When these HSE figures for workplace health dropped into my inbox I felt angry that, once again, stress and poor mental health is the top cause of work-related illness. We owe our people better than this … and if we want our businesses to be and stay successful, we have to tackle it.
To put this into context: 914,000 is an increase of 10% on the figures for 2020/21 (when 822,000 cases of work-related stress, depression and anxiety were reported). So it looks like things are getting worse.
It’s not just bad for individuals; it’s bad for businesses too. Below are three different ways of looking at the harm caused by work-related stress, anxiety and depression:
- That’s an INCREASE from the previous year of 10% in cases where people need to take time off work
- 450,000 workers whose condition was negatively affected by the COVID pandemic*
- COSTS of up to £1.1 BILLION per year to businesses based on 2013/14 data** (which becomes a staggering £5.2 BILLION per year to society as a whole, as there are additional costs to government and to the individuals involved)
* According to Coronavirus pandemic and work-related ill health in Great Britain 21/22. The figures quoted in the report are: 585,000 workers whose condition was affected negatively by the coronavirus pandemic, 77% of which were cases of work-related stress, depression or anxiety.
** According to HSE’s Supplementary analysis of Costs to Britain data: using existing ill health appraisal values to estimate illustrative costs of work-related musculoskeletal disorders and stress
Failing to support mental wellbeing hurts people and business
The HSE’s 2022 report on Work-related stress, anxiety or depression statistics in Great Britain showed a total of 17,000,000 working days were lost due to work-related stress in 2021-22. The average number of days off per case is 18.6 days – that’s an average of over 3 weeks per reported incident. This gives a startling insight into what those case numbers at the start of this blog really mean on the ground.
There’s a really strong case for understanding the working practices that are impacting on our peoples’ mental wellbeing! It shows there’s plenty of scope to reduce the number of days lost to sickness absence and therefore reduce the costs to our businesses. If we were providing good working conditions and supporting our people to speak up about mental wellbeing sooner and take short periods of time for recovery earlier, what kind of a difference would that make?
(Not to mention the small matter of improving our people’s lives so they perform better at work before and after sickness absence).
How do we support mental wellbeing in the workplace?
1/ Assessing our working practices using the HSE’s 6 causes of stress at work
It can be hard to know how to start and it’s always easier to keep doing what we’ve always done. But if you’ve seen the numbers above, you know we can’t leave things how they are. Just as with our technical processes, we need to keep improving our working practices to keep our organisation running well.
HSE have identified there are six main areas that can lead to work-related stress if they are not managed properly:
- Demands
- Control
- Support
- Relationships
- Role
- Change
You can read more about how these contribute to work-related stress on the HSE website here and following HSE’s stress risk assessment tool is a great first step.
Our 3 x half day workshop for Managers on supporting mental health at work includes how to run a stress risk assessment, do get in touch if you’d like to find out more.
2/ Employers need to stop dumping all responsibility for wellbeing onto the individual
We still talk about resilience as if that’s the answer to workplace wellbeing. Yet, when we talk only about our people becoming more resilient and never about how people are managed and what the norms are in the workplace, we’re avoiding responsibility.
Reports from before the coronavirus pandemic found that the main causes of work-related stress were the following, and I doubt these have changed much:
- high workload
- tight deadlines
- too much pressure
- too much responsibility
- lack of managerial support
- lack of clarity
- bullying
These won’t be solved by individuals building up their resilience. These are a result of poor organisational cultures and ineffective management.
3/ Train leaders & managers to deal with the reality of stress, depression and anxiety at work
The best place to start is with your leaders and managers. The job of a manager is to get the best from their people, so a manager is responsible for the productivity of their whole team. Yet for some reason we don’t invest anywhere near as much in training how to manage effectively as we do in technical or industry specific skills.
With the prevalence of work-related stress, it’s vital that managers feel confident starting supportive conversations about wellbeing and mental health with their people. I know managers can feel thrown in at the deep end with this and so we run this 3 x half day Management Skills course.
Going further, great managers aren’t just born great. To be effective as a manager you need to learn many different skills and how to applying them. That’s why we developed our 12 month Open Management Development course that covers all the essential management skills.
4/ Create environments where your people can speak up before they are overwhelmed
You can’t expect your people to spontaneously start opening up about stress, depression or anxiety. There are good reasons why people suffer in silence, not least because they’re worried they will be seen as a problem or as weak.
Creating psychological safety in your team and your workplace is really important. Not to mention listening and avoiding judgements or trying to ‘fix it’ when someone starts to share.
As you already know, improving wellbeing at work is a big topic.
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