Together, we can make the world of work better.

For everyone.

Hello. We’re Room for Growth - a therapeutic consulting service driving empowering, healthy and profitable change that lasts.

We partner with ambitious businesses to proactively make the experience of work more growthful, healthy, and profitable for all.

We bridge the emotional and the strategic, the creative and the competitive, the human and the commercial.

Our Philosophy:

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We believe passionately that everyone deserves to have an experience of work that is empowering, growthful, and emotionally and mentally healthy.

We believe that high performance cultures require high levels of support.

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Our Philosophy is underpinned by our four core beliefs:

We believe it’s unrealistic to expect leaders to adequately support all employees themselves.

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We believe this support must be specialist and delivered by dedicated, trained professionals.

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We believe working at depth with rigour enables truly transformational and porfitable change that lasts.

But what’s the need for a new approach?

The Silent Drain of Disengagement

While quiet quitting - when employees disengage and do the bare minimum - may be harder to measure, its impact is no less significant. Research consistently shows that engaged and happy employees take fewer sick days, are more productive, and contribute to innovation and collaboration. On the other hand, disengaged employees cost businesses heavily.

A McKinsey study estimates that the financial burden of disengagement equates to 4% of the wage bill for an average large corporation.

The Hidden Cost of Presenteesim

Even when employees show up, they may not be fully present. Workplace presenteeism - when employees work despite illness, stress, or burnout - has been found to cost businesses 5 to 10 times more than absenteeism. Since the pandemic, these losses have only grown, impacting both individual performance and overall company success.

Burnout: A Rising Crisis

Burnout is surging, with devastating consequences for productivity, employee engagement, and retention. UK businesses now lose more than 80 million working hours annually to sick days caused by burnout. The financial toll is staggering—burnout is estimated to cost UK businesses over £700 million per year, with 44% of employees admitting they’ve taken sick leave due to stress, exhaustion, and emotional overwhelm

The Ripple Effect: Working Parents and the Mental Health Crisis

Another unseen yet critical cost is the strain on working parents. With 1 in 5 children experiencing a probable mental health disorder in 2023 (up from 1 in 9 in 2017), the responsibility on parents has intensified.

Deloitte reports that concerns over children’s mental health are costing UK businesses £8 billion per year, as working parents struggle to balance professional responsibilities with their children’s well-being.

The question isn’t whether companies can afford to act - it’s whether they can afford not to.

Fortunately, we can help.

We specialise in three key areas:

Healthy Growth from the Start

Building in a proactive approach to emotional and mental wellbeing from the beginnings of a business.

  • THE PROBLEM

    Leading can be lonely. The quality of your decisions is relative to the clarity of your thought, but there is so much to think about. How can you ensure the business and its people stay well?

    OUR SOLUTION

    Seizing the opportunity to create an emotionally healthy business from the start will reward you heartily in the future. Let us support you in navigating your own experience with greater clarity, while we equip your teams and colleagues to empower and support themselves – all while keeping you in the loop.

    WHAT WE DO

    We work with start-up and scale-up Founders and Leaders 1-2-1, their teams, and individuals across companies to ensure healthy, autonomous practices become habit, allowing for aligned, rewarding and transparent growth.

Sustainable Growth during Change

Safeguarding emotional and mental wellbeing while businesses scale or transition.

  • THE PROBLEM

    We think of change as something that approaches, then passes, but change is constant and happening all the time. If we aren’t fit for it, we risk being left behind or lost. Prior cultures must be respected while cultivating cultures of the future.

    OUR SOLUTION

    Creating high performance cultures demands high levels of support. By working closely with companies amid times of transition, we create shared awareness of what is happening, why and support everyone in growing with the business.

    WHAT WE DO

    We work with leaders and teams to ensure that while strategy is prioritised, the wellbeing and value of every colleague too. By enhancing communication, facilitating conflict and promoting empathy at a group level, we promote unity, trust and connection amid change.

Autonomous Growth for All

Empowering people across businesses to enhance and manage their own emotional and mental wellbeing.

  • THE PROBLEM

    Leaders cannot be responsibility for the emotional and mental wellbeing of all colleagues. This is partly because they are already stretched by other demands, but also because each individual in a business is the expert on them.

    OUR SOLUTION

    Allow us as mental health professionals with an intricate awareness of business to empower individuals to understand and support themselves in more meaningful and effective ways – while supporting you in addressing any shared issues.

    WHAT WE DO

    We empower everyone within a business with deeper self-knowledge and a programme of personal development that empowers them to help themselves without fear of being judged because they need support.

We work across three levels

Individual

We work with leaders and employees 1-2-1, to develop self-awareness, empathy and motivation.

We also provide access to carefully designed, highly-engaging, independent training programmes that support ongoing, independent personal and professional development.

Relational

We engage with teams to support them in processing collective experiences, resolving conflicts, improving communication and strengthening trust.

We also run inspiring workshops that boost emotional intelligence, agency and awareness between colleagues and with clients.

Organisational

We collaborate with businesses to design cultures, systems and processes that support more productive and healthy ways of working.

We also create mechanisms of effective feedback and communication that allow greater understanding across business about what his happening and why.

The Unique Power of our Work

Our team members have not only worked extensively across some of the world’s leading businesses, they are also qualified psychotherapists. By bringing the wisdom and rigour of therapeutic practice into businesses, we empower people at every level to grow professionally and personally in ways that matter to them and their company.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

People can only fully engage when they feel truly safe. Through clear and quantifiable action, we mindfully create environments where honesty, vulnerability, and growth can happen.

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

True self-awareness helps people engage without ego, receive feedback without defensiveness, and remain curious. We compassionately support people as they engage with their whole self and mobilise their full potential.

OWNING YOUR IMPACT

Power dynamics exist in every relationship, but rather than ignoring them, we cultivate awareness of how power operates to promote collaboration, agency and empowerment - so that people can own their power.

Our work goes deeper than coaching, is more empathic than consultancy, and we lead with emotional intelligence.

STIMULATING YOUR GROWTH

We support people in uncovering the growth that feels more relevant and meaningful for them. This can include rumbling with the things they’d prefer to avoid, but we do it together to enable authentic, sustainable transformation.

Creating impact beyond your business

At Room for Growth, our partnerships deliver meaningful change within organisations - and beyond. A portion of every client engagement directly funds our Outreach projects, which provide free therapy services to underserved communities across the UK.

Too many people face barriers to accessing this support. By working with us, you not only invest in your team's wellbeing - you also help make therapy accessible to those who need it most.

Meet the Team

  • Founder + Consultant + Psychotherapist

    Neil Hutchison brings over two decades of combined experience across financial and professional services, charity leadership, and psychotherapy. His current work as a psychotherapist and consultant is grounded in a rare blend of commercial insight, strategic acumen, and psychological depth—helping individuals and organisations navigate complexity, change, and the emotional realities of professional life. 

    Neil’s career began in financial and professional services, where he spent 18 years in senior roles spanning governance, risk, and compliance. His work included FCA-regulated roles, designing enterprise-wide risk frameworks, managing high-performing teams, and advising board-level stakeholders. Across these roles, he was known not only for technical expertise but for shaping culture—building environments of accountability, resilience, and psychological safety in high-pressure settings. 

    In parallel, Neil has held significant leadership roles in the charity sector. In 2019, he co-founded Tiny Changes, a Scottish mental health charity established in memory of his brother, musician Scott Hutchison. As Chair of the Board, Neil led the organisation through its formative years—raising £400,000 in its first year, securing national media coverage, and launching a COVID-19 emergency fund that distributed over £100,000 to grassroots mental health projects. He previously served as Treasurer and Trustee of the Cystinosis Foundation UK, where he helped deliver nationwide family support events, led a successful rebranding initiative, and improved financial governance and oversight. 

    These diverse experiences—spanning personal loss, executive leadership, and frontline governance—led Neil to retrain as a therapist. He holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy from the University of Edinburgh and is a COSCA-accredited psychodynamic and person-centred practitioner. His therapeutic work is shaped by deep empathy and psychological insight, but also by a clear-eyed understanding of the challenges faced by leaders, teams and organisations today. 

    Clients value Neil’s ability to bring together reflective depth with lived experience—creating a space for honest conversations that lead to real change. Whether supporting individual leaders, facilitating organisational development, or advising on psychologically-informed approaches to governance and culture, Neil offers a unique mix of professionalism, compassion and clarity. 

  • Founder + Consultant + Psychotherapist

    Phil is a psychotherapist, anthropologist, and former innovation specialist with a background in the creative arts. His rare combination of disciplines makes him uniquely equipped to help businesses build psychologically safe, emotionally intelligent cultures - while staying competitive, relevant, and future-facing.

    For over a decade, Phil worked at the cutting edge of brand and business innovation, helping companies pioneer new thinking, redefine their market position, and unlock fresh relevance in fast-moving environments. This work spanned industries - from global corporations to ambitious start-ups - and placed him at the intersection of strategy, human behaviour, and culture change.

    Alongside this, his training in anthropology deepened his understanding of how people operate within systems. It gave him the tools to identify cultural undercurrents, unspoken dynamics, and the real (not just stated) values that shape behaviour in organisations. His parallel path into psychotherapy added yet another layer - equipping him with the insight and empathy needed to help people understand themselves and each other more fully.

    Today, Phil brings all of this together to offer something uniquely valuable: a truly holistic approach to organisational wellbeing and culture transformation.  he listens deeply, sees what others might miss, and works collaboratively to design meaningful change from the inside out.

Ready to start thinking together about how you want to grow?

FAQs

What does it mean to use therapeutic principles in business?

We apply insights from psychotherapy—such as active listening, empathy, relational awareness, and understanding unconscious dynamics—to help leaders and teams work more effectively together. Our approach focuses on improving communication, trust, emotional intelligence, and self-awareness within organisations.

Is this therapy?

Yes and no. We can offer 1-1 or group sessions that might feel like therapy, but will differ from traditional approaches to therapy in a number of ways. We use therapeutic frameworks to support personal growth, leadership development, and healthier workplace cultures. Think of it as applying the best of psychological insight to business challenges.

What kinds of businesses do you work with?

We work with small to mid-sized organisations across sectors, especially those who value people and purpose. Whether you’re a startup navigating team dynamics, a charity going through change, or a business looking to improve leadership or staff wellbeing, we can help.

Who is this for?

Our work is particularly helpful for:

  • Founders and business leaders who want to lead more consciously

  • Teams struggling with communication or conflict

  • Organisations navigating growth, restructuring, or culture change

  • Individuals seeking coaching, but with a deeper psychological lens

How is this different from traditional business consulting?

Traditional consulting often focuses on strategy, systems, or performance metrics. We go deeper - helping you understand the human factors that drive or block success. We look at unconscious dynamics, emotional undercurrents, and the ‘unsaid’ in teams, bringing what’s hidden into conscious awareness.

What kinds of services do you offer?

We offer:

  • 1-to-1 leadership coaching

  • Team facilitation and conflict resolution

  • Culture and values work

  • Reflective practice groups

  • Psychoeducation resources and activities

We can also tailor packages to meet the needs of your organisation.

What’s the evidence this works?

Our work draws from well-established fields like psychodynamic theory, person-centred practice, and systems thinking—all with decades of research and real-world application. We’ve seen how a deeper understanding of human behaviour improves team cohesion, reduces burnout, and leads to better decisions.

Will this feel too ‘touchy-feely’ for our business?

We understand that not everyone is comfortable with the language of feelings—and that’s okay. We meet clients where they are and work in a grounded, respectful, and professional way. Our goal is not to impose therapy but to help you understand what’s really going on beneath the surface of your workplace.

Can you work alongside our existing HR, coaching or leadership programmes?

Absolutely. We’re happy to complement other support structures and often work in collaboration with HR teams or external coaches. Our role is to deepen insight and add value - not to replace what’s already working.

Where do sessions take place?

We work both online and in-person. Some clients prefer workshops at their premises, while others opt for off-site sessions or 1-to-1 sessions online. We’re flexible depending on what’s most useful and comfortable for you.

What is the cost?

Given the unique nature of each client’s needs and the subsequent services we provide, costs are calculated on a project-by-project basis relative to time and expertise required.