The rate of sickness absence among Edinburgh Council 's workforce rose over the last year with stress, depression and anxiety the most common reasons given.
New figures on staff well-being show that the council lost 197,656 days due to absences between July 2021 and the end of June, which is equivalent to 718 full time employees.
This is up almost a fifth from the same period in 2020/21 when 166,725 days were lost.
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A council report said almost two-thirds of absences are long-term and the top reason for this continues to be 'stress, depression, anxiety and/or psychological conditions’.
The only age group where this isn't the case is 61+ "where ‘sprain, strain, musculoskeletal and/or broken bones’ is the top absence reason".
"The top two causes of stress at work in the UK are heavy workloads and management style , both of which have been highlighted repeatedly as issues by our people," it added.
"The spans of control in these areas are also higher, coupled with ‘remote’ working, means that there is less opportunity for one-to-one management support for team members."
Since the pandemic higher than average levels of sickness absences have been recorded in health and social care professions, predominantly those working in care homes or caring for people in their homes.
Edinburgh City Council officials said feedback from the workforce "is that the Covid pandemic has had a detrimental impact on employees’ well-being – mentally and physically".
"Many colleagues are often exhausted due to increased overtime or working more hours than normal given the higher levels of staff absences and staffing shortages."
They added an "enduring theme" of council-wide engagement is the impact of a 'reducing workforce' on staff when there has been 'no corresponding reduction in service demand'.
"Feedback from a number of services is that there has even been an increase in service demand against this reduced workforce," they said.
A gap in the council's workforce is evident in the latest data with the level of jobs advertised more than doubling between March and June.
In the first quarter of this year from January to March there were 1,195 vacancies, rising to 2,531 by June, which the council says is the highest figure "for some time".
"The majority of these vacancies are in Education and many are of a fixed term nature," a report to the finance committee said.
Speaking at the committee on Thursday (September 8), Conservative councillor Phil Doggart said: "We do have very high absence rates".
He added: "We have hints in the report around issues of stress, one being workload and one being style of management as UK-wide issues and there's a comment that that has been reflected in staff feedback.
"However, I wonder if the more worrying statistic in the report is the number of vacancies which seems extremely high in comparison to the size of the FTE of the workforce."
Cllr Doggart said a high number of vacancies will lead to "increased workload on those who are currently employed and possibility of increase in stress".
Cllr Alys Mumford, Green Party, said: "This paper is about well-being and absence and mental health of our workforce and I welcome lots of the initiatives that are happening - but we all know that actually the thing that has the biggest impact is poverty and precocity and security on these things, and that's obviously a problem that's coming through."
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