Research

Education Employees Take More Mental Health Days than People in Other Industries

• By Rhea Kelly
• 01/31/18

Nearly 60 percent of education employees have taken a "mental health day" to deal with work-related stress. That's according to a recent survey of 1,004 office workers and business decision-makers in the United States and Canada. The survey, conducted by KRC Research on behalf of Staples, asked employees about current trends in the workplace, including health, wellness and stress issues. About 9 percent of the survey respondents came from the education industry; the other industries represented were government/public sector, healthcare, industrial/manual labor, finance and tech.

The count of education workers who have taken a mental health day was significantly higher than the average across industries, which was 44 percent. In fact, education came in the highest of all industries surveyed for that particular stat.

Additional findings specific to education include:

• 82 percent of education employees agree that experiencing stress at work depletes health and vitality, and 72 percent agree that it inhibits learning and growth;
• Employees in the education field spend 76 percent of their time in or at an office. That's higher than the cross-industry average of 71 percent;
• 73 percent say that their workspaces don't offer a wellness room (a dedicated room for employees who want to rest, breastfeeding mothers, employees who need to take medication, etc.);
• Just 31 percent work in an environment that offers "agility seating," or the ability to work from various locations within an office, with no one space designated as your own; and
• Only 25 percent of employees in the education field are allowed to work remotely. That's quite a bit lower than the cross-industry average of 38 percent. In fact, it's the lowest of all industries surveyed.

The full report is available on the Staples site.