Your legal duties as an employer

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) states that stress should be regarded the same as any other health risk which employees may be exposed to at work. As an employer you have a duty under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999:

• To assess the risk of stress-related ill health arising from work activities.
• Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974:
• To take measures to control that risk.

In November 2004 HSE launced their Management Standards for Stress. These are not new laws, but are intended to encourage you and your employees to manage the issue of work-related stress and to meet these existing legal obligations, in addition to meeting the targets that have been set. These include:

• reducing the incidence of stress by 8% by the end of 2007/8 financial year.
• a 20% reduction in the incidence of work-related ill health by 2010.
• a 30% reduction in the number of work days lost due to work-related ill health by 2010.

As part of the HSE standards it is expected that as an employer, with a duty of care for your staff, you will work to address work-related stress throughout your organisation and support your staff in addressing and managing their stress. If a problem of work-related stress is identified, action must be taken to prevent, eliminate or reduce it.

Why do you need to tackle stress?

HSE commissioned research has indicated that:

• about half a million people in the UK experience work-related stress at a level they believe is making them ill;
• up to 5 million people in the UK feel "very or extremely stressed by their work; and a total of 12.8 million working days were lost to stress, depression and anxiety in 2004/5.
• work-related stress is a major cause of sickness absence, high staff turnover and poor performance.
• work-related stress is a serious problem, but there are simple, effective ways of­ preventing and controlling it that can result in significant benefits for individuals and organisations.

What are the benefits to your organisation from tackling stress?

HSE states that research has shown work-related stress to have adverse effects for organisations in terms of:

• Employee commitment to work
• Staff performance and productivity
• Staff turnover and intention to leave
• High absenteeism
• Staff recruitment and retention
• Interpersonal conflicts
• Customer satisfaction
• Organisational image and reputation
• Potential litigation

Work-related stress could have an impact on your unit or team. For example, if one colleague is on sick leave with a stress-related illness this can have a dramatic impact on the workload and morale of the rest of the team. There is also convincing evidence that prolonged periods of stress, including work-related stress, have an adverse effect on health. Research provides strong links between stress and physical effects such as heart disease, headaches and gastrointestinal disturbances, psychological effects such as anxiety, irritability and depression. Stress may also lead to other behaviours that are harmful to health, such as skipping meals, drinking too much caffeine or alcohol, or smoking.