Stress And Lost Working Days – What Can You Do?
An estimated 964,000 workers in Great Britain are suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety. What can you do to protect your employees?
The conditions account for 52% of all work-related ill health and 62% of all working days lost, culminating in 22.1 million working days lost.
The HSE recently ran a campaign entitled ‘Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change’, to highlight the importance of listening to people’s experiences. In the workplace, talking to workers about the pressures they face can help employers identify potential causes of work-related stress and where changes may be needed.
Legal duty
But listening is only the first step. Employers have a legal duty to assess the risk of stress-related ill health arising from work activities and take measures to control that risk.
Work-related stress can arise when the demands of work, and the way it is organised and managed, place excessive or difficult-to-manage pressures on people.
Kayleigh Roberts, Work-Related Stress Policy Lead at HSE, said:
“We’re encouraging employers to listen to their workers and take action on what they hear. Having an open conversation can help employers understand the pressures people are experiencing at work and identify where stress risks may exist.
“Our Stress Talking Toolkit provides structured questions and prompts to help employers start those conversations.”
First step
Roberts added: “Listening is only the first step. Preventing work-related stress means acting on what you hear, whether that’s reviewing workloads, improving communication, giving people more control over their work or providing better support. Employers should identify the risks, take action and review whether those actions are working.”
HSE’s Working Minds campaign sets out five steps employers can take:
Reach out – start conversations with your team using the Stress Talking Toolkit for helpful conversation starters.
Recognise – identify the causes of stress, including workloads, working patterns and how work is organised.
Respond – use HSE’s risk assessment tools to record the actions you’ll take to address the risks you’ve identified.
Reflect – review what you already have in place, consider whether it’s working and refresh your knowledge with HSE’s quick quiz.
Make it Routine – regularly check in with workers and keep work-related stress risks under review.
Risk management
HSE’s Working Minds campaign helps employers prevent work-related stress by taking a risk-management approach, using free tools, guidance and online learning built around HSE’s Management Standards for work design and management.
Picture geralt! Via Pixabay: Stress is causing a large number of working days lost.
Employers have a legal duty to assess the risk of stress-related ill health arising from work activities and take measures to control that risk.
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