Department for Transport: Sick Leave

(asked on 14th May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many and what proportion of officials in his Department took sick leave for reasons relating to stress in the last 12 months; what proportion that leave was of total sick leave taken in his Department; and what the cost was to his Department of officials taking sick leave over that period.


Answered by
Jesse Norman Portrait
Jesse Norman
This question was answered on 22nd May 2019

The Department and its Agencies have provided the responses below for the period 1 May 2018 to 30 April 2019.

  1. The number of staff that took sickness absence due to stress was 553. The Department and its agencies employed a total of 14,956 employees at the end of April 2019.
  2. Of the total number of staff that took sickness absence, the proportion due to stress was 7.57%. The proportion of working days lost to stress, out of all days lost due to sickness absence, was 14.33%.
  3. The total cost of working days lost to sickness absence for the period above is estimated at £13,710,056.78.

The Department has a number of sources of support for employees including a free-to-use Employee Assistance Programme, which offers up to six counselling sessions at a convenient location within days of referral, and a Wellbeing Buddy Network run by volunteers. It has also launched a Mental Health First Aid service run by trained volunteers for colleagues in immediate emotional distress.

The Department recognises the importance of the line manager in mental health, and has a resource available for line managers to provide guidance on managing colleagues with mental health difficulties/issues. It has also launched Wellbeing Action Plans, to guide line managers in conversations about wellbeing, including in relation to mental health.

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