Stress jumps to top of sickness-absence chart
07 October 2011
For the first time, stress has topped the list of reasons for long-term sickness absence among both manual and non-manual employees, according to the latest absence management survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
For manual workers, stress is now level with acute medical conditions and has superseded musculoskeletal problems to become the chief cause of long-term absence. Among non-manual staff, stress has moved ahead of acute medical conditions.
The survey also reveals a close connection between job security and mental-health problems. More than half of employers planning to make redundancies in the next six months reported an increase in mental-health problems among their staff; however, of those employers that are not planning job-cuts, just under a third reported an increase in mental-health issues.
Organisations preparing to make redundancies were also more likely to witness a rise in presenteeism (32 per cent, compared with 27 per cent of those who had no redundancies planned). Those respondents that had noted an increase in presenteeism were also more likely to report a rise in stress-related absence over the same period (49 per cent, compared with 33 per cent of those who did not report an increase in people coming to work ill).
Among public-sector organisations, half reported a rise in stress-related absence, with many respondents highlighting organisational change and restructuring, including job cuts, as the number-one cause of stress at work. Job insecurity is also reported as a more common cause of work-related stress in the public sector in this year’s survey (24 per cent) compared with last year (10 per cent), and is higher than in the private and non-profit sectors (both 14 per cent).
