For this week's discussion, I wanted to dive into some HR topics. One article that I found that was interesting was published recently in Forbes, titled Workplace Mental Health Support Is Not A Tick-Box Exercise: Why Old-Style Human Resource Professionals Have a Place.
Not that I'm an "old-style" HR person, but the article, written by Clare Bettelley, focused on some key stats.
One key caveat regarding the data I'm going to dive into is that it's based on the UK. How the UK compares to the US in regards to mental health is a separate topic, and probably a topic that will be even more exciting. How do you think we compare? I feel like we're worse!
So, the article states that 1 in 5 people take a day off work due to stress. That's 20%! This seems high as it is, right? Are people in the UK that stressed out? Come on, now.
This stat is coming from Mind, an organization in the UK that focuses on helping those who have mental health issues. They seem like a pretty cool organization. You can check them out here: http://www.mind.org.uk/
For this 20% stat, they surveyed over 2,000 people.
When I look at this, it makes it easier with a problem. We can frame this as follows: what is the probability that out of a department of 17 employees in an organization, 5 of those employees have taken a day off work due to stress.
With this framed up, similar to our lecture problem, it's a binomial probability. Now, we can solve it.
P(x successes in n trials) = C(n,x) * (p^x) * (1-p)^(n-x)
P(exactly 5 out of 17) = C(17,5) * (0.20)^5 * (1-0.20)^17-5
= 17! / (17-5)! * 5! * (0.20)^5 * (1-0.20)^17-5
= 6188 * 0.00032 * 0.0687194767
= 13.6 %
From this, there's a 13.6% chance that exactly 5 out of 17 employees in the department will take a day off from work due to stress. To me, I think this is a fair probability. There are still other variables that I think make a huge impact to the outcome such as the specific industry, the type of job, the job level, and the type of work environment that may frankly drop this probability down. What do you guys think?
On another note, here are some interesting stats from Mind from my reading:
Not that I'm an "old-style" HR person, but the article, written by Clare Bettelley, focused on some key stats.
One key caveat regarding the data I'm going to dive into is that it's based on the UK. How the UK compares to the US in regards to mental health is a separate topic, and probably a topic that will be even more exciting. How do you think we compare? I feel like we're worse!
So, the article states that 1 in 5 people take a day off work due to stress. That's 20%! This seems high as it is, right? Are people in the UK that stressed out? Come on, now.
This stat is coming from Mind, an organization in the UK that focuses on helping those who have mental health issues. They seem like a pretty cool organization. You can check them out here: http://www.mind.org.uk/
For this 20% stat, they surveyed over 2,000 people.
When I look at this, it makes it easier with a problem. We can frame this as follows: what is the probability that out of a department of 17 employees in an organization, 5 of those employees have taken a day off work due to stress.
With this framed up, similar to our lecture problem, it's a binomial probability. Now, we can solve it.
P(x successes in n trials) = C(n,x) * (p^x) * (1-p)^(n-x)
P(exactly 5 out of 17) = C(17,5) * (0.20)^5 * (1-0.20)^17-5
= 17! / (17-5)! * 5! * (0.20)^5 * (1-0.20)^17-5
= 6188 * 0.00032 * 0.0687194767
= 13.6 %
From this, there's a 13.6% chance that exactly 5 out of 17 employees in the department will take a day off from work due to stress. To me, I think this is a fair probability. There are still other variables that I think make a huge impact to the outcome such as the specific industry, the type of job, the job level, and the type of work environment that may frankly drop this probability down. What do you guys think?
On another note, here are some interesting stats from Mind from my reading:
- 9% resign from their job due to stress
- 25% consider resigning due to pressure
- 19% felt they couldn't tell their boss if they were overly stressed