Almost a quarter of all sick days within the civil service are attributed to ‘mental disorders’ (including stress) and this costs the civil service about £85m a year, according to figures from a 2007 Cabinet Office report. For departments which need to save millions of pounds in order to meet the Treasury’s exacting efficiency targets, the cost of sickness absence is an obvious place to start.

And this is not an impossible task. The same report pointed out that mental disorders had the “highest chances of preventability and effective management of return to work” when compared to other causes of long-term absence, such as cancer.

There are other reasons why mental illness should be a priority for HR teams: staff retention, for example. As Antonia Borneo, a senior policy officer with the charity Rethink, puts it: “If you’ve recruited good people who are right for the job, you don’t want to lose anybody unnecessarily.” Departments also have a public sector duty to equality under the Disability Discrimination Act, and they must set an example as employees of the government that has pledged to get the long-term unemployed into work – including people with mental health problems on incapacity benefit.

The Cabinet Office is already working on this: a working group is investigating how the civil service can employ more socially excluded adults, including people with severe mental health conditions, learning difficulties and ex-offenders; and there are plans for a civil service jobs event for people from disadvantaged groups.

While policies are being formulated, there have been criticisms that the government is talking the talk but not walking the walk. Lynne Jones, Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health, asked each department about their policies on the recruitment, development and retention of employees with mental illnesses. While she describes some departments’ practices as “innovative and progressive”, half of the answers simply referred to the department’s disability equality scheme and the vast majority of these, she says, make little or no reference to mental health and wellbeing.

Most departments’ answers ignored mental health problems or conflated them with disability, says Jones. She has now taken the issue up with Jonathan Shaw, the work and pensions minister responsible for health and wellbeing at work, incapacity benefit and disability.

“Mental health issues are often complex, intangible and hard to relate to. To address them simply as synonymous with all other disabilities is both naïve and ineffective,” she wrote to Shaw, asking him why there seemed to be “very little coordination or sharing of best practice” between departments. Such lack of detail “does not bode well for the state of other public bodies and private enterprises”, especially when departments should be acting as “a precedent and a blueprint”, she concluded. Shaw has since told Jones that government should indeed be an “exemplar employer”, but he replied that there is not a “one-size fits all” solution.

Jones agrees, to a point: “What you shouldn’t do is stifle innovation, but there are minimum standards,” she tells Whitehall & Westminster World. She compares the civil service’s recruitment website, where her search on mental health yielded no results, to BT’s, where there was a case study of a manager who had been helped back into work after three years off with depression.

Jones believes the use of pre-employment questionnaires is another example of where the government’s own policies are not living up to the preaching – campaigners argue that questions on health can put off candidates with a mental illness, thereby discriminating against them (see box, right). “This is a practical issue that could be addressed, that the government has shied away from,” she argues.

Over at the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), head of equalities Ruth Ludbrook disputes the suggestion that HR teams in Whitehall are not sharing best practice, and points to the diversity practitioners’ network set up to help deliver the civil service’s 10-point plan on equality. She says forum members who are unsure of how to tackle mental health issues can bring their questions to the forum and get advice from other departments. In the past there have been sessions on flexible working, home working, and equality. “We share best practice,” Ludbrook insists, though she does concede that “it may be that we need to have [a session] on mental health”.

HR professionals may have guidance available for staff, but unions argue that managers are not always aware of it or using it. Ro Marsh, FDA officer for equality and diversity, thinks managers need specialist help but “receive little support or guidance in this area”. And Phil Madelin, health and safety officer at the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), agrees. On paper, he says, departmental attendance management policies make room for mental health problems, “but the practices on the ground largely don’t reflect that”.

Madelin believes that negative headlines about public sector sickness rates and the demands for leaner and fitter government have produced overly mechanistic absentee-management systems which focus on the number of days off, not the reasons behind sickness or the value that a person with 20 years’ experience brings to the organisation when they are well and working.

“A lot of people are losing their jobs [over sickness] when really this doesn’t tie up with the government’s other policy commitments,” he says. The union is particular critical of the Department for Work and Pensions’ “stringent” absence policies because it is the department responsible for welfare reform, and backed Dame Carol Black’s report arguing that work was the best medicine for ill health. “It doesn’t make any sense that the department leading on these areas has one of the most stringent absence-management policies in the civil service, sacking people because they are sick,” Madelin says.

The department entirely refutes such claims and points to the support given to staff to improve their attendance, reduce stress and tackle any other illnesses, including occupational health advisers and professional counsellors. In the civil service’s drive to tackle sickness absence, departments now record days lost on a quarterly rather than an annual basis, and DWP sickness rates have fallen consistently over the past year. A spokesman says the department “will continue to look at what more we can do to improve support for employees”.

The Cabinet Office, with the help of unions including the FDA and PCS, is also examining health and wellbeing policies for the civil service as a whole. A Cabinet Office spokesman says the hope is that this will lead to “improved attendance, increased productivity and even better service delivery”, as well as making sure that the civil service remains an “excellent employer”. The unions also want to see improved support schemes for employees, rather than what Madelin describes as “systems that make people too frightened to take time off sick”. Such systems are counterproductive because staying in work does not mean people are well, he argues. They may not be working at their best and the strain could even cause far longer absences at a later date, he says. “That has far worse consequences for the organisation in terms of managing their return,” Madelin warns.

Part of the problem, says Rethink’s Borneo, is that the right advice is not available for managers and HR officials. Much of the literature is focused on the legal requirements rather than practical advice or only applies to common problems like stress or depression, not the kind of severe mental illness that can see people consigned to long-term incapacity benefit.

Funded by the Department of Health, Rethink is now developing a toolkit in just this area. Ahead of wider guidance, their initial work will be on local authority employment because, Borneo explains, mental health and wellbeing at work are national priorities which public bodies have a big part to play in delivering. “Government and public bodies are a major employer in every part of the country; they can set an example and have a major impact,” she says.

Action on mental health is not just about setting an example or even about saving money through addressing sickness and employee retention. Jones, the MP who quizzed every department, emphasises another benefit: “People with mental health problems have gone through an experience in their lives and have something valuable to contribute,” she comments. And CLG’s equality chief Ludbrook goes one further, arguing that the most effective organisations are the ones whose workforce represents wider society. “To limit ourselves to people who have never had a mental illness is just limiting our ability to deliver our programme effectively,” she concludes.

What’s out there – an incomplete guide

Most departments have confidential welfare services and occupational health workers, but there can also be additional help.

Department for Communities and Local Government has run workshops with charity City and Hackney MIND, and developed a check-sheet for staff which sets out how they should behave if they become unwell, giving their superiors the confidence to intervene early. The department may also sign up to the Mindful Employer charter for employers who are “positive about mental health”.

Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs offers a confidential 24-hour telephone service, counselling, and drop-in occupational health clinics. It has set up a mental health awareness scrutiny group, which is being watched by other departments.

Department of Health has developed a national ‘Action on Stigma’ project, promoting mental health and reducing discrimination at work, which the department and other public sector bodies are expected to champion through their own employment policies.

Department for International Development is one of seven departments in the Business Wellbeing Network, which provides advice for HR teams and managers. DFID also runs stress audits and a ‘Better Balance’ campaign looking at workplace stress, and has reviewed barriers in recruitment.

Northern Ireland Office runs seminars on mental health and a course for managers. It also offers counselling for staff and their immediate families.

For the Cabinet Office and Black reports and other resources, please click here