2023-10-30 04:00:15
When Robin (some first names have been changed) goes to his doctor in 2022, he does not think he will come out with sick leave. At just 27 years old, this option doesn’t even seem to cross the mind of this project manager at a website design agency. “I pushed the door to his office to get some sleeping pills, in the hope of getting back to sleep and continuing to function at work. » But the fact is that he can no longer continue, the health professional alerts him. Robin was overwhelmed by the extra work in the start-up where he was an employee, which then experienced meteoric growth, to the point of seeing its workforce triple in a few months and its customer portfolio expand even more.
Faced with the pressure put on his team, very young like him and little supported by seniors, he developed increasingly debilitating symptoms of professional anxiety. Without “the right tools” and especially “without the necessary time” to meet the growing demands of clients with new profiles, he spends his nights going over the difficulties experienced during the day, and goes to work in the morning with a lump in his stomach. Before his arrest, he found himself bursting into tears several times after client meetings. “In the doctor’s office, I realized that the situation had really gotten out of hand”breathes Robin, who had to be arrested for a month.
Being forced to take a break from the start of their professional life: many young graduates are now faced with this. Health at work has deteriorated in recent years, particularly for younger people. While the number of sick leave reached a record level in 2022, as noted by two studies published this summer, the most striking increase concerns those under 30. According to one of them, published by the consulting firm WTW in August regarding the private sector, the rate of absenteeism – an HR indicator which takes (in particular) into account sick leave, work accidents, unjustified absences – in this age group has increased by 32% in four years, with a significant jump among executives.
Anxiety, depression, exhaustion
While none of these studies details the reasons for these absences, Social Security notes that the primary causes of long periods of absence prescribed in 2022 were psychological disorders, such as anxiety, depression or exhaustion. And, on this matter, other surveys agree: young people are indeed hit hard by deterioration. Among 18-34 year olds, sick leave linked to suffering at work jumped from 9% in 2016 to 19% in 2022, according to a barometer from the mutualist group Malakoff Humanis. The consumption of sleeping pills, anxiolytics or antidepressants by employees under the age of 30 also doubled between 2019 and 2022, specifies this study.
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