Workplace absences soar to highest level in over a decade

A West Yorkshire mental health charity is urging employers to treat staff with more compassion, as workplace absences soar to the highest level in over a decade.

A report by the Chartered Institute for Professional Development (CIPD) and Simplyhealth looked at sickness absence at 918 organisations representing 6.5 million employees.

Their analysis found staff missed an average of 7.8 days of work over the last year, an increase of two whole days compared to before the pandemic.

It found stress is major contributor to short and long-term absence, with more than three quarters of respondents saying they took time off work in the past year because of it.

The top cause of long-term absence was mental ill health while the top cause for short-term absences was minor illnesses.

More than a third of organisations also said Covid-19 is still a significant cause of absence.

Arfan Hanif is chief executive of Touchstone which delivers mental health and wellbeing services across West Yorkshire. He says the service has been seeing demand rise since the pandemic:

“People feeling a lot more isolated, the impact of the cost of living, the uncertain world out there… all these factors are having a detrimental impact on people’s wellbeing.

“And covid, even though it manifested itself as a physical health issue, its implications long-term are psychological. People have lost people during the pandemic and also suffered long term health issues which have impacted on their wellbeing.”

'If you treat someone like a tool or a unit, you'll get very little back'

Arfan originally began his journey with Touchstone as a service user after being hospitalised due to his own mental health struggles. He hadn’t felt able to speak openly about how he was feeling and didn’t work in a place that helped with that.

Since working in his current role he says he hasn’t needed any time off and believes it’s an example of how treating staff with compassion pays dividends in the long-run:

“Being open, having conversations, creating an environment where mental health is not seen as a stigma.

“We have an employee counselling scheme, and we also have a celebration day which is paid for to say if you want to celebrate an anniversary or a religious holiday or just take time out for a day you can have that. And each member of staff has a wellbeing budget which can be used for therapy or a massage or things like.

“We don’t see it as a cost, we see it as an investment. So our staff can be productive and we can minimise sickness within the organisation.

“(Sickness) costs the economy billions and billions of pounds. So I say to employers, if you don’t want to see the ethical side, perhaps the business element or the profit margin might motivate you to invest in your staff.

“Some of us spend more time with our employer than with our friends and family. And if you show a bit of compassionate that goes a long way. Whereas if you treat someone like a tool or a unit you’ll get very little back.”

The research shows that many organisations are implementing support measures to try and address the issue.

Just under 70 per cent offered an occupational sick pay leave scheme for all employees while 53 per cent have a stand-alone wellbeing strategy - an increase from 50 per cent last year.

The CIPD and Simplyhealth are calling on more organisations to create an open and supportive environment where people can speak to line managers about health issues.

Rachel Suff, senior employee wellbeing adviser at the CIPD, said: "External factors like the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have had profound impacts on many people's wellbeing.

"It's good to see that slightly more organisations are approaching health and wellbeing through a stand-alone strategy.

"However, we need a more systematic and preventative approach to workplace health.

"This means managing the main risks to people's health from work to prevent stress as well as early intervention to prevent health issues from escalating where possible."