Figures from the UK’s Health and Safety Executive and the Institute of Employment Studies show that more than 500,000 people said they were affected by stress at work and that 13.4m working days were lost because of stress and related conditions.

“We’re seeing stress becoming a more acceptable recognised form of illness” says the Institute’s Jo Rick, who co-authored the report. “It’s a part of our everyday language, which is good. On the other hand, lots of situations are attributed to stress, maybe accurately, maybe not” If a few days taken off to cope with stress turn into long-term absence, the problem can be intractable.

“Long-term absentees are less likely to return to work than anyone else because they change their behaviour” says Paul Roberts of IHC, the UK healthcare consultancy.
“The longer you leave it, the more their behaviour patterns will change and the harder it will be to reintroduce them to the workplace.”

Research published in August, by the Work Foundation, found that much more could be done to manage the problem. It found that 57 per cent of employers do not cost absence, indicating a lack of data or understanding of the problem.

Mr Roberts’ experience suggests that large sums of money can be saved by taking action on absenteeism. For one of his clients, 33 absent employees in a company of 10,000 accounted for 87 man-years lost. “ For a company of about 6,400 employees, I have outlined savings in the region of £750,000 on long-term absence alone” he says.

Whatever the reasons for absenteeism, companies need first to be able to identify the problem “Absenteeism needs to be managed from a very early stage” says Celia Nicholson retention services Director at DBM, a Human resources strategy consultancy. “ If an organisation has to have a crack down on absenteeism then its managers have been failing to do their job. “The most useful thing the organisation could do is invest in a development programme for managers which will help them to understand the causes of absenteeism”

When it comes to tackling stress-related absenteeism, the HSE report suggests that more active management is needed. “Until now approaches have been based on stress audits and reading the signs and symptoms” says Ms Rick. “Both those approaches are problematic as stress describes so many different symptom sets it is difficult for managers to spot the fact that someone is feeling stress.”

The HSE advises companies to:
- Maintain contact with the employee on a personal rather than purely a work-related basis
- Try to diagnose the specific problems behind the stress
- Provide support to the employee early on
- Encourage stress awareness among line managers
- Provide creative and flexible options for a return to work
- Develop an agreed rehabilitation plan with the employee
- Create a written policy or set of guidelines for employee rehabilitation.

Other initiatives that can be taken include making risk assessments for the likelihood of stress in different jobs and coaching managers to deal with an employee once they are off work with stress. An offer of a phased return to work, with reduced hours and temporary reassignments, can also help reintroduce an absent employee.

What companies should avoid doing, says Ms Nicholson, is simply treating employees taking time off as skivers. “It could be that the employees have just become so de-motivated and fed up with poor management, inadequate communications, lack of development opportunities and frustrating unfulfilling work that they can’t be bothered to get out of bed” she says.

Sarah Murray - Financial Times 27th October 2006