Employees absent due to anxiety and stress (FOI)

Request

A

How many Government of Jersey employees have been signed off sick for anxiety and or stress in the last three years?

B

Please also share the figures for staff in each emergency service and the hospital.

Response

For the purpose of this response, any individual with an absence longer than 5 working days is considered to have been “signed off”. This may not necessarily be a medically certified absence.

If an individual has been signed off from their role multiple times within the same reporting period, they will only be counted once for the purpose of this response.

Where numbers are fewer than five disclosure controls have been applied to avoid the identification of any individuals. Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Significant activity has been taken by the organisation in recent years to ensure that data on sickness and absences is as comprehensive as possible. This has included the inclusion of several areas of the organisation (such as Children’s Services, Police, Fire and Prison services) which tended not to report centrally but are now covered by current reporting processes. Data quality controls have also brought down the volume of absences recorded without a reason code from 13% of all recorded cases in 2019 down to only 2% of cases recorded in 2023. The impacts of staff working from home as part of the organisation’s response to Covid-19 have impacted the levels of absences recorded in recent years. While we have seen the overall number of staff reporting leave due to stress or anxiety has decreased, we have seen an increase in the length of leave for those who have been affected.

A

Please see the below table for the number of Government of Jersey employees who have been signed off sick for Anxiety and/or Stress in each of the last three full calendar years.

B

Ambulance:

“Ambulance” staff are taken to be individuals identified within the Government of Jersey’s Human Resources (HR) systems as working a role within the Ambulance directorate.

Police:

“Police” staff are taken to be individuals identified within the Government of Jerseys HR systems as working a role within the Police directorate.

Fire & Rescue:

For instances of Fire & Rescue staff being signed off due to mental health issues up to the 31st October 2022, information is publicly available on www.gov.je in response to a previous Freedom of information request.  Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied. Please see the following link:

Firefighter’s Mental Health Sick Leave (FOI)

Between 1st November and 31st December 2022 there were fewer than five additional Jersey Fire and Rescue Service employees signed off due to mental health issues. “Fire & Rescue” staff are taken to be individuals identified within the Government of Jerseys HR systems as working a role within the Fire & Rescue directorate.

Hospital Staffing:

Hospital Staff are taken to be individuals identified within the Government of Jerseys HR systems as working a role within the Department of ‘Health and Community Services’ excluding the services of ‘Mental Health’ and ‘Social Care’. 

Articles applied 

Article 23 - Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public authority that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

3)      In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.