The news yesterday that CIPD/Simplyhealth survey findings that the incidents of stress related illness in the workplace is on the increase came as no surprise at all, nor was it any surprise to hear that the findings make a direct link to the current economic downturn. I was saddened to hear in news reports that this trend is particularly prevalent in the Public Sector, as is an increasing trend of mental health conditions.
I say I was sad, because unfortunately none of this was news to me and I would hazard a guess nor to anyone else. Why then do we seem to just accept it? Apart from a half hearted suggestion that employers make use of counselling services none of the news items I encountered had any suggestions about how to address this problem.
Counselling can be enormously helpful to identify the root causes of stress and provide individuals with a range of coping strategies but it is only one small part of the picture.
What was frustrating was that the root cause was suggested clearly in the various news items – Organisational Change, Restructuring. I’ve been working in the Public Sector one way or another for more than twenty years, in all that time I can barely recall a time when the Public Sector weren’t going through some kind of organisational change, but also during that time I have been acutely aware of the levels of stress, anxiety and depression reported in official sickness absence monitoring.
It has always seemed to me to be unacceptably high. The increases reported in this latest survey suggest to me that stress, anxiety and depression may well be reaching epidemic levels.
Why then do we seem to just accept that we can inflict this kind of pain on what we claim to be our most valuable asset and blame it on change? Surely we are responsible for the features of change, the quality of the management of the change? Why then do we seem to have failed to learn the lessons of the past?
If the pain is as acute today as it was twenty two years ago when I first started work and within weeks was embroiled in a Department swept up in “radical business restructuring” I fear that it is not good enough to say that counselling is the fix, if this is our bread and butter, we really must look to ourselves and find ways to address the root cause, our own capability to get better at this.
Jane Pound.