Managers in our 2025 pilot told us they avoided wellbeing conversations for one reason: they did not have the words. So we wrote them, tested them across eleven teams, and kept only the phrasing that people actually used twice.
The most effective opener was not a question about feelings. It was a question about workload shape - what has been heaviest this month - which gives an employee a safe, factual door into a harder subject.
Confidentiality has to be stated explicitly and honoured visibly. In teams where managers named the limits of what they would pass upward, disclosure rates roughly doubled.