Report: Health and Well-Being at Work

Exploring issues of health, wellbeing and absence in UK workplaces, this is the 18th annual CIPD survey produced in partnership with Simplyhealth. This year’s survey has been renamed from the Absence Management survey to the Health and Well-being at Work survey to reflect the changes in workplace policies and practices.

Key findings:

• Organisations vary considerably in how proactive they are in promoting employee wellbeing, with two-fifths of employers stating that they have a standalone wellbeing strategy.
• Most organisations could use a wider range of approaches to manage and support employees with a disability or long-term health condition. The majority admitted to experiencing challenges in this area.
• The average level of employee absence is 6.6 days per employee per year. Absence is highest in the public sector at 8.5 days compared with 5.6 days in private sector services.
• 37 per cent of organisations report that stress-related absence has increased, while 55 per cent say that reported common mental health conditions have increased, up from 41 per cent in 2016.

The survey was undertaken by 1,021 respondents in November 2017.