Every year stress, depression and anxiety cost UK businesses £28 billion. As the country marks National Stress Awareness Day, Sharon McCormick at The Listening Centre looks at the stress epidemic that’s sweeping through businesses in the Midlands.
During the pandemic, we saw business owners across the Midlands acting quickly and decisively in a bid for survival.
When the prime minister gave the order for everyone to stay at home, CEOs, managing directors and HR professionals put in place systems and strategies to ensure companies would be able to weather the storm. From giving employees the ability to work from home to selling more online, companies that came through the pandemic intact were ones that were able to invest in new technology and diversify, while adopting flexible solutions.
However, there is still a virus sweeping through our workplaces – and yet thousands of businesses are doing the bare minimum to survive it. According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), nearly 14 million working days are lost each year in the UK because of work-related stress, anxiety and depression. This costs businesses over £28 billion a year – and yet what are they doing to help lower these shocking numbers?
National Stress Awareness Day takes place on 2nd November and gives us a chance to focus on how stress is still severely impacting employees’ health as well as the whole workplace.
At The Listening Centre we know that stress affects the performance of employees. With everyone working so closely together, if one person is stressed then they can become a ‘stress carrier’. Like a virus or infection, they affect those around them – left uncontained it spreads and becomes ingrained in a company’s culture. Long-term stress produces a toxic and sometimes unworkable environment – and it reveals itself through a relatively high number of accidents, low staff morale, high staff turnover and sickness.
The statistics around stress and the workplace are shocking. One short trawl online reveals countless studies and data, all resulting in the same findings: That stress is still a severe problem in organisations of all sizes. Even though there is a greater understanding and recognition of stress, there are no signs of it reducing as companies aren’t putting in place the solutions needed to deal with this epidemic.
The latest findings show how serious the problem is.
A Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) report has revealed that psychological problems are the biggest cause of long-term absence from work, with 57% of respondents listing it as their top three causes. It may not come as a surprise that the most common issues in the workplace are stress, anxiety and depression. Also, a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) study taken for 2020/21 found that stress, depression or anxiety accounted for a staggering 50% of all work-related health cases.
So, what can industries do?
There are a set of HSE management standards, which were designed to tackle work-related stress. They are broken down into six areas and comprise lots of information, explanations and supporting tools. These key areas include demands of the job, job type, an individual’s level of control and their relationships. Every employee is different - some people may want more control, while others want less. We need to look at workplace dynamics and how an organisation deals with change.
Also, we should consider how much support an employee has, how much they need and then find out how we can get the two to match up.
While we know that stress is complex and can be the result of hectic, modern lives as well as problems at home, statistics show that a significant cause of stress is work-related.
Businesses have a huge part to play in helping the general population improve their health and well-being. Even introducing flexible working from home strategies haven’t helped as data shows that stress increased even more following successive lockdowns. What the recent pandemic did do though was put a greater focus on people and employees’ well-being. Again, statistics back this up, with the number of employers taking steps to tackle the problem increasing from 32% in 2020 to 53% in 2022.
What businesses can do is listen more carefully to workers and show them they care. The Listening Centre has been doing this for the last 20 years and has an incredible record of helping organisations in the Midlands with their employees’ well-being. Businesses can make use of a range of well-being services including staff counselling, mediation, corporate training and trauma support.
The recent pandemic has highlighted the benefits of simply sitting and listening to people – and, most importantly, treating them as human beings and not just a number. By talking and listening to employees and showing compassion we have seen it make a very positive impact. One of our long-term clients makes it even clearer in a testimonial about The Listening Centre:
“Results speak for themselves with amazing outcomes, they are our first point of contact for complex employee dispute resolution”
For more information about how your company can work with The Listening Centre email enquiry@thelisteningcentre.co.uk or call 01543 300068.
