On the eve of a gradual return to the office, burnouts "explode".

This is indicated by a barometer of the psychological health of French employees produced by OpinionWay and presented on Wednesday.

"The burn-out rate has doubled in one year, reaching two million people with severe burn-out," notes Christophe Nguyen, head of the firm Empreinte Humaine, specializing in the prevention of psychosocial risks, presenting the seventh wave of this barometer since the start of the Covid-19 crisis.

"With such figures, in a context of a return to the office, we can unfortunately expect a new explosion in sick leaves in the coming months," he says.

Worrisome indicators

The indicators of the psychological state of employees also remain "very worrying" with 44% of employees in psychological distress (-1 point compared to March 2021).

The survey also notes that six out of ten employees believe that their management "does not realize the psychological state of the employees and does not act accordingly".

The rate of depression requiring support among employees remains at 36% (including 21% at risk of severe depression) and 56% of employees on short-time work present a “risk of depression”.

At the same time, 15% of employees say they have been absent for psychological health reasons for a year.

And a quarter say they are "afraid of losing their job" (this is the case for 39% of those in partial unemployment).

Teleworkers exposed

In addition, the most exposed function remains that of manager, with 52% of them in psychological distress.

Six in ten managers say they cannot do their job as they would like.

Teleworkers are also more exposed with 46% of them in psychological distress but eight out of ten want to continue teleworking one to three days a week.

Because if seven out of ten employees think that a face-to-face return is “necessary for team cohesion”, half of teleworkers “do not want to come back to the office as before”.

They say in particular that they fear "of not being able to make the same hourly amplitudes" as during confinement.

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  • Covid 19

  • Deconfinement

  • Depression

  • Employees

  • Burn out

  • Job

  • Coronavirus

  • Health