Stressed out and working too much?

Wednesday 30 November 2016

One in ten of us are taking time off for work-related stress and over half of us who were surveyed this Summer said they'd taken at least six days off work because of it.

The figures come from the latest Jersey Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (JOLS) which showed that one in 20 of us have more than one job.

Most people surveyed this Summer said they are contracted to work a 37-hour week but are actually putting in about three hours overtime and those in Senior Management positions said they were working around ten hours a week extra on top of their contracted hours.

Those working at least one extra job said they are working around eight hours a week doing that second job.

The majority of those surveyed (86%) work and almost two-fifths of them in a job requiring a professional qualification. 

Almost one in ten manual workers said they'd been injured at work last year and 'lifting or moving heavy objects' accounted for around a quarter of work accidents. 60% of those who had to take time off work because of their injury said they'd had to take more than five days off.

One in five households said they use friends or family to look after their children while they work and almost half of them because they can't afford the cost of other childcare options. Around one in eight said they paid friends or relatives to look after their children. 

Most of us rated our health as either good or very good although almost 20% of adults said they were drinking more than the recorded weekly limit and one in five surveyed were still smoking.

One in ten adults said they rarely or never socialised face to face with someone outside their own home and two thirds of Islanders who were born in Portugal said they'd struggle to find someone here who they could count on to help them if they were in trouble.

Islanders were also asked things like how safe they feel living here, whether they'd been victim of discriminatory abuse and prejudice over the last year, who clean they find Jersey, how they'd rate the roads and what they think of our public transport.

Around 3,300 households were asked to take part in the survey this Summer. Almost half (46%) completed the survey, with around a third of them doing it online.