The Window Before the Sick Report
In the Netherlands, absence for psychological complaints lasted about 63 working days on average in 2023. That is longer than any other category, and close to three months of working time.
That count starts on the day of the sick report. What led to it usually began months earlier.
What people describe afterwards
In the counselling room, people describe the same sequence.
Sleep went first, several months back. Then Monday stopped feeling any easier after a weekend off. Then routine tasks took twice as long, which was handled by working longer rather than by saying anything.
The sick report came at the end of that, not at the start.
What a manager can and cannot see
Little of that is visible to a manager. Sleep, dread and mental effort are private.
What can be seen is the behaviour around it. This is why advice to watch for someone who seems unhappy does not work. The person is often not visibly unhappy. They are visibly busy.
Three changes worth noticing
These matter most in combination, and in someone who was reliable before.
A reliable person starts missing small deadlines. Someone who used to decide now checks everything twice. Small changes to a plan get a bigger reaction than before.
Those sit close to two of the three dimensions in Christina Maslach's burnout research: exhaustion, and a falling sense of competence.
They are not diagnoses. They are a reason to offer a route to someone qualified.
Why the earlier route costs less
Support at that stage is short, and the person is still working.
After the sick report you are dealing with a bedrijfsarts, a reintegration file, and a two-year wage obligation with a legal timeline attached. What separates those two situations is a matter of weeks.
Structured sick-leave and reintegration support is usually discussed once an absence has started. Most of what it can prevent happens before that point.
Where to put the effort
Most organisations concentrate their mental health effort after the sick report, where the obligations are clear and the process is defined.
The weeks before it have no process attached, and that is where a case is still small enough to end quickly.
Kelly Kim is an NIP-registered psychologist and workplace mental health specialist supporting international and Korean organisations in the Netherlands.
Sources: TNO, Arbobalans 2024, covering 2023 data, produced for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment with CBS, RIVM and the Netherlands Center for Occupational Diseases.
The three dimensions of burnout are from Maslach and Jackson (1981), The measurement of experienced burnout, Journal of Occupational Behavior 2(2), 99 to 113.
