Rosemary then a director of ISMA at the launch of the New Management standards. Rosemary is talking to - Bill Callaghan chair of Health and Safety Commission, Chris Row head of HSE psychosocial policy, Jonathan Pearce PR Consultant ISMA, Jane Kennedy Minister for work and pensions

HSE Guidelines For Tackling Work Related Stress

In the last few years organisational stress has been recognised as a cause of absence from work for many people. Handling stress and well being has therefore become a priority for the government and the Health and Safety Commission.

ApP is completely up to date with all the latest Health and Safety initiatives including the most recent “Health work and well-being - Caring for our future”, ”Managing Sickness Absence” and the Management Standards approach for tackling organisational stress.

Information

According to research commissioned by the HSE (2001/2004), 560,000 people are estimated to be suffering from stress-related illness, indirectly resulting in around 13.0 million days being taken in sickness absences.

Tackling stress has therefore become one of the HSC’s priority programmes for improving the health of the nation. From a legal viewpoint, both under civil law and the Heath and Safety at Work Act etc 1974, employers now have a legal duty of care to ensure so far as is reasonably practicable that employees do not suffer from stress related illness as a result of their work.

	Change
	Control
	Demands of the job
	Role
	Relationships and
	Support and Training

Managers are then given sound advice as to how they should tackle the problems associated with these. They are also shown how to do a stress risk assessment using the 5 steps as follows :

While the guidance takes this risk assessment approach, stress risk assessment is very different to other types of risk assessment and involves the use of 6 Management Standards. One for each of the 6 risk factors.

 

So what are these Standards?

The Standards basically provide a yardstick to measure the success and progress an organisation has in managing stress.

 

Rosemary with Hugh Robertson from the TUC

They also provide a means to help managers adopt good management practice.

While they are not new legislation they are intended to help employers meet their existing duties under Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and Management of Health and Safety at Work Regs 1999. The 6 standards are based on 6 of the 7 risk factors described in the original Manager’s Guide. Culture has been removed because this is now believed to be endemic in the other factors and improving these will automatically result in an improvement in culture.

Each Standard comprises a major platform statement about good management practice and represents a desirable state to be achieved. In addition to this each standard is accompanied by a number of additional sub- statements which explain what should be happening in the organisation if the standard is to be achieved.

Taking demands as an example, the standard is that:

	Employees 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

To achieve this standard the following sub statements describes what should be happening:

Measurement

The Standards have been developed basically to enable employers to work with employees and their representatives to continuously improve performance in tackling work-related stress.

To do this effectively organisations are required to determine their performance in each Standard and compare this with national data. The data represents a level of achievement reported by the 20% of workers in Britain with the most favourable working conditions. Data for the national average achievement is also available.

Once organisations a have determined how they compare with this they are then required to set their own aspirational targets for improvement. The eventual aim is to reach the level of the top 20% in each Standard.

In order to help organisations implement this Standards approach to tackling stress the HSE has also developed a new process which follows on from the original Managers Guide. While this is currently only web-based (www.hse.gov.uk/stress) plans are afoot to produce paper copies at a later date.

So what does the process involve?

Like the Managers Guide (HSG218) the new process adopts the 5 step risk assessment. Using the 5 steps it shows managers how to determine the cause of stress in the organisation, and how to produce action plans to work towards improvement.

Before the 5 stages are discussed the importance of gaining senior management commitment is emphasised as is the importance of all levels working together to find suitable solutions. The need for effective communication at all stages is also stressed.

Organisations are also advised to produce a Stress Management Policy The process then takes managers through each stage of risk assessment as follows:
:

Stage 1 - Identify the hazards

This basically involves all employees at all levels familiarising themselves with the Risk Factors and Management Standards so they are aware of causes of stress and what can generically be done to improve matters.

Stage 2 - Decide who may be harmed and how

This is a heavy weight stage and is the stage that many mistakenly describe alone as risk assessment. This is because it is the stage where employers need to identify causes of stress in the organisation. (NB It is important to be aware that all five stages together comprise the risk assessment and not just part 3).

First managers are expected to have an understanding of stress such that they need to recognise that the risk factors can affect people in different ways and acknowledge that stress has the potential to affect any member of staff. Stress should therefore, not be seen as a weakness, because under a certain set of circumstances stress can happen to anybody. It would therefore be helpful at this stage to ensure that staff has some kind of stress management awareness training to understand the concept and the psychological component of stress. Organisations are at this point also advised to accept that managers and employees need to “communicate with openness, honesty and trust.”

Once this is understood managers then need to identify the problem area in their organisation. To do this the HSE recommends managers use a variety of methods.

Quantitative data

Quantitative data such as staff absence figures and productivity data can be used to identify hot spots. Data from staff satisfaction surveys may also be very useful. However the HSE also suggest that organisations may like to use some kind of a stress survey. While this may be tailor made for a specific organisation or one of the many “off the peg “ surveys in existence, the HSE have produced a new generic survey available on the web site www.hse.gov.uk/stress

Qualitative data

In addition to quantitative data, the HSE also suggest that qualitative information may be used too. If an organisation has less than about 12 employees this is favourable as questionnaires with small numbers are unlikely to totally confidential. Quantitative data can be gained by running specific focus groups or, less formally via team meetings, appraisals, return to work interviews and exit interviews. Throughout, organisations are advised that combination of methods is the best approach.

The HSE survey

For those wishing to use the HSE survey, a questionnaire of 35 questions is provided together with advice on how to conduct the survey, choosing a significant sample size and a random sample and how best to run the survey ensuring high response rate. If the HSE survey is used, it can be automatically compared to the top 20% of organisations using best practice for each standard. Results of the survey are displayed as bar charts for each Standard alongside bar charts obtained for the national average and top 20%. However if organisations do not wish to use a quantitative survey, advice is also given how to convert qualitative data from a focus group into data which can also be compared to the national average and top 20% of organisations.

Whatever methods are chosen for step 2, the main issue is that the organisation must decide how they compare and, where performance is low, decide on realistic target for improvement. In other words they must decide on what level of achievement to aspire to. The final step in stage three is then to communicate the results to all levels of the organisation. The manager can then move on to step 4.
.

Stage 3 - Evaluate the risk and take action

Here managers need to work with the information they acquired in stage 2.

They need to provide feedback to staff by communicating the results obtained in step 2.

They also need to deal with any individual concerns that may arise.

They then need to work with staff to link problems with solutions. This can be done by discussing the results in staff team meetings or setting up focus groups representing all levels and areas of a department.

Step 4 - Record your findings

To do this managers should develop an action plan and in doing so should include senior management and employee representatives of all levels. A major requirement here again is communication. Writing an action plan enables managers to set goals to work towards, prioritise important issues and demonstrate to all that they are serious about addressing employees’ concerns. Action plans also provide something to evaluate and review against which is the final step. When writing an action plan the HSE advises it should include:

This then leads to the final stage.

Step 5 - Monitor and review. Evaluate Effectiveness.

This stage is often forgotten but is still a major part of the 5 step risk assessment process. If stress management is to be successful it is important that progress is monitored and reviewed. This can be done using the action plan to ensure all actions have been satisfactorily undertaken. In doing this the effectiveness of the actions taken can be evaluated and any necessary changes made. Again at this final stage the HSE emphasise the need to update senior managers and employees on progress and provide them with the opportunity for feedback.

Unlike many government initiatives, this risk assessment approach is NOT an enforcement-led approach. As the Standards approach is based on good management practice where the workforce is shifted from an “undesirable state” to a “desirable state” the HSE hope that organisations will see the benefit of adopting it and want to work towards continuous improvement.

MOVING FORWARD

 

For further assistance please contact us.