Stress the number one reason for council staff sickness

Richard Evans Local Democracy Reporter

Stress is the number one reason for sickness for one Welsh council’s staff members – including schools.

At a meeting at Bodlondeb this week, Conwy’s cabinet were updated on the council’s end of year ‘workforce dashboard’ by cabinet member for audit, policy, and performance Cllr Chris Cater.

The report included figures on Conwy’s attendance and sickness absence with stress cited most for staff missing work.

In second place was ‘non-specified hospital treatment’ followed by infection or communicable disease in third place, musculoskeletal in fourth place, and digestive and abdominal issues in fifth place.

These reasons were in much the same order for school staff, apart from communicable disease and infection being in second place and hospital treatment in third.

Stress

The report highlighted that absence for council staff was at 11.69 days per full-time equivalent employee in 2023/24. This compares to 12.25 days per full-time equivalent employee in schools.

The figures show an upturn in attendance of council staff from the previous year of 0.56 days and a downturn of 1.62 in schools.

But the numbers highlighting stress as the most common reason for sickness follow years of budget reductions and cuts to frontline services with redundancies to staff.

Speaking to the chamber Cllr Cater said: “We’ve got to provide a working environment that promotes health and wellbeing for employees.

“We all agree with that, and I welcome this particular report as it demonstrates where we need to focus support, giving line managers the right tools, as we know staff are our most important and valued asset.

“The days lost per full-time equivalent sits at about 12, but this is an average across the local authority, and it’s not a percentage. The majority of staff, it must be remembered, have little or no sickness absence at all, and if you look at the absence balance, we have in fact less people off but for a longer period.”

Prevention

Cllr Cater said attendance was reviewed with heads of service every month and that staff had regular one-to-one check-ins as part of the ‘Conwy Conversation’.

“There is a high level of stress absence. It is number one. But we know that each case is its own complex case,” said Cllr Cater.

“Waiting for hospital treatment, family, personal circumstances, the cost-of-living crisis, and, of course, work issues are all there. Our main focus has to be preventative.

“We know more efficient ways of working are on the agenda. We are always talking about this, and repetitively we have to make cuts and change our ways of working and make ourselves more efficient, but staff need to know that they are not expected to continue to do more with less.”

He then added physiotherapy was available for staff with musculoskeletal issues.

Cllr Julie Fallon said it was alarming that stress was the number one reason for both school and non-school staff absence.

Cllr Fallon said staff had to be praised for their hard work and going the extra mile.

She said: “Massive thanks to the staff for continuing to come in every day and continuing to work in a very, very different place to where they started 20 or 30 years ago, and they step in year in and year out.”