Britain is facing a work-related stress crisis, with 22 million working days lost due to stress in the last year.
This is according to a new study published by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which found that almost eight in ten union representatives reported stress as one of the main concerns they faced at work.
The study surveyed more than 2,700 union safety representatives and found that 79% of them cited workplace stress as a major hazard – the highest figure recorded by the TUC.
Stress was rated as the top concern in every region and across almost every sector of industry, and was particularly acute in central and local government.
One of the biggest drivers of this stress was excessive workloads, which representatives said were driving employee stress to unprecedented levels.
Stress is routinely omitted from work risk assessments, the study found, and nearly half of representatives surveyed said they were not consulted at all on their employer’s risk assessment process, which the TUC said is a breach of safety regulations.
The TUC’s ‘stress crisis’ claim is backed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)’s official statistics for 2024/2025, which show that work-related stress has reached record levels.
According to HSE data, the number of workers reporting work-related stress, depression, or anxiety was 964,000 in 2024, a significant increase over the 776,000 reported in 2023.
It also found that 22 million working days were lost due to work-related stress that year, and the TUC pointed to these figures as evidence of the human costs of employers’ failure to tackle stress in the workplace.
The organisation called on the government to enforce laws requiring employers to assess and prevent work-related stress and told employers to reduce excessive workloads and give safety representatives the rights and time they need to carry out their roles effectively.
“These findings expose a growing national crisis. Stress is now entrenched as the biggest health and safety issue facing working people, and the situation is getting worse,” said TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak.
“No worker should find themselves lying awake at night from stress. But too many employers are ignoring the law, failing to assess stress risks, and piling impossible workloads onto staff. Workers are burning out, and they are paying with their health.”
“Employers and managers need to do more to identify and reduce risks and to provide support to employees struggling to cope.”
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