The Invisible Man

The “Invisible Man” is the employee who looks fine on paper.

He turns up. He gets on with it. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t ask for help. He may even be one of your most reliable workers.

But under the surface, something is deteriorating.

Because male distress is often expressed indirectly — and because research, services, and workplace approaches don’t always reflect men’s lived reality — warning signs can be missed by everyone around him.

What’s invisible to the workplace is often what matters most:

• Relationship breakdown or divorce
• Custody stress and grief
• Financial pressure or debt
• Addiction or substance misuse
• Isolation and loss of purpose
• Shame, identity collapse, or feeling trapped

These problems rarely arrive at work labelled “mental health”.

Instead, they bleed into working life and begin to eat away at the organisation slowly, until they manifest as:

• Disengagement and presenteeism
• Increased mistakes and reduced attention
• Conflict and behavioural change
• Laxity around standards and safety
• Absence or repeated short-term sickness
• Sudden resignation
• Or, in the worst cases, serious self-harm or suicide

By the time the issue is visible, it is often already advanced. The organisation is left dealing with consequences rather than prevention, and colleagues are left shocked that they “never saw it coming”.