The latest figures from the Health & Safety Executive, has found that stress is still the top cause of absence from work in the UK, costing the economy around £3.7 billion a year.
Sickness absence as a whole costs the economy around £12 billion a year. The Health and Safety Executive has been working with the Department of Health to launch a new occupational health strategy ' Health Work and Well-being' which will tackle sickness absence in both the public and private sectors. They also plan to publish stress management standards designed to help employers identify stress at an early level and address the problems before they lead to staff absence.
Our view
Stress is a real tough issue. There are those that genuinely need help and are ill; there are also those that 'swing the lead' as stress hoaxers are difficult for doctors to diagnose.
The reality is that those who expect huge salaries should be paid a wage commensurate with the stress they carry and those that cannot take pressue should be in lesser paid jobs without stress.
We believe, it is extremely unpalatable for a worker to be salaried at £50,000 pa and then be off work with "stress".
The individual clearly does not have the skills to cope with a job that sort of salary demands.