Monday, twenty to eight. A text arrives from your deputy in the pre-school room: she won’t be in today, and she doesn’t say why. It’s the third time this month. By eight you’re on the floor yourself to keep ratios, the learning journal updates are sliding again, and the conversation you need to have with her keeps getting pushed to “when things calm down”.
Most nursery managers know that morning. What has changed over the last year is how the law and the inspectors look at it.
No new law, but a lot more attention
There is still no legal requirement for a nursery to appoint a mental health first aider or to put staff through mental health training. The change is in enforcement. The Health and Safety Executive now treats work-related stress as a hazard like any other, and it has started acting on that. In December 2025 it served a formal notice on the University of Birmingham over the way it managed staff stress, with a deadline to produce an action plan.
The numbers explain why. HSE’s figures for 2024/25, published last November, put the number of workers with work-related stress, depression or anxiety at 964,000. That cost 22.1 million working days, an average of almost 23 days for every person affected. Both figures are sharply up on the year before, and workload was the most common cause people gave.
Early years isn’t singled out in those statistics, but most of the known risk factors are part of the job. Long days on your feet, tight ratios, paperwork squeezed into naptime and parents at the door every evening all add up.
The stress risk assessment most settings don’t have
The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require every employer to assess the risks staff face at work, and stress counts as one of those risks. If you employ five or more people, the assessment has to be written down.
HSE’s Management Standards give you the headings, and they translate easily into nursery life:
- Demands: ratios, cover for sickness, observations written up at home.
- Control: how much say staff have over their rota, breaks and room routines.
- Support: whether supervision actually happens and whether anyone asks how people are.
- Relationships: conflict between colleagues, and difficult exchanges with parents.
- Role: whether a new room leader knows what they’re now responsible for.
- Change: new EYFS requirements, new software, a new manager.
A page under each heading, with the actions you’re taking and a date to review them, is a stronger answer to an inspector or an insurer than any wellbeing poster in the staff room.
Ofsted is asking too
Under the report card system, the leadership and governance area looks at how leaders support the wellbeing of their staff and whether they keep workload manageable. Inspectors talk to practitioners as well as the manager, and staff tend to be candid about whether supervision is real or a form filled in twice a year.
The EYFS already requires regular supervision for everyone who works directly with children. That meeting is the natural place for wellbeing to be discussed and recorded. If your supervision sessions have drifted into a checklist of children’s progress, our earlier piece on supervision that staff don’t dread has some practical ways to bring them back.
Absence now costs more, sooner
Since 6 April 2026, statutory sick pay has been payable from the first day of absence, and the lower earnings limit has gone. Part-time practitioners and apprentices who previously got nothing for a short absence are now paid from day one. That’s fair on staff, and it also means the true cost of a stressed team shows up on your payroll much faster.
A mental health condition that has a substantial and long-term effect on someone’s day-to-day life can also count as a disability under the Equality Act 2010. At that point you have a legal duty to consider reasonable adjustments, such as a change of room, adjusted hours or a phased return. Managers who have never been shown how to open that conversation tend to avoid it, and avoidance is what leads to formal grievances.
A position you can defend
For most settings, a sensible position this autumn looks like this:
- A written stress risk assessment built on the six headings above, reviewed at least once a year.
- Supervision that takes place on schedule and includes a genuine question about how the person is coping.
- Room leaders and deputies who can spot the early signs of stress and know what to do next.
- A whole team that knows where support is available and feels able to use it.
- Records of all of it, kept with the rest of your compliance file.
None of that needs a big budget. It does need everyone to be working from the same understanding, which is where training helps. Our online course Practitioner Mental Health and Wellbeing at Work covers the signs of stress and burnout, managing workload and how to support a colleague who is struggling. For managers, Effective Supervision and Appraisal for Early Years Managers covers the wellbeing side of supervision and how to handle the difficult conversations. We also wrote in January about who looks after the people who look after the children, which covers the day-to-day culture side.
Give your whole team a shared understanding of stress and wellbeing.
Practitioner Mental Health and Wellbeing at Work covers recognising stress and burnout, workload, supporting colleagues and knowing when to seek help, with an NFAQ-accredited certificate for your compliance file.
As for the deputy who texted at twenty to eight: the conversation you keep postponing is the most important part of all this. Book it for this week and put it in the diary as a supervision session.
This article was published in September 2026. Employment law and HSE guidance change, so check GOV.UK for the current position. It is not legal advice.