Wellbeing Part One: Graduates off Sick

By Fay Capstick

This week, we start a two-part series looking at wellbeing at work. A new report from the NHS Confederation and the Boston Consulting Group is showing a worrying trend for graduates to go straight onto sickness benefits due to mental health conditions when they graduate. We shall look at what has happened and what might be causing it. Then, in part two, we shall go on to look at what employers can do to improve and safeguard the wellbeing of workers.

What has happened?

New statistics show that many graduates are leaving university and immediately going onto sickness benefits instead of looking for work.

Currently, 1 in 15 people of working age are not working, and many of those have recently only left higher education. 63,000 people in 2023 followed this path, which is double the average figure before the pandemic. The rest of Europe is not seeing similar figures, our long-term sickness rate is 69% above Germany's, for example.

Why has this happened?

Covid will be a big factor here, as many of those leaving higher education will have had their education experience impacted by Covid. The impact of Covid on these students could have been debilitating as studies and lives were disrupted. Life lessons and formative experiences may have been derailed. Everyone was in a heightened state of anxiety and this would have been magnified for younger people who might have had been less able to cope.

Further, there are falling numbers of jobs for graduates (The Guardian). This is extremely worrying and will be a huge stressor for students about to graduate, who have put years of their time and a huge financial investment into getting their degree. The longer-term impact of people starting their working lives not working, we think, also needs fully assessing.

What does this mean?

Research has shown that employers are worried about how younger employees are able to respond to workplace stresses, feeling that they ‘lack resilience’ required.

It is very concerning that employers are feeling this way, as it could make them less likely to consider younger applicants for jobs.

Mental health crisis

Mental health is a huge concern for universities in the UK. In 2022, 57% of students self-reported a mental health condition, with 27% receiving a formal diagnosis. Any kind of mental health condition can have a catastrophic impact on the person and a knock-on impact on their studies.

Universities do provide support and make accommodations for students with mental health conditions, but such support and accommodations might be harder to replicate in the workplace. We also need to question whether universities are doing enough to support students.

Based on the above figures, we are left with the potential for between 30-60% of students requiring support when they leave university should they have any chance of being able to enter the workplace and function at the level they were at university. We should also remember that university and its pressures are very different from work, and most would agree that work can potentially be more stressful when coupled with the demands of adult life.

What do we think?

The figures show that mostly the reason for younger people not going into the workforce is mental health related. Covid would have impacted this cohort. There are also the other adult life stresses of being able to afford basic accommodation and living costs, which are harder to meet than at any other time for young people entering the workforce.

We think that it is essential that applicants and employees are open about the support that they need to do the job they already have or are applying for. This way, everyone can get the support they need.

We also think that it is vital that employers appreciate how much impact the pandemic would have made on the lives of the current crop of graduates and younger applicants. Their teen years were not standard, and their experiences were drastically different. This has taken an inevitable toll on many. Employers understanding this and working with staff with kindness will hopefully result in a happy and productive workforce of all ages.

The government has said that they will make it a priority to try and help younger people and graduates on a path to work, and a white paper on economic inactivity is due later in the Autumn. This is positive, as the report by the NHS Confederation and the Boston Consulting Group has found that the financial impact of this is nearly £20 billion annually.

Next week we shall go on to look at what employers can do to improve and safeguard the wellbeing of workers.

Final thoughts

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