Almost 40 Health employees walked out of their jobs before completing a year in post, sparking concerns about possible “onboarding or departmental issues”.

A workforce metrics paper, discussed at last week’s public meeting of the Health Advisory Board, revealed that 37 staff left last year before reaching 12 months’ service.

The report warned that this “may indicate onboarding or departmental issues and will be monitored”.

The figure formed part of a wider update showing turnover had increased compared with the same period last year.

Board members were told that early departures would be “closely monitored” because higher turnover in the first year “may suggest poor onboarding processes or departmental issues”.

The same report revealed that the department’s overall sickness rate for 2025 was 6.44%, with an average of 13.5 days being lost per employee.

Stress and anxiety emerged as the single biggest cause of staff sickness absence.

“As a result of the reporting changes, stress and anxiety were our highest cause of sickness absence,” the report stated.

However, it added that this “is a combination of both personal-related stress as well as work-related stress because the reporting system does not differentiate between the two”.

By way of comparison, the report noted that stress at work accounted for 27.7%, 29% and 30.9% of all absences in NHS England in October, September and August respectively.

In Jersey, stress and anxiety accounted for 25.34% of all sickness absence in 2025 – more than double the next most common cause, coughs, colds and flu at 11.71%.

Surgical procedures (8.9%), gastrointestinal problems (7.87%) and injury or fracture (7.24%) completed the top five reasons why staff were off work.

The picture was even more pronounced in long-term absence cases, where stress and anxiety made up 35.13% of all prolonged absences.

For short-term absence, coughs, colds and flu led at 20.28%, followed by stress and anxiety at 17.53%, and gastrointestinal problems at 12.5%.

The board heard that efforts are underway to tighten management of sickness.

A sickness-absence lead took up post in November 2025 and has since introduced monthly departmental audits, individual sickness trackers, a new dashboard system and more rigorous monitoring of sick pay and policy compliance.

Meanwhile, staffing levels have risen over the past year with a 5.5% increase in headcount largely due to agency workers moving into permanent roles.