Clarico Reacts: HR Practices in Ireland 2025/26

Clarico Reacts is a series where we publish our thoughts on new publications and content relevant to our favourite topic, People at Work. This post looks at the CIPD's HR Practices in Ireland 2025/26 report, conducted in conjunction with Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick. You can read the full report here.

This is one of those reports we look forward to every year, because it tells us so much about what is actually happening on the ground in Irish workplaces, not just what we hope is happening. And this year's findings gave us a lot to think about.

The headline that stayed with us is, over a third of organisations reported that wellbeing has become more challenging over the past year and a similar number reported an increase in absenteeism. Mental health and acute medical conditions were the most common reasons for absence. Over half of organisations identified workload and lack of management support as contributing factors to mental health issues.

We see this pattern consistently in our work and it never gets any less frustrating to witness. Here is what struck us most.

Wellbeing Is Slipping, Even Where Support Exists

It would be easy to assume that wellbeing challenges come down to a lack of support structures but the report tells a more complicated story. There has been an increased emphasis on mental health support and online wellbeing initiatives, yet only half of respondents said wellbeing was increasingly on senior leaders' agenda.

This gap between effort and visibility matters enormously. A mental health initiative that senior leadership does not actively champion sends a quiet but clear message, that this is a tick box exercise rather than a genuine priority. The report's own recommendation is visible senior leader support for wellbeing is critical, with leaders needing to take responsibility for the impact of culture, technology and working hours on employee wellbeing.

Management Support Is Not Optional

Over half of organisations pointed to workload and lack of management support as contributing factors to mental health issues. Wellbeing is not just an individual resilience problem. It is, in large part, a management capability problem.

Leadership and influencing skills were flagged as the most concerning capability gap in the entire report. Organisations are recognising that future leaders are not adequately equipped to build the right culture or support the employee experience, particularly in a hybrid working world. This is not a criticism of managers as people. Most managers have never been trained in how to hold a difficult conversation, recognise early signs of burnout, or support someone returning from leave. They are doing their best with tools they were never given.

Absence Is a Signal, Not Just a Statistic

When we talk to employers, absence is often treated purely as an operational problem, something to track, manage and minimise but this report is a reminder that absence is also information. When mental health and acute medical conditions are the leading causes of time away from work, and workload and management support are named as contributing factors, the data is telling employers something specific about their own culture.

The organisations that listen to that signal, rather than just managing around it, are the ones who will see real improvement. The ones that do not will keep treating the symptom while the underlying cause continues, quietly, to cost them their best people.

What Next?

So what does this mean in practice?

The report's own recommendations are clear and we could not agree with them more.

• Increase commitment to addressing workload and working hours.

• Close the gaps in management support.

• Build leadership capability specifically around culture and employee experience, not just performance management.

None of this is about adding another wellness perk. It is about building the underlying conditions that determine whether people can sustain their work without breaking down.

This is precisely where Clarico's Workshops come in. We help employers build the practical and legal capability their managers actually need, how to have supportive, well informed conversations about workload and wellbeing, how to recognise the early signs of strain before they become absence, and how to support a genuine return to work rather than a sink or swim re-entry.

We also support organisations through Coaching for Employers and Corporate Partnerships, helping build the kind of leadership capability and culture this report identifies as the real gap, not just policies on paper, but practical, lived support.

If this report has you reflecting on where your own organisation sits, on wellbeing, on management capability, or on how absence is showing up in your data, we would love to talk. Get in touch with us at hello@claricocoaching.com or through our contact page.

Read the full CIPD report here.