Saturday, July 21, 2007

It's official - working in an office is more stressful than teaching

The proof of something we have long suspected has finally arrived; teachers are just whinging when they claim that all that time spent finishing at 3.30pm and on holiday over the summer is really stressful just because they have to spend the odd day with some armed teenagers or under-tens flicking things at one another.

At a meeting this week Greenwich Council considered figures which classified staff reasons for absence including 'stress, depression, mental health, fatigue syndromes'.This report further sub-divided the sufferers between the education staff who worked centrally, in an office, organising(?) education and those that work in schools (teachers).

The results were somewhat surprising as 21.4% of office staff took time off with stress but only 12% of teachers. See teachers' might claim their job is tough, but dealing with Councillors or the Council's IT system is clearly worse!! Alternatively the office staff are a bunch of malingering skivers wonder which it is?

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4 Comments:

Blogger Inspector Sands said...

Or it could be that working for Greenwich Council could drive you to despair.

12:28 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think you misread the figures. I very much doubt that 21% of staff took time off for stress. I think it's far more likely that 21% of time taken off by staff was for stress. And, generally speaking, leave taken for stress tends to be long-term sickness, not short term. So if any member of staff is signed off for stress, it will tend to skew the figures.

1:30 pm  
Blogger Major Gripe said...

Good article. Reply to the previous comment: given that the figures quoted are for the same thing, the article still stands, as the teachers' figure will be similarly skewed. If you are someone who works for Greenwich Council then you may just have demonstrated Inspector Sands' point.

10:18 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't work for the Council :)

The comparison certainly stands, but the statement in the article is wrong and deserves to be corrected as such.

10:32 am  

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