Northern Ireland’s health and social care system will roll out new training for line managers starting this autumn, aiming to reduce stress-related absences and improve staff well-being.
The initiative, developed with Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, will standardise well-being practices across the five regional health trusts and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service. It follows research linking manager support to lower absences and more sustainable workforce resilience.
Sickness absence in Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care (HSC) system reached 8% of working hours in 2024/25—nearly double the 5.2% rate in NHS England and four times the 2% UK average. Work-related stress was identified as a key driver of these figures.
The online programme, launching in autumn 2026, will cover 8,500 line managers and introduce tools like the STOP model and Judgment Shift to help leaders communicate more effectively and intervene earlier in well-being concerns.
Staff shortages have also contributed to rising outpatient wait times, which climbed from 43 to 64 weeks between 2020 and 2025, raising patient-safety concerns. The programme builds on a six-phase study that tracked over 14,400 staff through the pandemic using surveys, focus-group interviews, and longitudinal health-outcome monitoring. Findings from that research informed the design of the STOP model, which prompts managers to recognise early signs of stress, and the Judgment Shift approach, which encourages a pause for reflection before making decisions that affect staff welfare.
Dr. Heike Schroder, a senior lecturer in health management, emphasized that line managers, often overlooked, play an important role in shaping workplace culture. Strengthening their skills could help address deeper systemic issues in the health service.
