Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions , what assessment she has made of the effect on productivity of (a) absence as a result of stress or mental ill health and (b) presenteeism over the last three years.

Thriving at Work; The Stevenson/Farmer Review of mental health and employers, published in October 2017, sets out a compelling business case for employers to support their staff’s mental health. In the review, an independent study on the cost to employers of poor employee mental health commissioned from Deloitte found that:

• There is a large annual cost to employers of between £33 billion and £42 billion (with over half of the cost coming from presenteeism – when individuals are less productive due to poor mental health in work) with additional costs from sickness absence and staff turnover.
• The cost of poor mental health to Government is between £24 billion and £27 billion. This includes costs in providing benefits, falls in tax revenue and costs to the NHS.
• The cost of poor mental health to the economy as a whole is more than both of those together from lost output, at between £74 billion and £99 billion per year.

The Government’s full response to the review is included in Improving Lives: The Future of Work Health and Disability where we set out a broad ranging strategy to further support disabled people and people with health conditions – including mental health conditions - to enter and thrive in work.