Private sector companies have almost returned to their pre-Covid level of absenteeism, but the mental health of employees is deteriorating, indicates the annual barometer of the mutualist group Malakoff Humanis, released Thursday, September 8. A dive into the results of the study since 2016 demonstrates this trend, year after year.
However, no alarmism. The majority of employees are doing well: 54% of the 1,800 people questioned between May 5 and May 30 believe that they are in good physical and mental health. Over the long term, the number of sick leave is relatively stable. 42% of employees surveyed have been prescribed a work stoppage in the last twelve months, compared to 44% in 2019 and 41% in 2016. The most vulnerable remain young people (18-34 years old) and women. Paradoxically, the older you are, the less sick leave you take.
But the nature of absences is changing, characterizing a deterioration in the mental health of employees, in particular in younger people. Excluding Covid, work stoppages for psychological disorders or professional exhaustion are the only ones to progress regularly. They went from 15% in 2020 to 17% in 2021 and 20% in 2022. That is one out of five prescribed stops. “It was one in ten in 2016… A real clear progression »comments Anne-Sophie Godon, director of services at Malakoff Humanis.
Among 18-34-year-olds, sick leaves prescribed for psychological disorders (depression, anxiety, stress, burnout, burn-out, etc.) have jumped: from 9% in 2016 to 19% in 2022. Over the past three years, consumption sleeping pills, anxiolytics or antidepressants has doubled among employees under 30, specifies the strategic studies department of the mutualist. “Fatigue, stress at work, work-life imbalance… a number of risk factors have increased in recent years for young people”M-analysisme Godon.
First cause of long stoppages
The mental health of employees has thus become the second reason for sick leave excluding Covid, just behind the all-comers of ordinary ailments (colds, flu, angina, gastroenteritis, etc.). Psychological disorders are now the cause of more sick leaves than musculoskeletal disorders, accidents and traumas.
Mental pathologies have even become the first cause of long stoppages. Absences of more than one month (excluding Covid reasons) represent only 14% of prescribed shutdowns, but they affect the majority of companies : 64% of them have experienced at least one long stoppage in the last twelve months. This is not without posing major organizational problems, 30% of the companies surveyed only replacing their employees after a month of absence. And recruitment difficulties are affecting more and more sectors.
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