News

Read about the latest developments at Shepherd and Wedderburn - as well as updates on the law. There are also details of our latest deals, and our media centre for journalists.

Media Releases
2006

02 March
2006

Scottish employers face growth of stress and absence issues

A survey of Scotland's employers undertaken by leading law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn has demonstrated how common stress and fatigue is amongst the nation's workforce. Stress and fatigue has remained the biggest single reason for absence - with 90.3% of organisations now experiencing this problem, compared with 84% in the previous survey, conducted in 2004.

However, employees are taking less time off to look after family matters, with just 54.8% of delegates citing 'family commitments' as a reason for absence compared with 81% in 2004.

Roy Drummond, an employment law specialist at Shepherd and Wedderburn commented: "One possible explanation for this drop is perhaps a growing 'family-friendly' attitude of employers, or that eligible parents are now starting to become more aware of rights to take parental leave to attend to childcare commitments or taking time off for dependants to deal with emergencies, instead of having to 'take a sickie'."

The survey was carried out amongst the delegates of a series of seminars on "Stress and Absence Management", hosted by commercial law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn to understand concerns about the ongoing issues associated with stress and workplace absenteeism.

A similar report by the firm in 2004 disclosed that almost half of respondents admitted having employee absences due to 'drink' related issues. In 2006, this problem shows no signs of abating, and indeed the instances of this have increased to 53.2%. This year's survey also probed the impact of drug use on employee absence, and alarmingly 16.1% of delegates admitted to experiencing drug-related absences within their organisation.

Roy confirmed: "Drug-related absences are more common than people might expect, with some employees possibly resorting to drugs to combat the effects of work-related stress and the country's long working hours culture".

The survey also found other key causes of absenteeism as social occasions (37.1%); extended holidays; (30.6%) and job interviews (22.5%).

In terms of addressing absenteesim, the results highlighted that while 90.6% of organisations have a system in place to monitor absences, only 48% have actually introduced initiatives to combat 'sick days', although 65% have actually dismissed an employee for long-term absence or frequent, short-term absenteeism. Perhaps of greater concern to industry is the finding that 11% of all delegates admitted to having received a tribunal complaint of unfair dismissal or disability discrimination in connection with action taken by them related to absence.

Roy concludes: "Employers need to ensure that they have adequate policies and procedures in place to manage the problem effectively, and more crucially, fairly. The risk for employers in failing to do so is finding themselves on the end of a potentially expensive employment tribunal claim. Employers must also ensure that they look behind the absenteesim and obtain appropriate medical evidence to ascertain the true reason for it. It may be the case that a series of apparently unconnected absences are in fact symptoms of an underlying long-term condition, which may amount to a disability within the meaning of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 which gives special protection to employees."

The survey also identified some of the approaches being adopted by Scottish organisations to combat absenteeism including:

  • Occupational health and one-to-one counselling services, particulary for those suffering from stress and other mental health issues.
  • Rewards, bonus and incentives for good attendance including "quarterly prize draws" for unblemished attendance records, and discounts for leisure facilities and healthy eating promotions to encourage health living.
  • Tight monitoring of employee health by conducting return-to-work interviews and even home visits.
  • Discouraging short, intermittent absenteeism by implementing policies that do not provide for sick pay during the first three days of absence.


« Back to Press Releases