As well as causing considerable pain and suffering for individuals, there is a substantial burden on the community as well as significant effects on absenteeism and productivity within organisations. Surveys of employers in the UK show that absenteeism costs UK businesses around £10.5bn and that stress is the highest cause of absence amongst non-manual employees.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) estimates that 13.4 million working days were lost in Britain in 2001/2002 due to stress, depression or anxiety ascribed to work-related stress. This can have severe consequences on organisations, leading to spiralling effects on the rest of the workforce who may be burdened with the workload of absent colleagues.
One of the most important annual surveys of absence and the causes of absence in the UK is run by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. This survey shows absence has remained fairly static over the last five years, with an average absence rate varying between 3.8% and 4.4%. Stress-related absence has been increasing steadily over the last fifteen years. In the latest report from the CIPD, more than half of the employers questioned reported an increase in stress-related absence in the past year alone
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