How Unipart built a Mental Health First Aid programme that actually works
Lara
Wrote this on, August 20, 2026
Unipart is a global logistics, supply chain, manufacturing and operational consultancy group, with more than 8,000 colleagues worldwide. Like many businesses, Unipart wanted its Mental Health First Aid programme to be more than a ratio to hit or a box to tick. They wanted a culture where people ask for help sooner, where colleagues feel safe at work, and where the skills that come with the training ripple outwards into everyday behaviour.
At the heart of that ambition is their Mental Health First Aid programme, led by Claire Burgess, Head of Health & Wellbeing, and supported by Everymind at Work.
Helping people speak up sooner
For Claire, the value of the programme was never limited to crisis moments. As she explains:
“We want to enable people to seek help sooner rather than later, but also drive the skills that we want to see…empathy and passion and just allow people to feel safe within the workplace.”
That connects directly to how Unipart thinks about performance. Gareth Uden, Director of the Unipart Way, has spent 21 years shaping the organisation’s culture globally. His remit is to dial up the features of a high-performing business, and psychological safety sits squarely within it, so that teams can challenge each other openly and everyone comes to work and leaves work safe, physically and mentally.
Making support easy to reach was the practical test. Claire says,
The Everymind platform not only provided a technical solution to log conversations, it made it more accessible. Wherever our supporters work in the organisation, they can log a conversation, they can access the support, they can use the Skill Centre, they can ask for help.
For her, the most compelling part of Everymind’s support was the on-demand, 1-to-1 support sitting behind it all.
Support for the supporters, not just training
Mental Health First Aiders are asked to hold difficult conversations. Unipart wanted to make sure they weren’t holding them alone.
Neil Pinnell, Health, Safety, Wellbeing & Sustainability Manager at Unipart, describes what that looks like in practice: “Whenever I do a check-in with one of my people, there’s always a feedback for me to say how I’m feeling post that.”
On the rare occasions he has needed more, the response has mattered. “There has been one or two times where I’ve needed that support, and I’ve reached out to the Everymind team, and they’ve been there for me.” As Neil puts it, when the really tough cases come, it’s good to know someone is looking out for you, and that it’s a genuine team of people who care rather than something done for the sake of it.
Voices from across the business
What stands out at Unipart is why people volunteer in the first place.
Paul Day, Health, Safety, Wellbeing & Operations Manager for CIRT in Newcastle, stepped forward because colleagues and friends were already coming to him, and he didn’t have the training to meet them properly. “At first, I thought I could fix the problems because of my own insights and what I’d gone through. But I soon learned that is not the best thing to do.”
Learning to listen and signpost, he says, turned out to be the strongest thing he could offer which is what he learned through the Everymind training.
Charlie Stoddart, Health, Safety, Wellbeing & Sustainability Coordinator, came to the role from personal experience of being supported. “I was wanting to help other people in their time of need, when they were just wanting to unload for a bit, and just be that listening ear for them.”
The impact of that willingness is not abstract. Claire recalls an assistant team leader who spoke to his team leaders and was very clear about what the network had meant to him:
If it hadn’t been for those Mental Health First Aiders, he wouldn’t be here.
That is what a well-supported network makes possible. It isn’t awareness for its own sake. It’s colleagues equipped with the confidence to notice, to stay in the conversation, and to reach someone at the moment it mattered most.
Data-driven wellbeing
Alongside the network, Unipart uses the Everymind platform to see patterns rather than isolated incidents. Neil describes the value of that view: “Being able to see the information about our site and all of the other sites and see the trends of the different things that are being spoken about [is very valuable].”
That intelligence feeds directly into how he leads. It shapes his health needs survey and his conversations with his team about the most prevalent issues, and it lets him act earlier. His ambition is telling: he wants a team who feel able to talk to him, but who need to less often, because the support arrived before the crisis did.
The shift is showing up in Unipart’s annual engagement survey too. One of the questions the team watches most closely is “I feel cared for as a person.” Claire notes that it no longer sits in the bottom three. “For me, that’s a real testament to the work that we do and the investment we’ve put into it, and how that’s been received by the rest of the business.”
Partnership in action
Much of the momentum comes from working with Jemma Bell, Everymind’s Wellbeing Business Consultant. Claire leads the programme in what is largely a solo role, relying on volunteers across the business, and describes Jemma as an extension of her team:
She takes the data, she gives me insights, and it’s proactive. She comes to those meetings with suggestions. Have you thought about doing ‘this’? I can provide you with some comms around ‘this’.
For Claire, the relationship has moved past the transactional. “It’s not a supplier-customer relationship.” What she describes instead is a shared purpose and value set, with a partner invested in how Unipart is succeeding and willing to evolve alongside them.
Value, not a tick box
Gareth is direct about what separates a programme that works from one that doesn’t, and it starts with giving people the time to do the role properly.
If a business is just training mental health first aiders to hit a ratio, tick a box for compliance reasons, there’s no value in that. That becomes a cost to the business. It doesn’t become a value add.
He went on to say “Businesses doing it that way are flushing fifty pound notes down the toilet, and would be better off reinvesting in a network who genuinely add value.”
Unipart’s story shows what happens when a Mental Health First Aid programme is treated as an ongoing commitment rather than a tick-box task. By protecting people’s time, supporting the supporters, and using data to act earlier, they have built a network that changes how colleagues experience work, and in at least one case, has changed far more than that.
