Ah. The numbers question.
“How many mental health first aiders do we need?” It’s one of the first things I get asked by HR managers, and it’s a fair question. Organisations need numbers. They need budgets. They need to know they have coverage.
But whenever somebody asks me, there’s another question going through my head. What are you actually trying to achieve?
The short answer
There’s no legal number, and no ratio will tell you whether it’s working. A better starting point is to ask who your staff already trust, make sure there’s cover across every site, shift and team, and then build the support around those people so they can do the role well.
When it becomes a numbers exercise
If we aren’t careful, it goes something like this.
- We’ve got 300 employees.
- We need X number of mental health first aiders.
- Train them.
- Put their names on the intranet.
- Job done.
Except that tells me absolutely nothing about whether somebody struggling at 10am on a Tuesday actually feels able to speak to one of them.
It doesn’t tell me whether your first aiders feel confident having difficult conversations. It doesn’t tell me whether they know what to do when somebody says something that scares them. It doesn’t tell me whether managers understand their role, or whether the first aiders themselves are supported after carrying some pretty heavy conversations.
And it definitely doesn’t tell me whether anybody remembers who the bloody mental health first aiders are six months after the training.
So yes, numbers matter. But you want to know what sits underneath them.
Trained isn’t the same as trusted
When I see a workplace where plenty of people have been trained but hardly anybody goes to them, the answer is rarely “the training didn’t work”. More often, the missing bit’s permission and trust.
People can know exactly who the first aiders are and still think:
- “Do I really want Dave from accounts knowing I’m struggling?”
- “What happens after I tell them?”
- “Is this actually confidential?”
- “Will my manager find out?”
- “Am I making too much of this?”
And sometimes there’s a more uncomfortable truth. The organisation has trained people to have conversations, but hasn’t created a culture where people feel safe starting one.
You can train 30 mental health first aiders. That doesn’t mean you’ve created 30 people your staff feel safe talking to.
“How many have you trained?” and “Would your people actually go to them?” are two very different questions.
The people colleagues already go to
The people colleagues actually go to are often the people they were already going to before anybody gave them a lanyard or a certificate.
They’re the person who notices. The person who doesn’t panic when somebody says, “I’m not doing great.” The person who listens without immediately trying to fix it. The person you trust not to turn it into workplace gossip.
Practical things matter too. If your first aider works on another floor, works different shifts, is permanently in meetings or is somebody you barely know, technically you’ve coverage. In reality, you might not.
Here’s something I notice a lot. Organisations often choose their first aiders based on who volunteers for the training, rather than asking who people would actually talk to. So perhaps the question that comes before “How many do we need?” is this: Who are the people our staff already trust? Then train them properly.
What to put around them
Don’t train people and then leave them to get on with it. That’s where organisations can accidentally create another problem. Before you worry about the number, think about the list below. We go into more detail in our article on supporting your mental health first aiders.
- Regular check ins or supervision, especially after difficult conversations.
- Clear boundaries. They need to know what their role is and, just as importantly, what it isn’t.
- A proper escalation and signposting route. If someone comes to them with something serious, where does that person go next?
- Managers who know the difference between their own responsibility and the first aider’s role. A first aider should not become the person managers send every difficult conversation to.
- Visibility that doesn’t disappear after launch week. Names, faces, locations, shifts and contact details, with regular reminders that they exist.
- Coverage that reflects how you actually work. Different sites, shifts, remote workers, holidays and absence.
- Permission to step back. Someone might be brilliant in the role for two years and then have things happening in their own life. They should be able to say, “I can’t carry this at the moment.”
- Refreshers and chances to practise. Confidence disappears surprisingly quickly when you haven’t used something.
- Some way of knowing whether it’s being used, without compromising confidentiality.
They’re one part of the system
If there’s one thing I would push hard with any HR manager, it’s this: don’t make your mental health first aiders responsible for your organisation’s mental health.
If managers aren’t equipped, policies don’t work, workloads are ridiculous, nobody knows where professional support comes from, and the culture makes admitting you are struggling feel risky, having 20 trained first aiders doesn’t fix that.
The training is the beginning of the system, not the system itself.
That’s why our training looks beyond the conversation itself, to where people go next, who they talk to, and the policies and support behind it. If you would like to look at how well your current support actually works, our workplace mental health systems review is a good place to start. You might also find our article on first aid for mental health versus awareness training useful.
Common questions
Is it a legal requirement to have mental health first aiders?
No. UK law doesn’t require employers to train mental health first aiders. The HSE does expect employers to think about mental health when they assess their first aid needs, and employers have a duty to manage the risk of work related stress. There’s more on this in our article on what the law actually requires.
So how many should we train?
There’s no fixed number. Start with who your staff already trust, then make sure you’ve cover across every site, shift and team, including remote workers, holidays and absence. Having more than one person in each area also gives people a choice about who they talk to.
Which level of training do they need?
It depends on the role you want them to play, not their job title. Our guide to Level 1, 2 or 3 explains how to decide.
What is the difference between a mental health first aider and a manager?
A manager has responsibilities for the people in their team, including workload, absence and adjustments. A mental health first aider is someone anyone can go to for a supportive conversation and help finding the right support. Both matter, and neither should replace the other.
Talk it through with us
Tell us about your organisation, your sites and the people you’ve in mind, and we will help you work out what makes sense. You can also see all our workplace mental health training.