Stress and mental ill health are a major cause of staff absence, research report reveals

Around 25% of UK employers consider stress and mental ill health a major cause for short term absence, while the figure goes up to almost 45% when it comes to long-term absence, a recent research report published by the Group Risk Development (GRiD), the trade body for the group risk industry, has revealed.

These statistical figures suggest that employers appear concerned about the impact of stress and mental ill health on their business, with 36% of those sampled seeing managing stress and mental ill health as their top health and wellbeing issue – up 5% on last year. Furthermore, an additional 25% thought that maintaining a good work/life balance amongst employees was a top priority.

Evidence also suggests that there’s clearly a growing need for early intervention strategies to help support people in managing these conditions and help them get back into the workplace.

Katharine Moxham, spokesperson for GRiD, commented: “Where once stress and mental ill health were commonly overlooked as a key health risk for businesses (compared to acute medical conditions such as heart attack or cancer) employers appear to be taking note. These figures prove just how big an impact stress and mental ill health can have on employers when managing the well-being of their business and the implications for absence rates if left unchecked.

“It is encouraging to see that more and more businesses are recognising that stress related absence is a major issue. Often, the condition keeping people away from work is not necessarily the same as the condition that caused the initial absence. Many employers are now recording the secondary cause of absence as part of the measures they use to reduce absence in the workplace.”

Tensor plc supplies an extensive range of solutions designed specifically to help employers thoroughly monitor and manage absence, with our flagship WinTA.NET integrated workforce management solution incorporating a dedicated Absence Planning and Entitlement Management feature.

Our comprehensive, yet user-friendly software comes pre-loaded with graphical calendar charts that provide a colourful way of viewing an individual’s or a department’s absence records.

Each employee can be allocated different entitlements for absence such as annual leave or allowed sickness. As absence is booked and taken, the remainder available for each entitlement is updated. Entitlement formulae are used to calculate more complex entitlements calculated on a rising scale based upon length of service.

WinTA.NET supplies the relevant managers with information on employee’s absences through warning email notifications or via hardcopy reports. After that, the system would rapidly identify missing employees that are expected to be at work and then informs you via automatic email reporting reports distributed by email.

If you’d like to find out more about the Tensor workforce management solutions, just contact our team or Book a Demo, we’ll be more than happy to answer all of your questions and queries.