In March 2020 Coronavirus (Covid-19) was declared a global pandemic and on 23/03/2020 the Prime Minster issued the first lockdown, forcing the majority of the workforce to work from home.
Some companies already had working from home facilities, so it was only the frequency with which this happened that changed but, a large number of companies had to quickly adopt working from home policies for all staff, who were used to being in an office environment.
Work related Stress, depression and anxiety was already an increasing problem for companies before the pandemic. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) statistics from ‘Health and safety at work Summary for 2019/20’ issued on 04.11.2020 shows that 17.9 million days were lost to work-related mental ill health in 2019/20, up from 12.8 million days in 2018/19.
There were also 828,000 new or longstanding cases of stress in 2019/20 compared with 602,000 the year before, which was an increase of 37 percent. This meant that work-related stress, anxiety or depression accounted for over half the total 1.6 million new or long-standing cases of ill health.
The Government’s ‘Covid-19: mental health and wellbeing surveillance report’ updated in April 2022 states that multiple studies revealed deteriorations in mental health and wellbeing between March and May 2020, followed by a period of improvement through July, August and September 2020 to a point comparable to before the pandemic.
Another deterioration occurred between October 2020 and February 2021 which gradually improved back to pre-pandemic levels throughout August, September and October 2021.
AXA completed research in 2020, the results of which were released on 08.10.2020 in their ‘Report on Mental Health and Wellbeing in Europe. The report concluded that 64% of those in work across the UK and Europe said their work-related stress levels had increased compared with pre-pandemic levels and, 82% of British workers missed physical contact with people outside of their direct household.
The Office of National Statistics report ‘Coronavirus and anxiety, Great Britain 03.04.2020 to 10.05.2020 also supported these results showing that feeling lonely was the factor most strongly associated with reporting high anxiety.
Covid-19 also created new causes of job-related stress which displaced the ‘traditional’ reason for workplace anxiety which was ever-increasing workloads. University of Birmingham researcher Dr Eric Shiu surveyed 700 UK workers in 2020 and found that concern about income, fear of being exposed to the virus and concern about potential job loss were the 3 key areas of job stress, along with being unable to separate personal life from work life whilst working from home.
The HSE Report, as detailed above also showed that the rate of self-reported work-related stress, depression or anxiety had show signs of increasing and that in 2020/21 stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 50% of all work-related ill health cases.
As has been widely reported, and most people have noticed when walking around their towns, a large number of companies have made permanent changes to working practices following the pandemic.
Some companies have converted to solely working from home, getting rid of their offices in an attempt to save some money and others who did not have the privilege of being able to work from home have now adopted a flexible working approach for their employees.
Personally, I love being able to work from home and I am grateful to have that privilege, but I am unable to do more than a couple of days before I start to go a little crazy and need to be back in the office. I enjoy seeing my colleagues and being able to separate out my home and work life.
However, I do know some people who do not enjoy working from home and are struggling with the new regimes put into place by their companies following the pandemic.
Only time will tell whether Covid-19 will have a lasting impact on work-related stress or whether this will simply return to ‘pre-pandemic’ status. For many people, myself included, the pandemic brought about welcome changes to the working environment which assists in having a better work-life balance. For others it brought about permanent changes to their working life which caused significant anxiety and loneliness throughout the pandemic.
Work related stress does not appear to be decreasing, and we have definitely noticed an increase in cases coming through since the pandemic. I was pleased to see that the pandemic created an increase in self-reported cases, as not reporting stress to an employer is one of the most common reasons why we are unable to progress with an enquiry.
We would hope that this increase will continue, and always recommend that you report stress to your employers, preferably in writing.
Further reading
Stress at work – Oakwood Solicitors
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In March 2020 Coronavirus (Covid-19) was declared a global pandemic and on 23/03/2020 the Prime Minster issued the first lockdown, forcing the majority of the workforce to work from home. Some companies already had working from home facilities, so it was only the frequency with which this happened that changed but, a large number…
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