Mental health training doesn't need to understand your industry

New clients often ask for training built around their sector. Construction says it loudest. But knowing your industry was never the missing piece.

Every so often a new client asks whether the course can be built around their industry. Sometimes the word is “tailored”. The worry behind it is nearly always the same. Our environment is unusual, our people deal with things other people don’t, and a trainer who hasn’t worked here won’t be able to teach them much.

I understand where it comes from. It is also, almost always, wrong. You already know your industry better than any trainer will. That was never the part you were missing.

What clients actually ask for

A client asked recently what their team needed. They had gone away and asked colleagues first, which not every client does, and came back with three things.

Recognising when someone, a colleague or a customer, is overwhelmed in a very busy environment.

Recognising when a member of the public is reacting badly to something and needs help.

Looking after your own mental health before it keeps you off work.

They believed these were specific to them. Every one of them is already in the course, and not as an add-on. Noticing that someone is struggling, responding well when they are, and spotting it in yourself before you end up signed off, that is First Aid for Mental Health. There is no version of the course that leaves those out, and no client who doesn’t need them.

Construction says it loudest

The industry that pushes hardest on this is construction. “You need to understand our industry. It has its own culture, its own pressures. You won’t get it.”

I think they’ve got it the wrong way round. What a construction worker needs from the person standing next to them is what everybody needs. Someone who notices they’ve gone quiet. Someone who asks, and then waits for the answer. Someone who doesn’t panic when the answer is a bad one.

The site is different. The hours are different. The risk of being seen as weak is probably higher. None of that changes what you need to do when someone is struggling. It changes where you do it, and you already know that place better than any trainer.

You know your environment. That was never the missing piece.

Clients assume the trainer has to bring knowledge of their world. We can’t, we don’t need to, and it isn’t what’s missing.

What’s missing is knowing what to do when the person in front of you is struggling. That has to be taught, and it works anywhere, because people are not industry-specific. Our learners come from every sector we work in, and what they write back to us afterwards sounds much the same.

So we don’t need to build a different course. We need to teach people what to do, then help them use it where they actually work, with their examples, their pressures, their shifts. That happens in every course we run. It isn’t an extra and you don’t need to ask for it.

Why does this keep coming up?

When a team believes that noticing distress in a busy workplace is a specialist skill unique to their building, it usually means nobody has ever taught them anything about it. No customer service training. Nothing on what to do when a member of the public is upset. Nothing on their own limits.

So when someone is struggling, they decide it must need an expert in their sector. That’s understandable. Nobody has ever told them it’s something a person can learn.

That isn’t a failing of the people asking. It shows how little most employers put into any of this before something goes wrong. Only 29% of organisations train their line managers in mental health, by the CIPD’s 2025 count. One of our learners, who had reached burnout twice, called stress “a killer”. Nothing they wrote was about their industry.

You don’t need someone who understands your industry. You need someone who has been taught what to do when the person in front of them is struggling. Most workplaces have never got round to teaching anyone that, and no amount of sector knowledge makes up for it.

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