping professional boundaries). It is also functional: a manager who absorbs the emotional burden of their team ultimately ends up exhausting themselves.
The clarity of this boundary protects both parties. The employee knows they will be listened to, directed, and that their working framework can be adapted. The manager knows they do not have to resolve a clinical situation. HR and occupational health have the training and mandate to intervene beyond that.
Manager mental health: a blind spot in HR management
Content on mental health at work almost always talks about teams. Rarely about those who manage them. Managers, however, absorb a dual pressure: performance objectives descending from management and increasing expectations for support rising from employees.
The psychological distress of managers is a rarely monitored indicator in HR dashboards. Some companies are beginning to integrate specific metrics: perceived emotional workload, sense of psychological safety in the relationship with their own hierarchy, actual access to peer support spaces.
Without these mechanisms, the manager becomes a fuse. They manage tensions, cushion conflicts, adapt the organization, and have no space to express their own difficulties. The PST 2026-2030 reminds us that the prevention of psychosocial risks concerns all hierarchical levels, including middle management.
Work stress and performance: what the data shows
The WHO estimates the global productivity loss related to mental disorders at one trillion dollars. This often-cited figure remains abstract. What is less so: the direct correlation between a degraded work environment and increased turnover, absenteeism, and operational errors.
According to the Ifop study of 2025, the vast majority of employees identify work as the primary factor affecting their psychological state. This result reverses the usual logic. Work is not just a place where stress manifests; it is often the main source of it.
For a manager, this data changes their posture. Acting on the mental health of their team does not consist of offering meditation sessions or well-being apps. It involves organizational decisions: reducing unnecessary meetings, protecting focus time, formalizing job expectations to reduce ambiguity.
Manager’s role in preventing psychosocial risks: concrete levers
The term “psychosocial risks” encompasses chronic stress, harassment, value conflicts, job insecurity, and information overload. The manager does not have control over all these factors, but they do control several on a daily basis.
- The regulation of workload remains the most direct lever. An employee who does not know what is expected of them as a priority ends up treating everything as urgent
- The quality of feedback plays a measurable role in the sense of recognition. A factual and regular return is better than a formal annual review
- The right to make mistakes, when it is real and not just stated, creates an environment where employees report problems before they escalate
These levers do not require additional budget. They require managerial time, which implies that the company recognizes this dimension as an integral part of the role, and not as an optional supplement.
Mental health at work cannot be managed with a single program rolled out in a cascade. It is built through daily trade-offs on organization, communication, and individual boundaries. The manager who knows how to listen, direct, and adjust without substituting for health professionals plays exactly the role that the current framework assigns to them.