Written by Tim Spoor MBE, CEO, Queerwell, the national lgbtq+ mental health and wellness charity (February 2026)

Many employers care deeply about inclusion. They have policies in place, run awareness campaigns, and mark key moments in the calendar. Yet despite these efforts, LGBTQIA+ employees continue to report higher levels of stress, burnout, and disengagement at work.

This is not because organisations don’t care. It’s because mental health disparities are rarely created by identity itself, they are created by workplace environments. In other words, this is not a values problem. It’s a design problem.

The hidden cost of “doing nothing wrong”

• In most organisations, harm doesn’t look dramatic. It accumulates quietly.
• It looks like talented people leaving without raising concerns.
• It looks like sickness absence that never quite resolves.
• It looks like employees who are “fine” on the surface, but exhausted underneath.

For LGBTQIA+ staff, work often carries an additional, invisible layer of effort: deciding when it’s safe to be open, managing assumptions about gender or family, or staying alert to how comments and decisions might land. None of this appears in a job description, but it has a real cognitive and emotional cost.

When workplaces are not designed with this in mind, they unintentionally reward those who can move through work without friction - and drain those who can’t.

The Evidence

• £56 billion per year: the cost of poor mental health to UK employersSource: Deloitte (2022)
• 1 million working days lost to work-related stress, depression, or anxiety Source: HSE (2023)
• Workplace stress increases the risk of developing depression by up to 80% Source: The Lancet Psychiatry (2022)

• For every £1 invested in workplace mental health, £5.30 is returned Source: Deloitte (2022)
• Psychologically safe workplaces show higher retention, creativity, and performance Source: Harvard Business Review (2022)

Why treating everyone the same doesn’t work

Many employers understandably say, “We treat everyone the same.” Equality feels fair. But sameness doesn’t produce equitable outcomes when people experience work differently.

Research consistently shows that LGBTQIA+ employees are more likely to conceal aspects of who they are at work, anticipate rejection, and feel psychologically unsafe. This chronic, low-level stress compounds over time and contributes to poorer mental health outcomes.

This is not about asking for special treatment. It’s about removing avoidable harm created by systems, policies, and workplace norms that were never designed with everyone in mind.

Understanding minority stress at work

• Minority Stress Theory helps explain why good intentions aren’t enough. Stress comes from two sources.
• The first is obvious: overt discrimination, bias, or micro-aggressions. Most employers actively work to address these.
• The second is less visible but often more damaging: concealment, hyper-vigilance, and fear of negative consequences. These are created not by hostility, but by silence, ambiguity, and poorly designed systems.
• Performance reviews that assume disclosure is safe.
• Wellbeing services that claim neutrality but lack competence.
• Policies that are technically inclusive but psychologically unsafe in practice.
• This is how even well-meaning organisations can unintentionally create chronic stress.

Why traditional wellbeing approaches fall short

Most workplace wellbeing strategies are reactive. They focus on support after someone is already struggling and rely on individuals opting into help.

But if the workplace itself is a source of stress, individual coping strategies can only go so far. You can offer mindfulness apps, employee assistance programmes, or flexible working policies — but if systems remain unchanged, these supports are often underused or mistrusted.

Put simply, you cannot build resilient people in fragile systems.

Moving from inclusion to infrastructure

Supporting LGBTQIA+ mental wellness does not require complex or costly initiatives. It requires a shift in mindset — from inclusion as intent to inclusion as infrastructure.

This means asking practical, preventative questions:

• Is psychological safety measured, or simply assumed?
• Are managers equipped to respond well to disclosure, absence, or conflict?
• Do policies reduce the need for people to hide parts of themselves?
• Are wellbeing providers competent and trusted by those most at risk?
• Does everyday work design — from dress codes to flexibility — reduce friction or add to it?

What good looks like in practice

• When organisations design wellbeing into their systems, success often looks quiet rather than flashy.
• Employees access support earlier, not only at crisis point.
• Managers feel more confident and less fearful of “getting it wrong.”
• Retention improves, particularly for experienced and high-performing staff.
• Grievances and escalations reduce because issues are addressed upstream.

This is not about perfection. It’s about prevention.

This applies to organisations of all sizes

You do not need a large HR team or a big budget to make meaningful change. Small employers can review language in policies, make expectations explicit, and build psychological safety through leadership behaviours. Larger organisations can use data, procurement standards, and manager capability frameworks to reduce risk at scale.

The principle is the same at every size: wellbeing works best when it is designed into how work happens, not bolted on afterwards.

The question every employer should ask.

• Where in our organisation is harm preventable, but currently accepted as normal?
• Answering that question honestly is the first step toward workplaces that are not only more inclusive, but healthier, more sustainable, and better for everyone who works within them.
• Inclusion that is not designed into systems is fragile.
• Wellbeing that is not preventative is expensive.
• And employers who understand that are the ones building workplaces fit for the future

For more information on Queerwell and our Wellness in the Workspace programme: www.queerwell.org.uk