When the Keep Britain Working review was published last autumn, it confirmed that Britain is facing a health-related work crisis – something that many in higher education already knew.
Across the UK, nearly 800,000 more people are now out of work because of long-term illness than before the pandemic, a 40 per cent increase. Ill health now costs the economy around £150 billion a year.
For higher education, the implications are profound. The sector’s people are its greatest strength – yet the data shows a pattern of strain and sickness that can no longer be dismissed as individual misfortune.
The health of our workforce
Across multiple UK universities, sickness absence has increased markedly, with working days lost rising by over 50 per cent in some cases. Several institutions now report thousands of staff days lost each year, while stress-related absence accounts for a growing share of overall absence, and mental health-related absence has risen rapidly in a short period of time.
The figures vary, but the direction is clear: absence is rising and long-term illness is becoming part of the picture. What’s missing is a shared understanding. There is still no consistent dataset on long-term sickness in higher education, which means universities often work in the dark when trying to understand what is happening or whether their wellbeing strategies are effective. That lack of visibility echoes what many staff describe when they are struggling: feeling unseen, unsupported or left to cope alone.
Alongside those who are off sick, there are many more who are “burnt-on”: still working but running on empty. They keep showing up, doing good work, but at a personal cost that is neither visible nor sustainable. The danger for the sector is not just losing people to illness, but eroding the health and hope of those who remain.
Beyond wellbeing rhetoric
The earlier Keep Britain Working discovery review warns that once someone becomes economically inactive for health reasons, they have only a 3.8 per cent chance of re-entering employment within a year. Intervention needs to happen before they leave.
Universities invest heavily in recruitment and retention, but few make equivalent investments in prevention or in the leadership practices that keep people well. Workload management, line manager training and wellbeing initiatives have improved, but remain patchy. Support often arrives after someone has already reached crisis point.
Across the sector, some people are getting this right. I have seen leaders and teams who act with compassion, flexibility and courage every day. Managers who hold thoughtful return-to-work conversations, HR teams who design genuinely inclusive policies, and departments where kindness shapes how work is organised. These examples show change is possible, but making it systemic remains the challenge.
From insight to action
Here are three recommendations from the review, as well as one from my own work on burnout prevention.
Audit the stay-in-work journey: Ask whether flexible options such as reduced workloads or redeployment are truly accessible, or simply written down in policy. Look closely at what staff actually experience often reveals good intentions, but also gaps and inconsistencies. The aim should be a clear, kind process that encourages early, honest conversations and helps people stay connected and supported.
Invest in line manager capability: Most absences escalate not because people don’t care, but because managers don’t know what to do. Many fear saying the wrong thing or overstepping HR boundaries, which leaves staff feeling isolated. Mismanaged returns cost workplaces dearly. We need to build managerial confidence, helping leaders recognise early signs of burnout and respond with empathy and flexibility. Psychological safety must extend to managers too; they need permission to lead with kindness.
Make wellbeing structural, not symbolic: Wellbeing cannot be reduced to a campaign or themed week. It has to be part of how the organisation works: built into strategy, policy and everyday leadership. Too often, institutions say the right things but leave the underlying pressures untouched. Real wellbeing means redesigning workloads, expectations and what we recognise as success.
Universities are excellent at tracking student outcomes and research performance – but few give the same attention to staff health or return-to-work rates. Building wellbeing into governance sends a clear signal that caring for people is not an optional extra. It is how we sustain our capacity to teach, research and serve society.
Create spaces for recovery and repair: Burnout is about more than workload. It grows from disconnection and loss of trust after constant change. Prevention must sit alongside recovery, through reflective spaces, manager supervision sessions and wellbeing-led leadership programmes where people can rest and rebuild.
Recovery begins with listening to those who are exhausted or unwell and asking what they need, without defensiveness. Their stories are data. Recovery is not rest; it is restoration. It is not about fixing individuals but rebuilding the conditions that allow people to return with energy and purpose.
Each person’s needs are different, shaped by health, identity, caring responsibilities or neurodivergence, but the principle is the same: people cannot get well in the place that made them sick. The environment has to change if recovery is to be real.
Kind, brave leadership
If universities can align around these four commitments – clarity of process, capable leadership, structural accountability and compassionate recovery – they can begin to reverse the trends highlighted in the Keep Britain Working review. Not through slogans or short-term fixes, but through culture: by making kindness a core part of how the sector keeps its people well and working.
Many in higher education know what needs to change, but struggle to begin. The review shows that waiting is no longer an option. Kindness in leadership isn’t soft, it’s urgent. The question I ask my coaching burnout clients feels like the right one to be asking here as well: if you don’t act now, then when?