Stress is an increasingly common condition, with just shy of one million cases of work-related stress, depression or anxiety reported for 2023–24 by the UK Health & Safety Executive.
From an employer standpoint, tackling stress among the workforce should be top of the agenda.
With Stress Awareness Month throughout April, it’s a chance to take stock and to reckon with a problem that makes stress harder to address than most employers realise.
Much of today’s workforce stress remains hidden.
Our research of 1,000 workers in retail, education, hospitality, construction and food and drink shows that close to 70% are not just showing up while unwell, but actively hiding their illness from colleagues and employers – up from 51% only three years ago.
This pressure, known as pleasanteeism, means that for every stress-related absence an employer can see, there is a much larger volume of strain they cannot.
Workforces hiding stress and pain
Across all sectors, mental health support was identified as the benefit most likely to make a positive difference to employees.
Hospitality workers showed the strongest demand at 42% – a sector where 76% of workers have experienced mental health challenges during their career.
The pattern held consistently across every other sector we surveyed, including education, construction and retail.
Mental health is also the leading driver of long-term absence. Of fit notes issued for mental health conditions, 42% sign employees off for a month or longer.
Yet many of those absences are often preceded by weeks of employees presenting while struggling – a period that generates no data, triggers no intervention, and represents a missed opportunity to act, to help.
The reasons employees stay silent are telling.
Money worries top the list (49%), followed by a belief that their manager won’t understand (26%), and stigma around mental health conditions (19%).
In hospitality, over a third cited fear of their manager’s reaction specifically.
These are not just cultural barriers – they are structural ones, exacerbated by the fact that close to three quarters of employees (74%) have at some point failed to receive timely NHS care due to waiting times.
The disconnect
There is a striking gap between what employers believe they provide and what employees actually experience.
Over a quarter (28%) of employees believed their workplace did not offer health insurance – when in fact it did. A quarter said they were unaware of what was available to them, 21% found it too hard to book, and 19% said the process was too complex.
On the employer side, 32% of 500 HR managers surveyed in the same sectors felt their current offering was sufficient, and 29% cited a lack of employee demand as justification for not expanding provision.
But low uptake is not the same as low need – and 81.6% of HR managers separately acknowledge that standard EAP and GP provision alone is not sufficient to address hidden stress and absence costs. The will to close the gap is there. The joined-up approach to act on it often is missing.
Building a culture
Addressing stress in the workplace requires more than adding services to a benefits portal.
It requires building a workplace culture where employees feel safe enough to say they are struggling and are supported by provisions that are easy to understand and use, free of stigma and confusion.
Better use of workforce health data – understanding not just what is offered but whether it is reaching people and making a difference – is what allows employers to move from reacting to absence to preventing it.
The stakes are clear.
More than 80% (83%) of employees say better health support would make them more likely to stay in their job, and more than half have already left or seriously considered leaving their role because of insufficient provision.
This Stress Awareness Month, the most useful question employers can ask is not ‘are we offering enough?’ but ‘is what we offer actually reaching the people who need it most?’
