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Stress costs 8,000 working days at Telford & Wrekin Council
Thursday 8th July 2010, 11:31AM BST.
Telford & Wrekin Council HQ
Nearly 8,000 working days were lost at Telford & Wrekin Council in a 12-month period due to stress, a report revealed today.
It also showed the authority spent around £30,000 of taxpayers’ money on counselling sessions for those affected. More than half of the 239 people who used the sessions sou-ght help because of problems at home rather than at work.
The figures relate to the period from April 2009 to April this year.
The report shows the amount of working days lost to stress have almost halved compared to 14,000 between 2008 and 2009. The latest figure is almost identical for the period 2007 to 2008.
The report says: “Stress continues to be a major cause of long-term sickness absence. This is a common experience in public sector organisations. Encouragingly, there has been a significant drop in days lost due to this reason over the last year.
Difficulties
“Confidential counselling sessions are available for employees who need some support to resolve difficulties at home or at work that may be causing stress.
“In 2009/10, 239 employees used the em-ployee counselling service. The average nu-mber of sessions was 2.6, and on average this costs £123 per employee using the service.”
Findings reported 84 per cent of employees using the counselling service continued working.
The figures form part of the Health and Safety Annual Report for 2009/10, due to be presented to the council’s ruling Tory cabinet by the authority’s health and safety manager at a meeting next week.
The report further shows more than 500 days were lost at the council due to accidents suffered at work in a 12-month period up to April this year.
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UNBELIEVABLE, perhaps if it was no pay when of sick ,except statuary sick pay after 1 week they may become well again.
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Once again, a story designed to provoke ill-informed anti-public servant rants, and naturally, Mr Finch, whom I assume has never worked in the public service has risen to the challenge.
With your sweatshop attitude to employment rights Andrew, it’s really only a matter of time before you find yourself on the wrong end of a tribunal…
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OH peter behave yourself. I have worked in the public sector for 1 1/2 years from 85-87.Has anything changed??.As for my sweatshop attitude to employment rights? no complaints yet good days pay for a good days work whats wrong with that.
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For once I agree with Mr. Finch. If it’s work related stress fair enough but counselling for home related stress? What the council can fix your teenage tearaways to stop stressing you out now can they?
My home life gives me gried sometimes but I don’t skive off work becuase of it
Some people just don’t know they’re born
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I have to agree with Mr Finch.
The people working for Telford & Wrekin coucil don’t know they are born.
I just wonder how long they would last in a high volume production factory with little or no benefits
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No Brian, I obviously don’t know I’m born do I?
I’m regularly in before 7am and out past 6pm with little or no lunch. I often work twelve days in a row for little or no thanks, and I’m forced to deal with people who think it is their right to verbally abuse me.
I haven’t taken any days off for “stress related issues” and neither do I intend to do so. So whilst my friends in private industry are busy sending joke emails and updating their Facebook statuses all day, I’m hard at it.
But do you know what? believe what you want to, because the very fact that you’ve sereotyped all council employees in the same way without obviously having a clue what you’re talking about, shows me that your comment is not worth the time it has taken you taken to type.
And Andrew – you worked in the public sector between 1985 and 1987 did you? So glad that you’re able to pass judgement on things as they are now, and not how you remember them 25 years’ ago.
I suppose it would be too much to ask the Shropshire Star – in the interests of fairness of course (and assuming the data is available) – how many private employees across the same ratio of council workers, have taken time off for similar issues.
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My other half used to unofficially carry a metal bar in his briefcase when he worked in a very dicey district as a council officer.
His pay packet did not reflect the often very unpleasant and sometimes dangerous aspects of working with joe public.
Add to that the often self interested or politically motivated councillors who put pressure on council officers for sometimes rather nefarious reasons.
Nope, he does not work for a council these days!
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