How Affinity Water built a supported Mental Health First Aid network
Lara
Wrote this on, May 8, 2026
For many businesses, Mental Health First Aid training is where the journey begins… and ends.
People are trained. Badges are handed out. Posters go up.
Too often, the Supporters are left to figure it out on their own.
No structure.
No visibility.
No ongoing support.
No real understanding of whether the network is actually working.
At Affinity Water, that didn’t sit right.
As the UK’s largest water only company, Affinity Water supports around 1,500 employees across a vast geographical area stretching from Kent to Essex and Suffolk. With field based teams, operational workers, office staff, and employees spread across multiple locations, creating meaningful wellbeing support was never going to be simple.
But for the team leading occupational health and wellbeing, one thing became increasingly clear.
Training people without supporting them afterwards was not enough.
“It’s irresponsible to train people and let them just walk away”
For Carol Moore, Health and Safety Advisor at Affinity Water, mental health support became a natural extension of looking after employee health overall.
But after stepping into the business and reviewing the existing Mental Health First Aid network, gaps quickly became visible.
There were trained Mental Health First Aiders across the business but they weren’t connected. There was little visibility, no real understanding of whether supporters were active and no structured support for the supporters themselves.
Carol explains:
I think with mental health, it’s irresponsible to train people and let them just walk away… They need to have structure. They need to have networks that they can talk to. They need to have somewhere to go to talk about their own issues, to talk about the stress they may be under.
That challenge is one many organisations face.
Supporters are often having incredibly difficult conversations behind the scenes; conversations involving work-related stress, burnout, grief, pressure, relationships, amongst many others.
Yet many businesses still operate with little visibility into whether supporters feel confident, whether they feel overwhelmed, whether they are engaging, where conversations are happening, or what themes are emerging across the organisation.
Affinity Water wanted to change that.
Moving from training to an actual support system
Rather than viewing their network as a standalone initiative, Affinity Water wanted to create something embedded.
A visible network.
A supported network.
A measurable network.
That meant creating regular engagement opportunities, bringing supporters together consistently, and giving the business real insight into what was happening across the organisation.
Creating visibility and accountability
Rather than viewing their network as a standalone initiative, Affinity Water wanted to create something embedded.
A visible network.
A supported network.
A measurable network.
Today, Affinity Water has 59 Mental Health First Aiders positioned strategically across different operational areas of the business. Coverage was planned intentionally, particularly around operational and field based teams who can often feel the most disconnected.
One of the biggest frustrations for Affinity Water was the lack of measurable insight available through traditional Mental Health First Aid approaches.
As Carol explained:
“We were doing lots of training, but no outputs that we could see.”
This is where many businesses struggle.
Without visibility, organisations are often relying on assumptions.
They hope people are engaging.
They hope Supporters feel okay.
They hope conversations are happening.
But hope is not a strategy.
Through Everymind’s platform and partnership, Affinity Water was able to build a clearer picture of what support actually looked like across the business.
Not just how many Mental Health First Aiders existed, but whether Supporters were active, whether conversations were taking place, what themes were emerging, where pressure points existed, where additional support may be needed, and whether supporters themselves felt confident and supported.
This allowed the business to move beyond assumptions and towards meaningful action.
Turning wellbeing conversations into actionable insight
One of the most powerful parts of the Everymind approach has been using conversation data to identify organisational trends and problem areas.
Rather than simply logging that a conversation took place, Affinity Water refined its categories to better understand what employees were actually struggling with. For example, the business could begin identifying whether conversations related to relationship issues at work, workload pressure, stress caused by the volume of work, operational challenges, or pressures emerging within specific directorates.
This gave the organisation something many businesses are missing.
Early visibility.
Instead of waiting for issues to escalate into absence, disengagement, or crisis, Affinity Water could identify patterns emerging within particular teams or departments and begin targeted conversations earlier.
Carol told us:
It just allows us to have more of an insight, to focus our attention into those areas, into those directorates, and say, ‘This is a problem in your area. What are we going to do?’
That shift matters.
Because workplace wellbeing should never operate in isolation from operational decision making.
Support conversations can reveal pressure points within teams, leadership challenges, workload concerns, relationship breakdowns, communication issues, and cultural risks developing beneath the surface.
But only if organisations have a way to safely and consistently identify them.
Supporting the supporters
One of the themes repeated throughout Affinity Water’s case study was the importance of supporting the supporters themselves.
Initial training doesn’t do that, an embedded peer support system does.
Supporters are encouraged to step back if needed, reminded that they do not need to carry everything alone, and given ongoing access to 1:1 support, live monthly development sessions and 24/7 access to the skills centre to upskill and take care of their own wellbeing through the Everymind Platform.
This ongoing connection has helped create something far more sustainable.
As Carol described:
[With Everymind] I’ve always felt as though we’ve had a big pair of arms around the Mental Health First Aiders, and they feel that too.
That feeling matters.
Because supporters who feel isolated, unsupported, or emotionally overloaded are far less likely to remain engaged long term. And yet this is still one of the most overlooked areas of workplace mental health strategies.
Many businesses invest heavily in training but far fewer invest in maintaining healthy, sustainable support networks afterwards.
Beyond tick box wellbeing
For Affinity Water, the partnership with Everymind became about far more than a platform. It became about having a structured support system around the organisation.
Designed for the Supporters, yet impacting the whole business.
Affinity Water wanted a model that embedded wellbeing into the fabric of the business rather than treating it as a disconnected initiative.
And importantly, it created confidence.
Confidence that supporters were visible and taken care of.
Confidence that conversations were happening.
Confidence that data could inform action.
And confidence that the organisation could identify areas of concern before they escalated.
As they explained:
Without Everymind, I’d be relying on people telling me things, or relying on people reporting back. But this gives me the information I need to be able to provide statistics to HR and the Health & Safety Director at a touch of a button.
That visibility changes the role of workplace wellbeing entirely.
Instead of operating reactively, relying on assumptions or waiting for crises, businesses can begin building proactive, measurable, supported cultures.
The future of workplace support networks
Affinity Water’s story highlights something increasingly important across workplace wellbeing.
Training alone is not enough.
Supporter networks need structure, support and ongoing development and every business needs safe, effective and measurable insight from it.
For Affinity Water, that shift has helped transform Mental Health First Aid from a training initiative into an active, supported, evolving part of workplace culture.
And for many organisations, that will be the difference between having trained supporters… and having a support system that genuinely works.
At Everymind, we work with organisations to help build embedded peer support systems.
Not just training. Not just awareness.
But ongoing support, visibility, measurable insight, and real cultural impact.
Whether you are looking to strengthen an existing Mental Health First Aid network or starting a network from scratch, we’d love to show you how businesses like Affinity Water are approaching it.
If you’d like to explore how Everymind could support your organisation, get in touch with the team or book a conversation with us today.
