Council 17,000 working days lost to stress and anxiety

STRESS, anxiety and depression accounted for almost a third of Bristol City Council staff sickness absences over the last 12 months, a “horrifying” report reveals.

Almost 17,000 working days – 31.6 per cent of all employee time off for illness at the authority – were lost to the three mental health issues between September 1 last year and August 31, 2021.

That was more than three times the 5,200 days of absence from Covid-19, which comprised just 9.8 per cent of the total days off work and was the third most common reason, behind musculoskeletal conditions.

A council meeting was told that time off for stress, anxiety and depression rose by 7.7 per cent on the previous year and “has been increasing since the start of the pandemic”.

Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME), disabled, female and lower paid staff took disproportionately more days off due to illness, the human resources committee heard.

Overall, employees took an average of 8.1 days off over the 12 months, marginally higher than the authority’s target of eight days, despite the fact that more than half of the 6,000 workers took no sick leave at all.

A report to members said that taking Covid-19 out of the equation, this figure reduced to 7.3 days, lower than pre-pandemic levels, which suggested working from home was improving illness rates.

Labour group leader Cllr Steve Pearce told the meeting: “I was horrified when I read those depression numbers, as I’m sure everybody would be.”

He said there was greater acceptance now of mental health issues and more willingness to report them, but “clearly it’s an issue we need to seriously address”.

Green councillor Lorraine Francis said the data showing higher rates of absence among women and minority groups was “worrying”.

A council officer told members: “Proportionately we have seen an increase in anxiety, stress and depression, particularly in the resources directorate.

“Wherever we know someone being affected by that, we support the manager to have good conversations with those staff and as soon as possible get them back to work on the basis that, in some cases but not all, work can be part of the therapy, providing any underlying reasons in the workplace that have contributed to the anxiety, stress and depression are being effectively and properly dealt with.”

Head of HR Mark Williams said: “The health and wellbeing of our workforce is our number one priority. It’s at the forefront of everything we do. We have a lot of staff who work in jobs that are intrinsically stressful, such as social work.

“How we support our colleagues in those jobs is extremely important.”

He said this included personalised health and wellbeing plans, preventative measures and “loads of work” around “very challenging” mental health, BAME and disability issues.

Mr Williams said the sickness absence rates were about average among the core cities’ local authorities.

The report to the committee on Thursday, September 23, said musculoskeletal problems accounted for 11.6 per cent of lost days, although this had fallen by about one seventh.