Excellent! Your
organisation is to be congratulated for being in the forefront of tackling the
problem of stress in the workplace. Most employers in the United Kingdom are not
taking stress as seriously as yourselves. Your answers indicate that stress is
being addressed in your organisation at each of the three intervention levels,
Primary
, Secondary, and Tertiary as outlined on our Corporate
Strategy page.
If you have not already
done so, could we suggest you consider the following questions and our
comments. The answers to these, in our experience, usually help employers
to find the most appropriate route forward to (a) meet their legal
obligations and (b) reap the full benefits of reducing stress in the workplace.
Do
you have a Stress Management Policy in place?
A
comprehensive Stress Management Policy demonstrates that an organisation is
committed to meeting its legal requirements in respect of work related stress.
Have
you carried out a stress survey or stress audit?
Our
experience shows that this type of risk assessment plays an important role in
many organisations by establishing a reliable baseline for future monitoring of
the situation.
Was
your stress survey carried out by an external independent auditor?
Staff need to feel that
their responses will be treated in strictest confidence with no possibility of
them being identified otherwise the validity and/or truthfulness of their
answers is seriously prejudiced. Surveys or audits carried out by an
external provider usually produce more reliable results as employees are more
confident about responding frankly with less chance of their superiors seeing
their response.
Has
the survey been repeated or are there any plans to do so?
It is clearly vital to
monitor the effectiveness of any actions that have been taken following the
recommendations of your first survey. For example, do you know how
successful your Stress Management Training programme has been in reducing stress?
The
HSE recommends that you must review your assessment whenever there is reason to
think it is no longer valid.
Have
there been significant organisational changes recently?
If
changes have been taking place or are planned, it is important to obtain an up
to date assessment of what the staff's reaction to these are... Do
they feel under more pressure? Do they need more support?
Are
your managers receiving training that includes such subject
areas as the proactive approach to stress, their legal obligations, how to
recognise that a staff member is experiencing stress, and how to deal with the
situation?
A
large amount of stress training has, in the main, concentrated purely
on what an individual can do to counteract the effects of individual stress.
It is now felt that both individual and corporate issues at all levels of
an organisation must be taken into account and where possible the benefits of a
preventative element emphasised.
These
are only a few comments to help you consider whether the health of your
organisation and its employees could be further improved. If you would like more
information about how Stress In Perspective can help you achieve this please
click here to Contact
us . We look forward to
being of assistance
Thank you for taking
the StressWatch test.
We hope it has been interesting and helpful.
