“I can’t come in today, it’s my mental health.”

A recent survey by ONS about ‘Sickness absence in the UK labour market’ made for an interesting read; one where we could read between the lines of the data to dig into why people may avoid saying things such as the above to their employers.

Mental Health still has a stigma, it’s unfortunate, but it does; and when it comes to calling your boss because you are unable to come in today, saying it’s to do with your mental health is something many will still avoid - instead opting for a minor illness or other reasons as to why.

I’m not here to say everybody calls in sick and doesn’t say what’s really going on, but I can say from my own experiences in the past that that’s something I have done, and that speaking about something more common - such as a cold or flu - can be easier than opening up about something more delicate to the boss.

Especially if your place of work, and your boss don’t provide you with a safe space to speak about such matters.

This openness around mental health to your employer can also be considered when looking at this latest report from the Office for National Statistics around the reasons people give for sickness absence.

In the UK, the top five reasons for sickness absence, between 2019 and 2022 are (in no particular order):

Minor illnesses
Musculoskeletal problems
Mental health conditions
Respiratory conditions
Other

No surprises in those reasons, but let's focus on the mental health choice and when it was at its peak.

Mental health conditions in 2019 were 10.9% of all sickness absences reported, and in 2020 this rose to 11.6%. Then in 2021 this went down to 9.7% and in 2022 it went down again to 7.9%.

On paper, that’s fantastic.

It’s great that it has started to lower in 2021 (no doubt due to the year of 2020 being the pandemic and things then starting to relax a little in 2021) and that we collectively went from 10.9% of all absences due to mental health to 7.9% in just four years, but it’s potentially not as black and white as that.

In 2022, ‘Minor illnesses’ and ‘Other’ have suddenly shot back up, to be the main reasons to call in sick. ‘Other’ reasons especially, has gone from 13.6% of all sickness absences in 2019 to 23.8% in 2022 - quite the jump.

Why is that? Why are Minor Illnesses and Other reasons suddenly back on top. And does this mean that everyone's mental health is ok now?

We know that’s not the case. We already know that 1 in 6 people report experiencing a common mental health problem (like anxiety and depression) in any given week and that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem of some kind each year in England (Thanks Mind for the statistics here).

So is it to do with us now having other, less stigmatised reasons for being absent, even if it’s not really the truth?

Could it potentially be that now the pandemic is (for the most part) behind us and the collective mental wellbeing focus that we all had at the time was at its strongest has now lapsed, that we’ve now slowly gone back to our old ways?

We know that a lot of companies have started to bring people back to the workplace in an attempt to bring back some ‘normality’, we seem to be accepting that the old ways are the best ways and are forgetting what people have gone through and the environments they previously worked in - and we need to get back on top of this.

If people aren’t giving their true reasons for not being able to make it in today, it’s not what that says about them, it’s about what it says about the environment they work in, and what they feel comfortable about saying.

It’s something to think about.

Of course, it’s difficult to know what someone is going through, but as an employer it's important to create an environment for your employees to feel comfortable and to do what you can to consider all aspects of their health, from their working hours, to their commute and their work/life balance.

"I can't come in today..."