Writing
Personal essays on workplace mental health, the systems that shape it, and what the evidence really says.
Confidence at work is made and unmade by design
Confidence isn't brought to work. It's made and unmade there, by the design of the job and by the first manager. What our community and the Civil Service show.
Access to Work is crumbling, and a year on it's worse
In July 2025 I wrote that Access to Work was being quietly dismantled. A year on, the NAO, the Public Accounts Committee and DWP's own letters prove it.
We count work-related stress. We stopped asking why.
HSE counts 964,000 workers with work-related stress every year. Its data on what causes it averages 2009 to 2012. We measure the damage, not the cause.
Mental health training doesn't need to understand your industry
New clients often ask for training built around their sector. Construction says it loudest. But knowing your industry was never the missing piece.
You cannot destroy jobs and demand more people work
Richard Murphy names the contradiction in UK employment policy: suppress jobs, then blame the people who can't find them. I've lived both ends of this one.
Loneliness, neoliberalism and 'enough' at work
Richard Murphy says loneliness is internalised neoliberalism. The workplace is where that lesson gets taught most clearly, and 'enough' is the fix nobody calls simple.
AI at work isn't a revolution. It's a vacuum.
Four in five UK workers use AI. Fewer than one in twenty use it well. That gap isn't your people, it's the training, rules and permission nobody gave them.
'Job hugging' isn't fear. It's a rational read of a broken deal.
HR's new phrase blames the worker again. People aren't clinging to jobs out of fear, they're surveying the alternatives and finding nothing better.
'It is a killer': what a learner taught me about burnout
A learner who reached burnout twice could name every protective habit. Knowing your non-negotiables isn't the same as being able to use them.