It's official: work makes you sick!

It's official: work makes you sick!

It's official: work makes you sick!

If you work in central London, your working environment is prone to making you ill, frustrated and unhappy, according to a recent survey from Training and Enterprise Council, FOCUS Central London[1]. Forty-nine per cent of respondents admitted to feeling frustrated when their colleagues call in sick, even if they were genuinely ill, because it meant that they would have to take on an extra workload.

More than one in ten believed that colleagues who said they were ill were actually just taking a "sickie" and spending a day at home, knowing that someone else would cover for them. More than a quarter of respondents (29 per cent) claimed that they had called in sick because they had seen others doing it and getting away with it.

These are the key findings from the survey, which looked at how working conditions affect your ability and desire to work. The research was commissioned to coincide with IIP (Investors in People) Week and highlights some of the issues that businesses need to address to improve the performance and morale of their employees.

According to two-thirds of respondents, colleagues take time off sick because a lack of job satisfaction reduces their enthusiasm to go to work. This figure rises to 70 per cent among female employees questioned. Thirty per cent of senior managers blamed working conditions for people taking time off sick, despite the fact that the responsibility for this environment could well lie with them. These figures suggest an urgent need to address the ways that businesses treat their staff and the channels that are available to employees to change the conditions they work under.

The research also revealed that women were almost twice as likely to take time off sick as their male counterparts (39 per cent of respondents claimed women took more time off, compared to only 23 per cent who thought that men did). Among female respondents, the number who thought that women were more likely to take time off sick rose to 47 per cent. Seventy-two per cent of respondents believed that the more senior you are, the less likely you were to take time off sick. This was a view particularly held by younger respondents, who were more likely to be in a junior position within an organisation.

Suzy Brain-England, Director of Business Services, FOCUS Central London, commented, "These results show that the changing working environment, unless managed properly, causes companies to lose many employee hours each year and affects staff performance.

"For example, as new technology such as e-mail changes the culture of an organisation, people's rules and responsibilities will also change. Managers need to make sure that employees are not just trained in IT tools, but also in how to cope with the effect of IT on their working lives.

"We pay fortunes for the 'technology' while neglecting strategy and implementation. Investors in People companies are able to overcome these problems by offering employees and managers a working environment where everyone understands what is required of them."

Note

1. This research was carried out on behalf of FOCUS Central London, Training and Enterprise Council by independent market research company, BMRB International. It was based on face-to-face interviews with 587 adults in Greater London. FOCUS Central London is the Training and Enterprise Council for the nine boroughs of Camden, the City, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth, Southwark and Westminster. FOCUS Central London is one of the seven TECs which serves the capital. With nine boroughs, 120,000 businesses and 1.45 million residents in its area, FOCUS is the UK's largest TEC.