Staff absence due to stress: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/02425
Date received: 18 October 2017
Date responded: 15 November 2017

Information requested

You made the following request for information:

Details of the number of Scottish Government staff who have gone on stress leave, broken down by each of the last five years.

Response

You have requested information for Scottish Government staff. Our response therefore covers staff who are employed in the Core Directorates and who are subject to Scottish Government Main and Scottish Government Marine terms and conditions of employment. It also covers Senior Civil Servants working in those areas.

The Scottish Government has arrangements in place to closely monitor sickness absence levels to ensure that appropriate action is taken both to help reduce overall absence rates among employees and to support individual members of staff during periods of ill-health.

For the Scottish Government's Core Directorates, the number of staff who have been absent due to stress (including work and non-work related stress) is as follows:

Number of staff absent

Year absence started	Stress	Work related stress
2013	70	40
2014	87	30
2015	83	44
2016	102	49
2017 (to end of Sept)	66	44

Scottish Government overall sickness levels of 7.2 days per full time equivalent employee per year remain lower than the average levels for public services (9.8) and for all sectors (7.5) as reported by the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD) 2016 annual absence survey.

About FOI

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