The number of cases of work-related stress in the UK has dropped by14% year-on-year.
The statistics from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), released yesterday, reveal that the number of UK workers reported to be suffering from work-related ill health during 2023/24 is 1.7 million people – which is similar to 2022/23 (1.8 million workers).
While the rate of self-reported work-related ill health remains broadly similar to the previous year, the current rate is still higher than the 2018/19 pre-pandemic level.
Around half of those reporting ill-health relate to stress, depression or anxiety, with an estimated 776,000 cases in 2023/24.
The current rate of self-reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety is higher than the pre-pandemic level but has dropped by 14% year-on-year from 910,000 in 2022/23.
Natural human response
Vanessa Sallows, group protection claims and governance director at Legal & General Retail, (pictured) said: “Levels of work-related stress in the UK had significantly increased in the years just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and they haven’t significantly decreased since then.
“The reasons behind this are unclear, and undoubtedly complex.
“A lot of work has gone into raising awareness and knowledge of mental wellbeing, reducing stigma, and creating psychologically safe environments.
“So, it’s likely that some of the increase in self-reported stress is due to this, and that’s a positive thing.
“Stress is a natural human response that everyone experiences to varying degrees. A little bit of stress is good. It prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives. It can be a motivator to help us perform, driving us to succeed and, therefore, shouldn’t be medicalised.
“Learning how to respond to stress is key, to help us feel less overwhelmed and, thereby, make a big difference to our overall wellbeing.
“Where clinical depression and anxiety are concerned, early intervention and vocational rehabilitation might be entirely appropriate.
“With for our group income protection customers, the earlier the better, when it comes to their HR teams referring such cases to our in-house vocational clinical experts.”
Sallows added that what is increasingly being understood about work-related stress, thanks to data we recently collated in partnership with Fruitful Insights, is that it is a driver of impaired productivity.
Subjective measures
“So, understanding exactly where the problem areas lie is crucial to designing the right solutions,” Sallows continued.
“Most organisations have in place subjective measures – such as job satisfaction – to help with this.
“While such measures can help show whether an organisation has a positive or negative overall wellbeing status, they don’t tell us why this is the case.
“This can lead to well-meaning employers providing all-of-workforce access to support and advice but failing to address the root causes.
“Fruitful’s analysis found that cultural factors represent the key drivers; control over workload, feeling valued, having supportive managers and colleagues.
“For example, comparing responses from employees who ‘definitely agree’ or ‘definitely disagree’ that their managers are supportive, productivity loss for those without supportive managers – calculated at £9,800 – is double that of employees with supportive managers, at £4,800.”
Impossible to cut productivity loss to zero
Though Sallows noted it would be impossible to get productivity loss to zero.
“Striving for that might only serve to inadvertently increase work-related stress and burnout,” Sallows said.
“Even the most satisfied employees have the occasional period when they’re not at their peak. The important point is they have a much lower level of productivity loss.
“This is about bringing the tail up, as opposed to expecting 100%.
“And we can help our clients covering over 100 employees with this, thanks to our exclusive partnership with Fruitful Insights, not to mention our Be Well helpline, one of the many facilities we provide to our group income protection customers; a hotline designed for HR and line managers to speak directly with our vocational clinical team about anything from individual employee stress related concerns, to carrying our stress risk assessments and obtaining advice on reasonable adjustments.”
