Spokesman Ben Willmott said that the trend, which was discovered by researching the reasons for employee absences, could be due to the closer working relationships found in small businesses and the fact that employees in such firms are more able to see the value of their work.

"In terms of stress, we know from research that [one] of the main causes…is workload," Mr Willmott revealed.

"You could argue that individuals in smaller organisations might be placed under greater stress in some circumstances because they have more limited resources. But that doesn't seem to be reflected by the evidence in our absence management survey," he said.

Mr Willmott also suggested that companies should have a policy on stress management, as recommended by the Health and Safety Executive.

"The difficulty with stress is that on the one hand you've got difficulties caused by people's working lives, and then you've also got problems caused by individuals' lives outside work," he continued.

"So it certainly makes sense to provide sensible working opportunities to help people balance the conflicting pressures between work and home," he added.