The silent health crisis hiding in plain sight at work 

Men are dying younger, burning out quietly and avoiding support until crisis point. Yet across many workplaces, wellbeing strategies still appear designed for people who are already comfortable talking about health. This is a disconnect which is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. 

Despite years of investment in workplace wellbeing, men remain significantly less likely to engage with preventative healthcare, mental health support and early intervention services. Suicide rates among men remain substantially higher than among women. Heart disease continues to kill men prematurely. Many are still reluctant to access support even when employers provide it.  

The question is no longer whether organisations offer wellbeing support. It is whether that support is reaching the people most at risk. 

For many experts across workplace health, the answer is uncomfortable. 

“In many workplaces, vulnerability is still quietly interpreted as weakness, especially for leaders,” says Keith Burnet, founder of leadership development company The Alchemist & Adventurer. “Performance is rewarded, pressure is normalised, and exhaustion becomes a badge of honour.” 

That culture, he argues, is pushing many men into silent decline. 

“Men learn very early to stay in control, stay useful, and keep moving,” he says. “The problem is that many carry stress, burnout, anxiety, and disconnection silently until it reaches a crisis point.” 

The modern workplace talks more openly about mental health than it did a decade ago. Employers now offer apps, EAPs, webinars, wellbeing weeks and digital support platforms at scale. But many of the people these initiatives are designed to help are still not engaging. 

And increasingly, experts believe the problem is structural rather than individual. 

Too much workplace wellbeing, they argue, still relies on employees proactively opting in, speaking up or navigating systems that feel culturally distant from their day-to-day lives. 

That gap becomes particularly stark among frontline, operational and manual workers. 

“The biggest risk is that workplace wellbeing becomes something only accessible to office-based employees with the flexibility, time and confidence to engage,” says Pauline Alonso from Hussle by EGYM. 

“Men in frontline, shift-based, manual and lower-paid roles are often the least likely to access support, despite potentially facing the greatest physical and mental strain.” 

In practice, many wellbeing strategies still orbit around desk-based working patterns. Lunchtime webinars, app-based engagement and digital self-service tools may work for corporate office environments, but they often fail to reach workers in construction, transport, manufacturing, logistics or engineering. 

Anil Toraty, non-executive director at MHFA England, says many organisations are mistaking availability for accessibility. 

“One of the biggest mistakes organisations can make is assuming that simply offering wellbeing resources means they’re reaching the people who need them most,” he says. 

“Many initiatives are still designed around desk-based working environments, which can unintentionally leave parts of the workforce feeling disconnected from the support available.” 

This is where the conversation becomes more complex than simply telling men to “open up”. 

Several experts say the wellbeing industry itself may need to rethink how it frames support. 

Andy Romero-Birkbeck, Founder & Director of We Are Wellbeing. says many men disengage because wellbeing often feels overly clinical, passive or emotionally loaded from the outset. 

“When wellbeing support is heavily focused on emotional language, clinical terminology or long digital resources, many men disengage before they even start,” he says. 

Instead, he says men often engage more effectively through practical, performance-focused interventions tied to energy, recovery, sleep, concentration and physical health. 

“What we consistently see through workplace health checks and wellbeing conversations is that men often engage better through practical, measurable and performance-focused approaches,” he says. 

That may explain why initiatives built around blood pressure checks, fitness, sleep, fatigue or physical performance often become gateways into broader conversations around mental health. 

For Josep Solà, co-founder and CTO of Hilo, the workplace may now represent one of the few realistic opportunities to catch serious health risks early among working-age men. 

“Hypertension doesn’t give any warning,” he says. “It is symptomless in most cases and there are no obvious signs of it unless you measure your blood pressure regularly.” 

The danger, he says, is that many men continue working through accumulating health risks without intervention. 

“High blood pressure that goes undetected in your 30s and 40s doesn’t stay still,” he says. “By the time it surfaces clinically, the damage is often already done.” 

What makes this particularly significant for employers is that many men may never proactively seek help elsewhere. 

“The workplace is genuinely one of the most powerful access points we have for reaching people who would never walk into a GP surgery to ask about their blood pressure,” Solà says. 

Yet, while employers increasingly position themselves as drivers of workforce health, some experts believe many organisations are still avoiding the harder cultural questions underneath the wellbeing conversation. 

Lesley Cooper, founder and CEO of WorkingWell, says deeply embedded social expectations around masculinity continue to shape how men behave at work. 

“Social norms continue to portray men as unemotional, self-sufficient and ‘tough’,” she says. 

That conditioning, she argues, means many men fear being perceived as weak if they admit they are struggling physically or emotionally. 

But she believes leadership visibility can shift that culture significantly. 

“When higher-ups can be candid about times when they have struggled, others start to see their own struggles as valid too, rather than a sign of weakness and fragility,” she says. 

Burnet agrees. He believes psychological safety is created through human connection rather than corporate messaging. 

“Men rarely open up because they are told to sit in a room and talk about feelings,” he says. 

“They open up when there is shared experience, purpose, humour, challenge and a sense of belonging.” 

At Difference Maker’s leadership retreats, Burnet says some of the most meaningful conversations happen away from corporate environments entirely. 

“We’ve watched senior leaders who struggle to speak honestly in corporate settings begin talking openly while walking trails, sitting around fires, or reflecting quietly in nature,” he says. 

For some experts, this points to a wider failure in how workplace wellbeing has evolved. 

Too often, support has been layered onto unhealthy working cultures rather than redesigning work itself. 

Alonso argues employers need to stop treating wellbeing as an optional extra and start embedding health into the working day itself. 

“The future of workplace wellbeing is not simply offering more programmes,” she says. “It is creating healthier working environments by design.” 

That includes movement during the working day, support adapted for shift patterns, better manager training and earlier intervention around burnout and stress. 

Matt Smith, associate director of clinical excellence at HA Wisdom Wellbeing, says organisations also need to become more intelligent about how support is positioned. 

“Research suggests that ‘growth-promoting’ mental health services see much greater engagement from men,” he says. 

“This involves goal setting, skills development, resilience building and integration of physical and mental health interventions.” 

Crucially, experts say this is not about building separate wellbeing systems for men. It is about recognising that equal access does not necessarily produce equal outcomes. 

“In many organisations, wellbeing strategies are designed for the majority, but not always in ways that actively engage men,” says Bar Huberman from Brightmine. 

“Men are still statistically less likely to seek help for physical or mental health concerns, often due to long-standing cultural expectations around resilience and masculinity.” 

The consequences of getting this wrong are becoming harder for employers to absorb. Rising long-term sickness absence, stress-related burnout, disengagement and preventable ill health are no longer isolated wellbeing issues. They are operational, financial and cultural risks. 

And behind much of it sits a simple but uncomfortable truth. Many men are not refusing support because they do not care about their health. 

They are refusing support because too much of the system still asks them to engage in ways that feel unfamiliar, unsafe or disconnected from the reality of their working lives.