Stress-busters
The HSE's Elizabeth Gyngell explains the new draft stress management standards.
Tackling work-related stress forms one of the Health and Safety Commission's (HSC's) priority programmes, and is an area in which employers are being encouraged to take preventive action. Taking the programme forward, we at the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have developed a long-term strategy to tackle work-related stress at source and to help with the recovery of sufferers.
A key element of our strategy is creating management standards to help organisations, working with their employees and trade unions, to assess how well they are managing stress and how far they are meeting their obligations to assess the risks.
After an extensive programme of research and consultation, we have worked with stakeholders to develop a set of draft management standards based on six key work-related stressors: demands; control; support; relationships; roles; and change. The draft standards have been designed as straightforward benchmarks which are easy to understand and implement.
Before the standards and supporting material are released, we want to be confident that they will work. A range of private and public sector organisations have agreed to pilot them for us over the coming year. When we have absorbed the lessons and feedback, we will move on to a bigger consultation exercise before promoting the standards more widely to organisations. We see asking employers to work with employees to look at the way work is designed, and to work together to find solutions, as key to tackling work-related stress. This joint approach will be integral to the management standards.
For each of the stressors identified in the standards, HSE is seeking to establish as a standard the percentage of workers exposed to conditions that reflect those stressors in the workplace. Under "demands", for example, the standard will require that "at least 85% of staff indicate that they are able to cope with the demands of their jobs: and systems are in place locally to respond to any individual concerns."
Employers will be able to use existing tools and information to assess whether or not they have met the standard, but, to help them, HSE will produce simple assessment tools. These tools will complement existing measures organisations may already have to assess the impact of stress.
The idea is to provide an initial gauge and develop an organisational picture of where problem areas lie. To help organisations find out more, a second tool will help employers make a more detailed assessment.
The data from assessment against the standard should give organisations a clearer idea of priorities that need to be addressed. To help facilitate the whole process, both HSE and the Health and Safety Laboratory are working on guides to help employers and employees work together to reduce ill health caused by work-related stress. Guides will also be developed to help focus groups generate ideas for improvements based on existing best practice in each of the standard areas.
The draft standards will be on the HSE website this month, and readers can send comments to laura.whitford@hse.gsi.gov.uk.
Elizabeth Gyngell, head of health strategy, management and research division, HSE.
See Stress risk assessments and EAPs for a survey of employers' use of EAPs.