One in six UK employees called in sick last year due to stress

Almost 5 million employees in the UK called in sick last year due to stress, leading to employers incurring costs of almost £460 million a day in lost wages, new research from life insurance and pensions provider Friends Life suggests.

According to a media report on the matter, the market research study revealed that, in terms of age segments, young people are most likely to be absent due to stress, with almost a quarter (24%) of 18-24-year-olds calling in sick with stress in the last year.

The sources of stress vary quite a lot, the most common ones, though, being the possibility of redundancy, with 36% saying they were worried about losing their job, followed by money (35%) and work (22%).

Additionally, the research also revealed that male workers are more likely to be stressed due to work than their female counterparts, with 31% of men saying work causes them the most stress, compared to 23% of women.

David Williams, director of group protection at Friends Life, said: “UK economic output is improving but this is not having as positive an effect on UK workers’ stress levels as we would have hoped.

“It is important that employers spot the signs of stress early to ensure that appropriate action can be taken to help employees feeling pressurized. This can positively affect employee wellbeing, engagement as well as business productivity.”

Managing stress-related absences (or any sort of sickness-related absence, for that matter) should represent a very important area of interest for any company, regardless of its size, and this is specifically where Tensor plc can put its extensive experience to very good use.

We supply a extensive range of solid, reliable, yet affordable personnel management solutions, and our flagship WinTA.NET solution offers a dedicated Absence Planning and Entitlement Management feature.

Our advanced software comes pre-loaded with graphical calendar charts that provide a colorful 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. The system quickly identifies 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.