A survey was conducted by GRiD to find out what businesses and employers felt was the prime area of concern as far as health related absence was concerned. It was found that Work life Balance was the top most area of concern for 21% of employers. Another 19% of employers categorized stress and mental health as areas of prime concern.

Anticipating vital areas of concern 38% of employers were acting to response to concerns relating to Work-life Balance while next to that 27% employers kept stress related employee absences as key contributing factors when tackling health concerns.

Talking to newspersons, GRiD’s Spokesperson, Katherine Moxham commented that the Work-life Balance factor was invariably overlooked against chronic illnesses when dealing with health issues.

In addition, she mentioned that the long hours that employees put in to tackle the increased pressure during economic recession posed a risk in increasing stress and thereby staff absences. Employers should adopt timely strategies to deal with those issues, she said.

Although employers initially encourage long working hours put in by employees to advance the business, they should be alert to the long-term dangers of the same that may lead to work related stress and employee absenteeism because of it.

Owners of businesses (32%) claimed that the absence rate of employees in their organization had fallen in the last year and also more than half of them claimed they were handling stress management as a key factor and was top priority.