£22 billion. It's a huge number, no? An almost incomprehensible sum of money. For context, it's the size of the black hole which the Chancellor claimed she'd found in the UK's public finances back in July 2024. It's bigger than the UK policing budget and almost one fifth of what we as a nation spend on education. If there were something we could do to save that sort of figure, we'd surely be trying to implement it quicker than you could say "Call the Office for Budget Responsibility!" But according to research by the TUC, work-related ill health reduced the UK's economic output by £22 billion in 2023. That isn't just any ill-health, you understand - it's specifically ill-health arising from work-related issues. These might be physical injuries, of course, but there's also a high risk that such issues might arise from stress and burnout - a state of physical, mental and emotional exhaustion which can occur when a person is under long-term stress in the workplace, and one which can lead to serious and long-term mental health challenges. In fact, the TUC has found that the number of working days lost to poor health - including stress, depression and anxiety - has shot up to an astounding 34 million. Perhaps we shouldn't be shocked. Although we desperately wish it weren't the case, we as a society still find it hard to talk about burnout and mental health difficulties. It means that stress can smoulder away, unseen and not spoken of, until something causes it to erupt into flames - sometimes with serious effects on our health, and long-term repercussions for our personal and professional lives.
Thankfully, it's not all doom and gloom - there are steps we as a society can take to challenge this phenomenon. Prevention's often said to be better than cure, after all. When we're talking about burnout and the mental health issues that arise from it, the "cure" may involve long term sickness absence, and have a monumental financial and emotional impact for individuals. That's before we even start to think about the tax lost to our national coffers. When weighed up against this financial and psychological fall-out, preventative steps seem like a quick and easy win - and research has shown that their influence can be huge. We shouldn't forget the mental health benefits of regular breaks during the working day, fresh air and exercise, of course, and daily check-ins with colleagues can enable managers to spot trouble brewing and take action. But there are also structural changes we can make in our own organisations which would benefit the mental health of the whole team and could dampen the flames of stress and anxiety before they take hold, saving huge amounts of unhappiness.
Studies have found that work flexibility and security have an enormous impact on employees' mental health, and can reduce the chances of individuals experiencing anxiety and serious psychological distress by an astonishing 25% and 26% respectively. Mental Health UK, a charity which works to challenge the causes of poor mental health, also emphasizes the importance of flexibility in the workplace in avoiding burnout. And we can absolutely understand why that would be the case. Searing anxiety is a common response when we feel that we're under excessive amounts of pressure, and that we don't have any control in our lives - when the demands of our jobs mean that we haven't made it home before our children's bedtime all week, for example. When long hours spent at work make it challenging to keep in touch with family or friends. When we look up from our laptops and realise that we haven't seen the sky or had any fresh air for several days. When the demands of our professional lives mean that we can't access these natural stress-relievers, it might be time to make some changes, for our own well-being.
And what might these changes look like in practice? Well, the short answer is that there's no one-size-fits-all rule. But as a general guide, if you have the space and peace to work at home, then the ability to work remotely for part or all of the week can reduce the strain hugely. Partly because it saves you huge amounts of commuting time and enables you to put that time back into a better night's sleep, having breakfast with your family or splashing in puddles with your little ones on the school run. Partly because working from home might facilitate a drop in to check on elderly parents during your lunch break, giving you the reassurance you need that they're safe. And partly because working from home is often associated with higher levels of physical exercise - it is, after all, much easier to go out for a lunchtime run in the sunshine in your own village than it is in central London - which in turn is correlated with better overall health. It's not hard to see how these small changes can reduce stress and worry and boost your physical and mental well-being. It's no surprise, then, that employees carrying out part of their job remotely have lower rates of sickness absence.
Then of course there's the flexibility of working part-time, of compressed hours, or of job shares. Again, these are relatively minor changes for most employers. But for individuals, these could be the keys to unlocking options which boost their mental health enormously. They might allow you to attend class assemblies and sports days, nativities and forest school activities. They could enable you to find satisfaction and extra purpose in volunteering roles, or to make new connections in the community and reduce loneliness. All of these are correlated with better mental, and to a lesser extent, physical health, and it's reasonable to assume that this improvement in general health might also reduce sickness absence.
Finally, even simple flexibility in start and finish times can make a huge difference to the levels of stress of the average employee. Who hasn't felt their heart rate rising as they sit in an apparently stationary traffic jam at 8am on their way to work? What working parent hasn't felt that sense of fiery alarm as they hurl themselves down the office stairs to get to pick up before the nursery's doors close? In the end, all of these small, everyday peaks of red-hot cortisol do wear us down, affect our long-term stress levels, and increase the likelihood of poor mental health and resultant sickness absence.
In short, then, maybe it's time to fight fire with fire. The health crisis in our workforce, and the personal and organisational consequences of this crisis, need serious action - but happily, we have the tools to confront the problem. With a little flexibility, we can tackle the human cost - and the economic cost - of workplace stress and make the modern corporate world a healthier place for everyone. Let's all light the torch in our own organisations, and carry it forward.
