Dumfries and Galloway work stress absences
Work-related stress has hit a five-year high with Dumfries and Galloway Council
Staff absences through work-related stress is a battle Dumfries and Galloway Council will never win, council chiefs admitted this week.
The problem “will never go away”, but efforts must continue to ease pressures on employees and help them back to work, according to the local authority’s governance officer Vlad Valiente.
Staff sickness was discussed at the council’s audit, risk, and scrutiny committee on Tuesday – after a new staff health and safety report revealed work-related stress has hit a five-year high with Dumfries and Galloway Council.
With a 6,500 strong workforce, Dumfries and Galloway Council is the largest employer in the region.
However, there were 171 absences recorded last year due to work-related stress – which equated to 4,822 work days lost.
This is an increase of 20 percent on the stats for 2023/24 where there 143 recorded absences due to work stress. The number of days lost in 2023/24 was over 300 fewer at 4,517.
At last week’s committee, Annandale East and Eskdale Councillor Archie Dryburgh said: “One of the ideas of these reports is to see what we can do as elected members to try and improve absence from work.
“I know this was last year’s report, as opposed to this year’s, but what I would like to understand is in relation to work related stress. There’s been an increase from last year – not a large increase – but an increase nonetheless.
“So are these reports helping us reduce the amount of absences that are taking place?”
He added: “With work-related stress, is this a small number of people with a large number of days off? Or is it a large number of people with small numbers of days off?”
Sue Hockin-Pethick, HR officer, replied: “It is basically a range. There are a few staff members that are on a considerable level of time off. So it does actually offset that balance.
“I know HR and also organisational development are doing quite a lot of work with all the well-being champions across the council. HR are also working with individual line managers to support absence management directly.”
Vlad Valiente, the council’s governance officer, added: “What we’re aiming to do both from a health and safety perspective, but more importantly also from an overall council perspective, is to ensure that we have that early intervention and prevention where we can.
“We’ve got really good policies about stress at work processes and assessments – and occupational health comes into that as well.”
He said that other supports, such as mental health champions, and line management processes “help staff through difficult times”.
He added: “Stress-related absences will never go away – we need to be frank and honest about that. But what we can try and do is mitigate it as best we can.”