Stress is a leading cause of long-term absence from work, according to a new survey from people management specialists the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
It says employees take an average of 10 days off sick each year, a slight increase, from the reported 9.3 working days lost, in last year's study.
The latest survey of more than 1300 practitioners found that sickness absence costs employers an average of £522 for each employee per year. This amounts to an estimated annual cost of £13 billion for the UK economy as a whole. Stress is the most common cause of long-term absence (of more than four weeks) for non-manual staff, cited by 44 per cent of survey respondents.
For manual workers, back pain is the primary reason for sickness absence, with around 30 per cent of the sample rating this as most important.
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