There is a stress epidemic in Whitehall, with anxiety related absences among civil servants rising by as much as 140 per cent over the last year in one government department, according to statistics obtained by the HuffPost UK.
The increasing number of stressed out officials as cuts and job losses begin to kick in was exposed through Freedom of Information requests made to each department.
Stress and anxiety related absence has risen over the past year in over half of the departments who answered the requests, and remained steady in one department, communities and local government.
In Chris Huhne’s Department of Energy and Climate Change, it has risen by 140% - and in Jeremy Hunt’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport it’s up by 127%.
Other departments had steep rises, with a 43% increase in Vince Cable’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.
Mark Serwotka, head of the civil servants’ PCS union told the Huffington Post UK: "It's no surprise that stress and anxiety are on the increase and this ought to ring alarm bells for ministers.
”The fact is that, with job cuts kicking in, those that remain are having to work much harder and for less reward, as the government has frozen their pay and is threatening to raid their pensions to help pay off the budget deficit."
However stress and anxiety related absence has declined in three departments - the Ministry of Defence, Transport, and the ring-fenced Department of Health, falling by 3.7%.
Professor Cary Cooper, a management specialist from Lancaster university, isn’t surprised by the figures. "The one thing you had in the civil service up until recently was job security. Now no job is now safe, from top to bottom. The other issue with them is their image in society. It's not very negative, people think that their wages are grossly higher than their are in the public sector. It's not just your job security, it's their perception.
"Plus the downsizing means the workloads are much, much heavier. If you go to most government departments there's 20, 30 per cent less staff but the demands are still the same.
“Probably another one but that's always been there is the quality of their management. It's not up to the scratch that you would get in many private sector organisations.
"Remember, if you take a lot at a lot of civil servants they're great at policy. My own view is the civil servants are very bright, very good at policy, probably less good at delivery. Now people are expecting delivery, government's telling them they have to deliver, a lot of pressure, with fewer people. And that's a real problem area.
Now delivery is going to be twice as forced as it was two years ago because there's fewer of them."
A Cabinet Office Spokesperson said: “Sickness absence across the Civil Service is at its lowest level for a decade. A healthy, productive, engaged and resilient workforce is a key priority for the Civil Service, to enable it to continue to deliver a range of important public services.
“The Civil Service is generally regarded by the CIPD as having best practice policies and procedures in dealing with sickness absence and individual departments are taking a number of measures to ensure sickness absence is managed effectively.”
Stressed out service: The worst affected departments
