Why mental resilience must be at the heart of your DEI strategy

The question for HR leaders isn’t whether to prioritise mental resilience, it’s whether your DEI strategy can succeed without it.

Mental health isn’t just a wellbeing issue - it’s a workplace equity issue.

When mental resilience is absent from your DEI strategy, you’re neglecting a key driver of retention, trust and long-term performance.

You’re also failing the very people your policies are meant to support.

Mental resilience: the missing pillar in DEI

As DEI strategies mature, HR and reward leaders are recognising an often-overlooked pillar of inclusion: mental resilience.

It’s no longer enough to focus solely on visible demographics.

To build genuinely inclusive cultures, organisations must understand how mental health intersects with identity, inequality, and workplace experience.

For forward-thinking employers, that means embedding mental resilience at the heart of both DEI and benefits strategy — not treating it as an add-on.

Why mental resilience is essential to DEI strategy

Mental resilience is the ability to cope with adversity, maintain performance and emerge stronger.

It’s influenced by workplace culture, inclusion and the level of support employees have access to.

Without the right culture and support structures, resilience can quickly diminish, especially for certain groups who face greater challenges in the workplace.

Who's most at risk when mental resilience is ignored?

Employees who experience bias, exclusion, or inequity are often the most vulnerable when it comes to maintaining mental resilience.

Here are some key groups who face heightened risks:

Women of colour: 43% report that being denied promotion directly harmed their wellbeing.
Younger workers (under 30): This group is experiencing the highest rates of burnout (17%), depression (14.6%), and fatigue (55.6%).
LGBTQ+ employees: 31% feel they cannot be themselves at work and of these more than half have experienced discrimination, such as receiving verbal or physical abuse, or feeling excluded.
Mature workers: Nearly one in seven (15%) say their age affected job prospects, and around one in 12 (8%) report age-based workplace discrimination.
Disabled employees: 40% have felt patronised or ‘put down’ by other people at work and 38% have been bullied, harassed or discriminated against.
Mothers: Over half of mothers (52%) have faced some form of discrimination when pregnant, on maternity leave or when they returned.

These aren’t isolated experiences; they’re structural issues that can leave employees vulnerable when resilience isn’t actively supported.

Embedding resilience into your DEI strategy helps level the playing field.

It ensures support reaches those who need it most and builds a culture where every employee has the chance to thrive.

Why is mental resilience still being sidelined?

Too often, mental health is treated as a standalone initiative, siloed under wellbeing, disconnected from inclusion.

And in many cases, diversity and inclusion efforts are reduced to tokengestures that don’t address the deeper systemic issues employees face.

The reality is that mental health is shaped by employees’ lived experiences and includes bias, microaggressions, exclusion and unequal access to support.

Failing to connect DEI and resilience is more than a missed opportunity.

It suggests that mental health is a personal issue, not an organisational responsibility.

In a global climate where DEI policies are being rolled back in the name of “neutrality” in parts of the US, UK organisations must lead with intention. Resilient, inclusive workplaces don’t happen by accident.

The commercial case for resilience

Inclusive, resilient organisations report:

Greater innovation and agility
Stronger employee engagement and psychological safety
Higher retention across underrepresented groups
Improved business performance

In fact, Deloitte found inclusive organisations are six times more likely to be innovative and eight times more likely to deliver better outcomes. And resilience makes those outcomes sustainable.

How to embed mental resilience into DEI strategy

This is about long-term culture change.

Here’s how to get started:

Educate your leaders: Train managers on the intersection of mental health and inclusion. Help them lead with empathy and build psychologically safe environments.
Offer culturally competent support: Provide diverse, multilingual access to mental health services — and ensure your Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) reflects the workforce it serves.
Design inclusive policies: Place flexible working, mental health days, and neurodiversity support within your DEI framework — not tucked away under “wellbeing”.
Foster psychological safety: Normalise open conversations through employee networks, storytelling, and reverse mentoring. Leaders who show vulnerability build trust.
Stamp out discrimination: Create and enforce clear processes for addressing exclusion. Equity must be lived, not just listed in a policy document.
Provide benefits for a diverse workforce including:
- Inclusive parental leave (covering adoption, surrogacy, same-sex families)
- Fertility and family-building support
- Culturally sensitive leave (e.g. religious holidays)
- Assistive tech and accessible platforms for disabled staff

Measure what matters: Track mental wellbeing as part of DEI reporting. Use surveys, exit data, and absence trends to find — and close — support gaps.

The bottom line for HR and reward leaders

When organisations fail to integrate mental wellbeing into DEI, they risk losing talent, trust, and performance.

When they get it right, they build inclusive, high-trust cultures where everyone has a fair chance to succeed.