12 reasons why staff wellbeing needs your attention

Staff wellbeing needs your attention. It sounds like a recruitment drive, but with stress once again topping the list of most common causes of long-term absence, you can’t afford to ignore the statement.

That little fact was brought to light by the CIPD early in 2017, claiming newly introduced schemes were paying lip service given that most were one-off initiatives. Less than 30 per cent of companies had actually created a wellbeing strategy to support staff.

Its report, which surveyed 1,000 HR professionals, unveiled two-fifths had come across staff with mental health problems – and that despite more initiatives being born, stress-related illness has been on the rise as well. There’s a reason why.

Cary Cooper, the president of CIPD, maintained: “Overall, absence levels have dropped marginally compared with last year, from 6.9 days per employee per year to 6.3 days. However, the data about the causes of absence and the methods of managing it is what provides the most food for discussion – and shows where employer attention needs to be focused.

“Essentially, staff wellbeing needs your attention. Employers who laid off staff in the last recession are now relying on a ‘lean and mean workforce’ and are beginning to realise they need wellbeing policies to retain their staff and spark a creative culture.”

It’s absolutely crucial bosses realise that. More work and less support – from both a lack of colleagues and no policies in place by bosses – is exactly why we’ve been slapped with a bumper sticker that reads “Burnout Britain”. We work unsociable hours, we’re unable to switch off due to technology, we refuse to leave the office when ill and we use our holiday time to catch up with work…

There has to be a more sustainable way of working, and to highlight how much damage can truly be done to the economy and your business as a whole, we selected 12 statistics from the web.

Image: Shutterstock

By Shané Schutte

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