Personnel Today 12 September 2006 08:00 This article first appeared in Personnel Today magazine.

An overwhelming 97% of senior HR professionals believe stress at work is the biggest threat to the future health of the UK workforce, exclusive research has revealed.

Virtually all of the 600 senior HR executives surveyed by Personnel Today and healthcare provider HSA think that lack of stress management is the number one threat to the future health of their employees.

Working longer hours and not taking enough holiday - both seen as key causes of stress at work - were other big contributors to poor wellbeing, the Who's Looking After Our Health? study found. More than a third (36%) of employers predicted that the health of UK workers would decline in the next five to 10 years.

Sickness absence costs the UK about £12bn a year, according to Health and Safety Executive figures. Work-related stress accounts for almost a third of that at an estimated £3.7bn a year.

Ben Willmott, employee relations adviser for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said employers need to identify the root causes of stress. He called on the government to address the dire skills shortage in occupational health to tackle the problem.
"There is a massive lack of occupational health professionals in the UK. There simply aren't enough to go around," he said.

Suzanne Clarkson, head of corporate marketing at HSA, said employers needed to put in more provisions for dealing with stress at work. "Employers must do more to encourage employees to look after their health. The message needs to be relayed more strongly," she said.

A spokeswoman from the Department of Health said that the government's health, work and wellbeing strategy, launched last year, was making an important contribution to reducing work related stress.

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