In Focus Collections
Stressing the right points
Do we need to see stress management as a compliance issue?
Mel Joseph Founder and director, Mente
It is important that workplace stress should be increasingly seen as a compliance issue. Everyone knows what it feels like to
experience stress, with surveys finding that four out of five British adults feel stressed during a typical week.
Key cause The workplace is a key cause of this stress, with research commissioned by charity Mind finding that one in three people (34%) say that their work life is either very or quite stressful.
Stress risk assessment Currently, employers have a legal duty to protect employees from stress at work by doing a stress risk assessment and acting on it. If they have fewer than five employees, they
do not have to write their risk assessment down – although it is good practice to do so. If they have five or more employees,
February 2020
www.CCRMagazine.com
they are required by law to write the risk assessment down and store it. More businesses must take workplace stress
seriously as a psychological hazard that they can take steps to improve. The government, as well as the Health
and Safety Executive, and the World Health Organization have all signalled that
mental health and wellbeing is a priority that they will focus on, and so we advise that businesses should begin taking effective stress management actions quickly.
These include providing managers with stress training, ensuring that the demands put on employees are fair, and allowing employees to switch-off when they are away from work
Steps There are, therefore, a number of steps that organisations can take to reduce stress levels in their workplace. These include providing managers with stress training, ensuring that the demands put on employees are fair, and allowing employees to switch-off when they are away from work.
Conclusion You can never fully eliminate all stress at work, and a certain level of stress can be motivating and healthy. But the way organisations view stress
needs to change from an unmanageable and invisible threat, to a safety hazard that they can take direct actions around to remain compliant. CCR
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