Further to our previous articles about the issues of workplace stress and presenteeism, National Stress Awareness Day 2021 was held on the 3rd November 2021.
National Stress Awareness Day 2021
National Stress Awareness Day was launched back in 1999 by the International Stress Management Association (ISMA) (UK) to highlight the problem of stress, including in the workplace. National Stress Awareness Day 2021 was held on the 3rd November 2021, and is part of International Stress Awareness Week which ran from the 1st-5th November 2021.
In a recent article, Carole Spiers, the Chair of ISMA (UK), who developed the idea of having a National Stress Awareness Day, stated: "Although mental health is often thought to be an invisible problem, it cannot be met with an invisible solution....In 2017, research was published from Deloitte which found that poor mental health costs UK employers up to £45bn a year, with presenteeism taking a bigger toll than absences....The research further stated that the cost associated with presenteeism was four times the costs associated with absences due to mental health."
Spiers added: "Pressure from targets and competing workplace priorities was the most significant cause of poor mental health at work [which was identified]..in...[the Deloitte]...survey. Unlike absenteeism, presenteeism isn’t always apparent. This research is demonstrating the costs to employers and organisations if action is not taken."
The Latest Research Upon Workplace Stress
With National Stress Awareness Day 2021 being held again this year, the latest research highlights that the need to address workplace stress is as important as ever
In a recent report by Professors Richard Saundry and Peter Urwin on behalf of ACAS, entitled 'Estimating the costs of workplace conflict’, the authors found that almost 5 million workers were suffering from workplace stress as a direct result of workplace conflict. Of this number, 85% continued to work, exhibiting the symptoms of presenteeism and causing a fall in productivity.
Furthermore, in a report compiled by the people management platform, Employment Hero, 55% of the respondents stated that they planned to move to another employer within the next 2 years. The main reasons for this that were cited were:-
- Not appreciated by their employer (31%)
- Excessive workload (26%)
Employment Hero also found the following from their research:-
- 48% of employers are of the view that they have insufficient resources to deal with workplace stress
- 30% of employers report that they do not know how to address mental health problems, with 46% of employees being of the view that their employer lacked the ability to assess and measure the scale of the problem within their workplace. Just 48% of employees believed that their employer would be supportive if there was a problem with workplace stress. This contrasts with the finding that 65% of employers assert that they would be supportive
- 46% of employees have workplace stress concerns
- 44% of employees believe that there remains a stigma over mental health issues
- Most employees reported that the Covid-19 pandemic had caused them mental health problems, with the majority of employers stating that remote working had made it more difficult to address mental health issues
Moreover, recent research conducted by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) found that there were 828,000 cases of workplace stress in 2019/20, which amounts to 2.44% of the workforce. Combined, these cases resulted in 17.9 million days of absence from work, with each person taking 21.6 days off work on average. In terms of all cases of work-related ill health, these workers accounted for 51% of them, and 55% of all those who were absent from work at some point during the period. The sector with the highest number of cases of workplace stress, was the public sector, with excessive workload cited as the main cause.
The fact that the HSE research identified that 347,000 of the 828,000 cases of workplace stress in 2019/20 were new cases, highlights that workplace stress is a significant ongoing problem, and that events like National Stress Awareness Day remain as relevant and as important as ever.
National Stress Awareness Day 2021: Call For Action
With the latest research highlighting that the Covid-19 pandemic has aggravated the problem of workplace stress, National Stress Aawareness Day 2021 is an important opportunity for galvanising support for action to address the problem.
The CEO of Employment Hero, Ben Thompson, states: "It is important employers provide ‘total employment care’ and listen to their employees, offering mental health support where possible.....A full return to the office might not happen for the foreseeable future, however, [and] making remote mental health support available is something all employers should be preparing for."
