Employers are failing workers with mental health issues as stress issues soar to make long-term absenteeism a real problem for many organisations.

Few workers feel confident about discussing their mental health with their managers, according to a new report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and mental health charity Mind.

Six out of 10 workers would keep a mental health problem secret, the findings showed, while 25% of workers have suffered a mental health problem while in work.

Just one in four workers claim their employer’s are open to talk about mental health issues, while only 37% reckon their employer offers good support to workers with mental health issues.

To help, CIPD has compiled a workplace guide to handling mental health problems, called Managing and supporting mental health at work – disclosure tools for managers. [LINK: http://www.cipd.co.uk/publicpolicy/_mentalhealthatwork ]

Other findings from the report include:

• Women are more likely to talk about mental health at work (31%) than men (22%).

• A quarter of workers say their current mental health is moderate (21%) or poor (4%) while 41%  describe it as good and 33% that say it is very good.

• People working in the voluntary sector (39%) and public sector (37%) are significantly more likely than those in the private sector (23%) to say they have experienced a mental health problem in employment.

The CIPD’s Ben Willmott said: “Managing mental health at work is central to good business performance. Stress is the number one cause of long-term sickness absence, but it is not just time lost to absence which impacts on the bottom line.

“Our survey highlights that the majority of people with poor mental health continue to attend work and report that it can impact on their ability to concentrate, make good decisions and provide effective customer service. It is estimated that this presenteeism costs UK businesses £15.1 billion per year in reduced productivity, while mental health related sickness absence costs £8.4 billion.”