A member of your team comes to you and tells you they have just been diagnosed with ADHD, autism or dyslexia. Or they tell you they are struggling with their mental health. Or they disclose something personal that is affecting their ability to work.
And you freeze.
Not because you don’t care. But because nobody ever told you what to say.
The silence that follows a disclosure is one of the most costly moments in any workplace. Not because of what is said. Because of what isn’t.
In my work with organisations, I see this regularly. Managers who are decent, well meaning people who genuinely want to do right by their staff, but who have never been equipped to handle the moment when someone is honest with them about what they are carrying.
So, they say something vague. Or they say nothing at all. Or they refer it to HR and hope the conversation doesn’t need to happen again.
And the member of staff walks away feeling more alone than before they spoke.
What silence actually costs
£51 billion — the annual cost of poor mental health to UK employers
That figure from the Mental Health Foundation includes absenteeism, presenteeism, and staff turnover. But it doesn’t capture something harder to measure: the cost of a person who needed support, didn’t get it, and quietly disengaged.
When a disclosure is met with silence or awkwardness, the message the employee receives however unintentionally is that this is not a safe place to be honest. They stop asking for what they need. They mask more. They manage more. And eventually, the gap between who they are at work and who they actually are becomes unsustainable.
Retention suffers. Performance suffers. And the organisation loses someone it didn’t have to lose.
What good actually looks like
Good doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means knowing enough to respond in a way that keeps the door open.
It means saying: I’m glad you told me. It means asking: what would be most helpful right now? It means knowing the difference between what you need to act on immediately and what simply needs to be heard.
It means understanding what reasonable adjustments are and recognising that most of them are simpler than organisations fear. A different working pattern. A quieter workspace. Written rather than verbal briefings. Small changes that make an enormous difference to someone whose brain works differently.
And it means creating a culture where these conversations can happen before someone reaches crisis point not after.
The organisations that get this right don’t just retain better staff. They build workplaces where people can actually perform.
What ISO 45003 means for your organisation
ISO 45003 the international standard for psychological health and safety at work sets out a framework for identifying and managing the psychosocial risks that affect your people. Poor communication, excessive pressure, lack of support after a disclosure these are not soft issues. They are organisational risks that the standard asks employers to actively manage.
Most organisations want to do the right thing. The gap is usually not intention it is knowledge. Knowing what to say. Knowing what is reasonable. Knowing how to build a culture where mental health and neurodiversity are part of the conversation rather than a crisis to be managed.
That is exactly what I help organisations do.
If your organisation is ready to act
I work with businesses across the UK through training, coaching and consultancy that gives managers the tools they need and gives your staff the confidence that someone will know what to do when they are honest.
Mental health and neurodiversity training. Reasonable adjustments guidance. Support through redundancy and restructure. One to one staff coaching on a confidential basis.
If you want managers to feel confident having these conversations — before staff reach crisis point I’d be happy to talk.
Get in touch: 07981 508023 | enquiries@andreapeers.com