Looking at Stress – is it a 'can of worms' or can it be a positive improvement?

Stress is the latest issue to hit the workplace health and safety management in recent times. Failure to address Stress assessment can result in an automatic unfair dismissal case, carrying an award up to £52,500 for the employee. If this makes you feel stressed, read on…!

Safety Concepts Limited is able to provide Awareness training, health and safety management awareness, and procedures and policies to ensure that stress is well managed in a mutually beneficial manner for the company and employees. In our experience, Stress management has many advantages for employers in fields such as personnel relations, one-to-one management, and the reduction of absenteeism. We have also observed positive effects in production processes and output at busy or seasonal workload conditions from the introduction of stress management regimes.

A significant proportion of the population suffer from some form of stress at some time in their lives, much of which is associated with domestic and personal situations which can often impact on their performance at their place of work and on others around them. For the employer the only duty is to ensure that additional stress is not added to the equation by foreseeable conditions which may go unnoticed or unattended in the work routines and environment of the employees.

Stress management guidance from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) comes in the form of the Management standard which describes principles that the employer should adopt to comply with basic minimum Stress management measures. The need to address this issue arises from the fact that Stress is a workplace hazard like a trip, slip, or fall hazard, in that it can create an injury or illness to employees and senior management in pursuit of company business,.

Recent cases concerning stress management in employment tribunals have defined the way in which employers can successfully introduce adequate stress management control factors to avoid repetitions.

Examples of these factors are the implementation of staff stress assessments, the provision of training for key team members of staff, health and safety procedures to analyse conditions that may contribute to stress issues, the provision of help-lines, and, where appropriate the use of counselling services.