Every May, the world pauses to acknowledge something that most workplaces spend the rest of the year quietly sidestepping. Mental health. Not as a checkbox or a campaign theme, but as a genuine condition of how people show up — to their work, to each other, and to themselves.
And the numbers make clear why it matters. Globally, more than one billion people are living with a mental health condition — roughly one in every seven people on the planet. Mental health is now the top health concern worldwide, ranking above cancer, heart disease, and obesity, according to a 2025 Ipsos survey across 30 countries. Awareness has grown significantly: in 2020, only 27% of people named it a pressing concern. By 2025, that figure had risen to 45%.
The numbers are striking. But behind every statistic, there is a person trying to get through their week.
This year’s global theme is Move for Mental Health — a small instruction, but a significant one. Wellbeing isn’t a state you arrive at. It’s something you tend, through small, sustained acts of care.
A world that has moved home
Over the past few years, how and where we work has changed profoundly. Remote and hybrid work is now the norm across much of the tech and creative industries. And it comes with real contradictions.
Flexibility, when it’s real and not just nominal, is one of the most meaningful things a company can offer the people in it. It means someone can live where they want to live. A parent can be present at school pickup. Someone managing a health condition — visible or not — can structure their day in a way that works for them. The shape of the working day doesn’t have to be determined by a train timetable or an open-plan office.
But remote work has its own pressures too. The boundaries between work and rest quietly dissolve. The small social rituals that offices provide disappear. Loneliness can creep in when you are heads-down for too long. Employee burnout has hit an all-time high in 2025, with 66% of workers reporting it — and one of the most cited causes is the simple inability to disconnect.
We are building faster. We are always reachable. And somewhere in that pace, the question of how we are actually doing can get lost.
What it looks like from the inside
We asked some of our team to share what remote work genuinely means to them — the good, the complicated, and the quietly personal.
“Working remotely made me rethink how I define work-life balance. I used to think balance meant filling my time outside of work with social plans and constant movement. But over time, I realised balance looks different for everyone. For me, it became less about doing enough outside of work and more about staying connected to myself beyond it — reading, watching a show, playing games with my son, or simply spending time with my cats. They may seem like small things, but those quiet moments help me recharge and slow down.” Ron
“Remote work has given me a kind of freedom I don’t think I could give up anymore. But there’s another side to it too. Working globally often means your day never really ends. And remote work can quietly make people feel invisible — you can spend months solving problems, building systems, helping teams, and still feel disconnected from the rooms where bigger conversations happen. That’s why the future of AI at work cannot only be about efficiency. Scaling work is not the same as scaling humans. The human side of AI matters because the people building the future are still human too.” Jules
“Working from home gives me the freedom to structure my day without the stress of the commute. It also — weirdly — allows me to build more organic relationships with the people I work with, because effort has to be put in to maintain camaraderie.” Layide
“Working for Pencil remotely gives me the flexibility and balance to do my best work, while still feeling genuinely connected to a collaborative and supportive team. In a fast-moving AI environment, that culture of trust, communication, and human connection makes a real difference.” Sophia
There is a lot of honesty in those words. And we think they reflect something many people working in tech and marketing feel but do not always say out loud.
Working on AI doesn’t mean forgetting what humans need
We build AI tools. We work, every day, on technology that automates, accelerates, and scales creative work. And yet — or perhaps because of that — we are unusually conscious of the human dimension.
AI can reduce the mechanical load of creative work. It can handle the repetitive, the routine, the nth revision. What it cannot do is replace the judgment, the taste, the emotional intelligence, the genuine human connection that makes creative work worth doing. Those things require people who are well, who are supported, and who have enough space to bring their full selves to the work.
That is the kind of company we are trying to build. And the kind of product we think is worth building.
To our team, and to everyone in this community
Mental Health Awareness Month is a good moment to look up. To check in on a colleague you haven’t spoken to properly in a while. To take the afternoon you’ve been deferring. To say, out loud, that things are hard right now — to someone who will listen.
We don’t always get that right. But we keep trying.
Happy Mental Health Awareness Month, from everyone at Pencil. 🌿
This year’s theme is Move for Mental Health. We think the first move is simply noticing — the people around you, and how they’re actually doing.
