Sickies and surveys

Another day, another survey.
This time academics from Nottingham and Ulster tell us there has been a 40 per cent leap in work-related stress during recession. And that there is a 25 per cent rise in stress-related sickness absence.
While an increase is hardly surprising, measuring the impact an economic event has on the workforce does have clear value as it helps point to possible solutions and to an additional level of economic activity that is lost during a downturn.
There is one significant caveat with this survey, though. While I don’t for one moment doubt its academic rigour, there’s an important detail everyone should be aware of when they read about it.
The study draws its conclusions from two surveys of 17,000 workers in Ulster, one conducted in 2005 before recession struck and one in 2009 when it hit in a big way. So this is a heavyweight sample, from which you are entitled to draw some solid, in-depth conclusions.
But only about the public sector. For that’s where all 17,000 of those surveyed worked.
When you consider that only around 20% of the UK workforce is employed in the public sector, and that the working environment is often decisively different to the private sector, that raises some questions about whether it’s right to apply the conclusions from this survey to the whole of the UK labour market.
Historically, the public sector has always had higher incidence of sickness absence than the private sector, including days lost to stress-related illness. While businesses sometimes take a jaundiced view of why this happens, one of the reasons is that the public sector has more well-developed mechanisms for identifying and handling occupational health issues.
And while the private sector will often let people soldier on when they’re not feeling 100%, you might expect government in all its forms to make a point of sticking to the rules it has enacted.
While there’s little doubt that fewer people and fear of job loss does cause stress, there will be those who argue that in the private sector it will, if anything, make some people less inclined to throw a sickie because they feel the need to prove their worth.
There are some valuable lessons in this survey, though the two most important conclusions will be very familiar. One is that businesses are always likely to get the best out of their workforce if they look after them, whatever the economic weather.
The other is that surveys themselves should always come with a health warning...