1. Poor mental health is now the single biggest recorded cause of work absence.
Whether or not a legacy of Covid-19, due to increased reporting, awareness, workload or cost of living increases, work-related, or having some other root cause, the problem is showing no signs of going away. Depression, stress and anxiety took the top spot (48%) in the 2020-21 statistics with an estimated 17 million working days lost and 1.8 million sufferers: the figures remained fairly constant for 2022-23. DWP figures for Work Capability Assessments in the period January 2022 to November 2023 recorded mental and behavioural disorders in 69% of cases.
2. HSE revives its interest and has embarked on a sustained long-term campaign.
May 2024 marked Mental Health Awareness Week and 6 November Stress Awareness Day UK. HSE’s 10-year strategy to 2032 puts employee mental health high on the agenda. It seeks to address a number of anomalies, for example that the construction industry reports considerably less than half the average mental health absences of other trades combined (0.8% as against 2.1%), but has one of the highest suicide rates of any sector – 34/100,000 in 2021.
3. Of the two guidance notes issued by HSE during the pandemic lockdowns and bearing on WFH, the most prominent was about safeguarding mental health of home workers (the other dealt with display screen equipment and posture).
The current HSE campaign “Working Minds” is in the large part of a call to action for employers to recognise and address the issue, but MIND publishes concrete guidance.
4. HSE has published largely general advice to employers, but you need to surf more widely to find specific pointers.
The HSE website provides sample policies, risk assessments and action points, recommends focus groups to address mental health and promotes its Management Standards tool, but perhaps unsurprisingly confirms that the burden of compliance is on employers to tailor their control measures to particular jobs. Beware of snake oil salesmen peddling simplistic remedies.
5. Poor mental health increases the chances of being injured at work.
An analysis conducted by IOSH in late 2023 suggests that more than 60,000 RIDDOR-reportable accidents or incidents notified to HSE in 2022-23 listed mental health difficulties as the sole or major contributing factor. People with mental health issues tend, it found, to take more risks than those on an even keel. They endanger others as well as themselves.
Written by Mark Scoggins
If you want to hear more from Mark Scoggins he will be speaking at our next event The SHE Show North East, Tuesday 25th March 2025, Hilton Newcastle Gateshead
Mark Scoggins, Solicitor Advocate, Fisher Scoggins Waters LLP
Graduate of Cambridge University. Solicitor Advocate (formerly barrister), based in the City of London since 1983. Principal Practice is the defence of organizations and individuals in the construction, chemical, transport, waste, water and emergency services sectors in regulatory claims: particularly those involving health and safety, environmental damage and catastrophic personal injury or death. Represented Balfour Beatty’s civil engineering division in the Health & Safety Executive prosecution over the Heathrow Express tunnel collapse of 1994, and Thames Trains at the public inquiry into the October 1999 collision near Ladbroke Grove in which 31 people died; numerous health and safety, regulatory and environmental cases arising from a variety of operations including construction, pipelines, oil storage, highway maintenance, waste, firearms, fish farming, fire and explosion, flooding, pollution, drinking water supply, asbestos management, legionella, electrocution, confined spaces, intellectual property and EU public procurement. In 2003 handled the successful Old Bailey defence of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens and his predecessor Lord Condon, in a five-week trial at the Old Bailey, on all ten charges brought against them by the HSE arising out of roof falls suffered by patrolling police officers.
Please note, the views expressed by the original article author are theirs alone and do not necessarily represent those of Washingtondowling Associates Ltd or The SHE Show and therefore we take no responsibility for the content or accuracy of this post.
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