Employee Stress Litigation: The UK Experience

Jill Earnshaw and Cary L. Cooper

Chapter 32 in From Stress to Wellbeing Volume 2, 2013, pp 157-168 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract It has been known for many years that workplace stress is costing the UK economy, and the individuals and organizations for whom they work, an enormous human resource bill (Cooper and Payne 1988). Alcohol Concern and the Centre for Health Economics have calculated that alcohol-related problems at work alone are estimated at £2.2 billion per annum in terms of sickness absence, labour turnover, premature death, and other employment costs. The British Heart Foundation Coronary Prevention Group suggest that 180000 people in the UK die each year from heart disease (500 people each day) and that heart disease accounts for 70 million lost working days each year to industry and commerce. The mental health charity MIND claims that 30–40% of all sickness absence from work is attributable to mental or emotional disturbance. The total national bill for workplace stress is therefore extremely high, estimated by some at 10% of the Gross National Product per annum (Cartwright and Cooper 1994). In addition to the health consequences for public and private sector organizations, and for the role of the human resource professional in preventing and treating stress at work, there is another looming cost-employee litigation.

Keywords: Sexual Harassment; Sickness Absence; Personal Injury; Workplace Stress; Civil Court (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-30934-1_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137309341

DOI: 10.1057/9781137309341_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().