Leadership1 publisherNot yet confirmed elsewhere2 min readPublished
PR bodies take a UK mental-health audit worldwide in search of 5,000 responses
Three PR bodies are seeking at least 5,000 responses to the profession's first global mental-health survey, with results due in January 2027. Heads of communications would get an outside yardstick for team stress, built on a UK audit that found practitioners far worse off than the wider workforce.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
Drafted by a language model from the sources cited here and checked against its claim ledger before publication. How we use AISend a correction
What happened
- The survey is open to PR and communications professionals worldwide throughout October and November 2026.
- It extends the UK wellbeing research of the CIPR and PRCA UK, which have partnered with the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management to run it globally.
- Their latest UK audit found 91% of PR professionals had poor mental health in the prior 12 months, against 63% of the wider UK workforce.
- In that audit, 58% named overwhelming workload as a key source of stress, and almost three in ten rated their job as highly stressful.
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- decision Heads of communications decide during the October and November window whether to give staff time to respond, and a region or sector that sends few answers will be thinly measured in January.
- constraint Until the global results arrive, this programme's only comparator is UK data, so leaders running teams elsewhere have nothing from it to set their own staff surveys against.
- exposure From January 2027 a board or client can ask a comms head where the team sits against a profession-wide figure, a question that until now had only a UK answer.
In the audit this survey grows out of, PR practitioners reported poor mental health at a rate 28 percentage points above the wider UK workforce [11]. On that evidence, a written wellbeing policy tells a comms leader little about how a team is coping. The audit found the gap in workplaces where many employers affirmed their support for good mental health [4].
I think the trade-off for leaders sits in the workload finding [6]. Support offered alongside the work can be added without touching the work plan. Cutting the workload itself means hiring staff or turning down work from clients and executives. The first costs money and the second can cost revenue. Dr Jaelea Skehan, director of Everymind, said the profession's work "can include crisis management, exposure to distressing content, demanding deadlines, and engagement with complex social issues that can overlap with their own lived experience." [10] She also said: "Workplace mental health is not simply about providing support after problems emerge. It is about creating work environments, systems, and cultures that actively protect and promote mental health." [9]
A finance director asked to give staff time for the survey would want to know about bias. An open survey draws answers from whoever chooses to reply, and the organisers are urging professionals to add their voices [8]. Their answer is continuity of method. Opinium, which ran the original UK research, has adapted the survey for global use [7], so the January figures should be comparable with the UK baseline. Comparing a single team is harder. That depends on whether the 5,000 or more responses [2] come back in groups a leader can match against, by region, sector or seniority. The release does not say how responses will be weighted across regions or how results will be broken down.
The organisers say the benchmark will cover the pressures people experience at work, what supports them to thrive and where change is most needed [12]. Elaine Banoub, a partner at Primary Comms Group, said: "For too long, conversations around mental health in public relations have been shaped by individual experiences and anecdotal evidence." [14] Justin Green, president and chief executive of the Global Alliance, said: "we have never had a truly global picture of the mental health and wellbeing challenges facing our profession." [13]
What to watch
- The response count and regional spread when the survey closes at the end of November 2026, measured against the 5,000 target.
- Whether the January 2027 results are broken out by sector, seniority or employer type; without those breakdowns a team can only be compared with a profession-wide average.
- Whether the global workload figure lands near the UK audit's 58%, the clearest test of whether the UK pattern holds abroad.