A growing number of employees in the Netherlands are taking long-term sick leave due to stress-related complaints, according to joint absenteeism figures from occupational health services ArboNed and HumanCapitalCare (part of HumanTotalCare). Together, the two companies collect absence data for around one million employees in the Netherlands, and they have seen stress-related sick leave climb steadily for years.
36 percent rise over five years
Stress-related sick leave has increased by 36 percent over the past five years, ArboNed reports. Roughly one in four sick-leave days in the Netherlands now stems from stress-related complaints. The overall sickness absence rate rose from 4.7 to 4.8 percent. What stands out is not just the scale but also the duration: employees who go on sick leave because of stress are absent, at least partly, for more than 250 days on average. For burnout, the average absence period runs to nearly ten months.
Long-term absence in particular, defined as more than six weeks, weighs heavily: this type of absence accounts for around one in ten reported cases, but is responsible for roughly 81 percent of all sick-leave days. The healthcare, manufacturing, and transport & logistics sectors record the highest absence rates. Part-time employees are relatively more likely to be off sick due to stress than full-time employees, and while large companies account for the most stress-related absence in absolute numbers, the impact tends to be felt more heavily at smaller organisations, where one employee’s absence puts relatively more strain on the team.
Women affected more often and for longer
The figures also show that women are significantly more likely than men to be off sick due to stress, and for longer periods: stress-related absence among women is roughly twice as high as among men. The average duration of absence is also longer for women than for men, both for ordinary stress complaints and for burnout. ArboNed and HumanCapitalCare do not specify exactly where this gap comes from, but they point to the broader combination of workload, personal circumstances and societal developments feeding into the figures.
Context
The pattern fits a wider European trend. Spain’s occupational safety institute INSST recently reported widespread stress complaints among a specific occupational group, food-delivery couriers, and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) has long identified psychosocial risks as one of the most pressing current concerns for workplace safety across the European Union. In virtually every jurisdiction, employers are legally required to identify and, where necessary, limit psychosocial workload as part of a workplace risk assessment.
Causes and response
Occupational physician Redmer van Wijngaarden of ArboNed points to a combination of factors behind the rise: “Workload, personal circumstances and societal developments increasingly reinforce one another.” He cites the constant expectation of availability outside working hours, labour market shortages and uncertainty about the future as drivers of stress complaints among employees.
Iris Homeijer, director of medical affairs at HumanTotalCare, expects the number of people unable to work to keep rising in the coming years. She says an effective approach to absenteeism always requires a tailored response, and that prevention remains underused at many organisations. Both occupational health services stress that early recognition of workload issues and an open culture for discussing them on the work floor can help prevent long-term absence.
Source: HumanTotalCare (ArboNed/HumanCapitalCare), press release “Verzuim door stress blijft toenemen”, supplemented with figures from Accountant.nl. Related to: Werknemers vallen steeds vaker uit door stressgerelateerde klachten, nu.nl.
