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A. Stress does not go away on its own, it is a response to external pressure that if left poorly managed can have profound consequences for the employee and the employer. A CIPD survey from this time last year found stress to be a significant factor for both short- and long-term absence, with over 76% of respondents reporting stress-related absence in their organisation in the past year.
Your client should agree a contact method and frequency that your client and the employee is happy with. Daily calls from a line manager when an employee is off with work stress is generally not recommended, unless that’s the employees preference.
Upon the employee’s return to work, arrange a meeting with the employee in a private area, if that’s not possible, take a walk and find privacy. It is not reasonable to expect an employee to open up if they don’t have a safe place to do so. It would also be highly embarrassing if the issue is another colleague in earshot or the issue is the client, so location, location, location.
Once you have found the space to have the conversation, be mindful that the employee may raise issues with the workplace that you don’t agree with. Employer feedback should not be provided in this meeting, far from it. The purpose of the meeting is to actively listen, empathise and ask what can I, as your employer do to help.
The ‘stress’ the employee is experiencing may stem from the employees own personal circumstances. Certain employees are more susceptible to work stress, such as the neurodivergent or employees living with long term physical or psychological differences.
As these differences often constitute a ‘protected characteristic,’ employers are expected to have made reasonable adjustments to remove any workplace barriers the affected employees may be facing. If your client’s employee fits into this category I would advise caution because a failure to remove a stress trigger is more serious in these cases because that failure falls under the umbrella of discrimination.
Even employees with no additional stressors can be affected by overwork or workplace politics, to the extent that the work stress the employee is experiencing turns into a ‘protected characteristic.’ This means that an employer’s inadequate response or plain inaction could cause a substantial and long-term adverse effect to the detriment of the employee, which could in turn, allow the employee to cite discrimination.
The employee may share with your client that an aspect of their personal or work life is causing the difficulty. If so, your client could assist the employee with a temporary measure to support them or they may have a health issue, they had not previously disclosed that requires a permanent reasonable adjustment.
This can be a tricky balance for employers, they need to run a business and ensure productivity, but they also need to avoid long and potentially costly absences by taking a proactive approach to welfare issues before they escalate.
No matter who is experiencing the stress, the safest way for an employer to respond to it, is quickly and therapeutically.
