In honour of mental health awareness week, which is currently being promoted by the Mental Health Foundation, HSW’s SimplySafe bulletin has been produced to encourage businesses to tackle Work Related Stress.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the enforcing body for health and safety in the workplace, has set three priority health targets for action during 2018 and beyond – these are occupational lung disease, musculoskeletal disorders (e.g. repetitive strain injury) and work-related stress (WRS).

WRS affects almost half-a-million workers and is the second most commonly reported cause of occupational ill-health in GB, accounting for 37% of work-related ill health cases and 45% of working days lost. Annually, stress, anxiety and depression results in 11.7 million working days lost at an estimated social and economic cost of £5.2 billion. Not only is WRS damaging to health and wellbeing, it can impact productivity, competitiveness, and profitability.

WRS is defined as a harmful reaction caused by undue pressures and demands at work. This is caused mainly by workload (44% of cases), lack of support (14%), threats or bullying (13%) or changes at work (8%)

The HSE is encouraging employers to take a proactive stance to managing WRS using the HSE Management Standards, these identify 6 aspects of work which can contribute to WRS:

• workload, work pattern and environment
• how much say a person has about the way they work
• support and positive relationships with line managers and colleagues
• staff understand their role within the organisation and prevention of conflicting roles
• how organisational change (large or small) is managed, including communication and training.

It is also important to have a clear Stress Policy, which focuses on:

• preventing stress by knowing its causes
• recognition of any symptoms that do occur (lack of energy, mood swings, lapses in concentration, headaches, tiredness, weight loss, absenteeism) and
• a clear process for managing cases.

If you have any questions or queries on how to manage stress in the work place, or you wish to have an informal chat about the topics covered, please feel free to get in touch with one of our advisors.

Alternatively, you can gather information from the HSE or contact the Mental Health Foundation https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/mental-health-awareness-week