The statistics make uncomfortable reading. More than four in five UK tradespeople have experienced some form of mental health problem due to work, and nine in ten say they don’t know how to access mental health support services. In construction and specialist building services, workers are more than four times more likely to die by suicide than the national average.
These are not abstract numbers. They represent people – the electricians, engineers, technicians and specialists who keep the UK’s buildings safe, compliant and functioning every day.
For Premier Technical Services Group (PTSG), the largest specialist building services business in the UK, these figures represent an obligation to act.
Going beyond the baseline
This year, PTSG introduced a comprehensive Zurich Group Life Assurance programme for all 3,200 colleagues – not just as a financial safety net, but as a gateway to a full suite of health and wellbeing support.
At its core, the policy provides life assurance cover of three times annual salary. But the real investment is in what sits alongside it: a 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme offering confidential support on mental health, bereavement, legal and financial concerns, and family and workplace challenges; unlimited virtual GP, physiotherapy and dietitian services available to colleagues and their immediate families; access to second medical opinions from leading global specialists; and eldercare planning tools for those navigating that particular pressure alongside work.
Complementing this, PTSG’s dedicated Occupational Health and Wellbeing Service, Innovate, brings together a multi-disciplinary team of physiotherapists, exercise physiologists and mental health clinicians – all qualified in occupational medicine – to provide specialist support tailored to the realities of working in a physically demanding industry.
It’s a level of provision that most employers in the sector simply don’t offer.
Making help visible
Policy without infrastructure is a missed opportunity. PTSG’s approach is built around making support accessible, not just available.
Nearly 100 trained Mental Health First Aiders are embedded across the business – visible, proactive points of contact for colleagues who may not feel ready to reach for a helpline. Group Health and Wellbeing Director Terry Wilcock leads a programme that works in close partnership with HR, Occupational Health and the Board, ensuring that wellbeing isn’t siloed as an HR function but embedded as a business priority.
Smaller suppliers of specialist trade skills have fewer employment protections, more compressed schedules, and are even less likely to have the capacity to provide wellbeing services. PTSG, operating across five specialist divisions, is making a deliberate choice to be the exception to that pattern.
The business case is clear
Mental ill-health costs UK businesses an estimated £56 billion annually. Almost half of workers in construction and engineering take time off due to poor mental wellbeing – with around 30% reporting they use annual leave to avoid any questions or embarrassment. The stigma is real, and the cost – human and commercial – is significant.
Investing in wellbeing isn’t altruism in isolation. It’s how businesses build the resilient, engaged workforces that deliver for clients over the long term.
A statement of intent
Mental Health Awareness Week, which runs from 11 to 17 May, provides a timely moment to reflect – but for PTSG, the work is ongoing. The business has long maintained that how an employer looks after its people isn’t defined by what it says, but by what it does.
Greg Ward, Chief Executive of PTSG, said: “I truly believe that how we look after each other isn’t defined by what we say – it’s defined by what we do. Real support shows up in everyday actions: checking in, listening and being there when it matters most. Mental Health Awareness Week is good for reflecting and reminding, but our work here is never done. This is a subject that needs to be front and centre in our minds, every minute of every day.”
Ward started his career as an apprentice, learning a trade in the same industry he now leads. His perspective on the sector’s historically stoic culture – and the cost of it – is shaped by experience, not distance.
Terry Wilcock, Group Health and Wellbeing Director, added: “The conversations I see happening across this business every day are ones that simply wouldn’t have taken place five years ago. People are coming forward who would never have asked for help before – not because their lives have suddenly got harder, but because there’s now a visible network around them and they know it’s safe to reach out. That shift doesn’t happen through a policy document. It happens through the people who show up, check in and make support feel real rather than corporate.”
For a business that employs over 3,200 people across the UK – many of them working in physically demanding, often isolated environments – this is more than a benefits package. It’s a statement about the kind of employer PTSG chooses to be.
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