An NHS hospital may face court action after being accused of failing to protect doctors and nurses from stress at work.
West Dorset Hospitals NHS Trust is required to assess and reduce stress levels among its staff, after being issued with an “enforcement notice” by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). If it fails to do this by December, it faces court action and unlimited fines under the Health and Safety at Work Act.
According to a survey by Unum, an income protection insurer, the number of claims made due to stress and mental illness has risen by 88% in seven years.
TUC research published today suggests that workers exposed to stress for at least half their working lives are 25% more likely to die from a heart attack and are twice as likely to suffer a fatal stroke.
US stress researcher, Paul Landsbergis, said that it is manual workers, not executives, that are at greatest risk from stress-related illness: “Blue-collar workers are particularly at risk to heart disease due to high blood pressure, which is linked with excessive overtime, night shifts, and work with high psychological pressures and low rewards.”
The HSE has published draft Management Standards for stress and a draft process for piloting these in your organisation. Click here for further information.
9 Responses
clarification for Robert
Yes confidential in terms of data collected from individuals. The results however are shared with the organisation to consider whether or not they need to get in a professional third party to train etc.
As Robert said though many larger organisations have wonderful well resourced and professionally run H.R. departments, training departments and good occupational health departments.
The reason why it may make sense for a third party company to conduct the risk assessment and analysis is due to independence which gives both employer and employee more confidence in the process, the response is greater and the time to conduct such an assessment internally often means that the data produced is quite out of date as it often can take the larger organisations ( 5000 + employees) months and some I have helped (City Councils, Police Constabularies, Colleges,NHS Trusts) years.
Companies such as Clarion carry out these assessments in less than 30 days. Could I also mention that any materials used for such exercise should be validated to ensure compliance both legally and ethically!
David Hughes is right…
David is right, an initial risk assesment is critical. My company does not do these, we provide just the stress prevention training as I feel that a risk assessment should be largely an internal operation – because of internally held knowledge of the organisation, whereas the training should be external so to maximise the benefit of using an expert in stress training. Obviously risk assessment also needs expert skills but many large organisations do have that capability already because of other H&S issues.
One thing that David says that I would like clarified – is that he said “the assessment should be confidential” I assume he means the fact-finding and the statements of people – the results should obviously (I believe) be made known to everybody in the organisation.
All the best.
Robert.
Risk Assessment has to be the answer.
In our experience many organisations want to address this issue but don’t exactly know where to start. Often the work involved can add even more stress onto an organisation. A fully comprehensive risk assessment can be the only answer. Remember that the assessment should be confidential and have the co-operation of unions etc, in order for greater success. Stress is the work place is not going to go away and there are validated, practical and cost effective solutions out there, whether you have 20 staff or 20,000.
Define terms
When we refer to stress we do not use the term to cover all aspects of pressure we use it in a strict legal context.
In the workplace stress may have a number of levels but in employee claims it is defined legally as ‘pressure over time which results in a psychiatric injury causing temporary or permanent incapacity’.
GP involvement is rarely a single option, by the time employees seek medical advice from their GP they may have advanced symptoms of illness and require multi- faceted treatment.
Much more clarity on mental health is required in the workplace before this epidemic will resolve.
Those clients we advise on potential claims want in the main to be restored to physical and mental fitness not a money claim. The majority of the callers to our helpline are professional people who cannot undertake any work such is the severity of symptoms.
Lime One Ltd
http://www.limeone.com
0870 240 4325
Stress
“Stress” is an over-used, vague and rather unhelpful concept. If your people are unhappy at work you want to know WHY so that you can take specific action to deal with it. Not only to comply with the law, but because you respect your people and know it will improve the performance of your organisation.
Feedback obtained from managers and other employees under conditions of strict confidence can nearly always pinpoint the causes of difficulties that people have at work. And give a clear indication of what’s needed to to remedy the situation. Armed with this information, you can be seen by your people to be taking positive steps to remove difficulties they may be having. You will also be able to help people find solutions to their problems in the workplace itself rather than use a visit to their GP as an escape route.
Peter Burton [email protected]
Stress
It is certainly an emotive issue and one that a lot of companies are ill prepared for. It does not surprise me at all that the NHS have a problem with this area.
We started a help line for stress at work legal advice and the main occupation areas yielding the most callers so far have been NHS, Academic institutions and Social Services departments.
It seems to be an issue of poor management structures as well as unsupportive working practices.
The costs are high if employee loss is because of stress so it seems to make much better sense to improve the working conditions
( sometimes requiring small adjustments)to alleviate stress.
Poor communications and ignorance of current legislation coupled with continual change is often the root cause of employee stress.
Lime One Ltd
http://www.limeone.com
0870 240 4325
No easy task to develop a practical process
The HSE’s latest move places a significant burden on employers. It is no easy task to develop a practical process to assess workplace stress, which is why the HSE has taken so long to issue guidance on the matter.
Stress assessments often miss the target as the temptation is to focus on individuals rather than the causes of stress like work conditions, procedures and management methods. The whole process can become very subjective and emotive.
A real danger is that employers undertake an isolated stress audit and identify problems but not solutions. Raising employee awareness of workplace stress without the resources to take corrective action is likely to stoke the fire and cause employee relation problems.
A risk assessment approach that considers organisational stressors, exposure to risk and appropriate control methods is likely to be most effective. But, to turn rhetoric into reality, employers must have the resources to follow up with proactive measures and remedial support mechanisms.
Solutions are never easy as problems are usually related to organisational culture, operational pressures and management. Added to the fact that employers are working with ever tighter budgets, it is easy to understand why stress remains in the too difficult tray for many companies.
Stress is now the main or second largest cause of long-term sickness absence for most UK employers. On the plus side, any measures with real impact will provide an immediate and significant payback.
Christine Owen, Head of Health Management Consulting at Mercer Human Resource Consulting.
Good employers have nothing to fear from the HSE
As a stress management consultant I welcome the actions of the HSE. Apart from the fact that my phone has been ringing all week- (Who needs to advertise when the HSE is on your side?) this is a positive step to bring stress to the attention of employers before the Management Standards are introduced next year.
Quite simple the vast majority of stress at work is avoidable by good proactive interventions by managers. Good employers should have nothing to fear from the HSE.
Employers need to recognise that they have a primary legal duty to prevent and reduce the effects of stress in the workplace. They can do this by instituting straightforward stress policies which will provide a framework to tackle pressure in their staff before it causes stress and thus they can avoid the associated costs of stress related absences and staff turnover. A good policy will outline the responsibilities of the employee as well as those of the management, employees also have a responsibility in this area just as in any other health and safety hazard. It is not about a blame culture but about working together with employees to tackle the causes of stress.
Mixed Views
As a provider of stress management training I have mixed views on the HSE action…
On one hand it sends out a strong signal to employers that they should not shirk their legal duties to protect the health and safety of staff. On the other hand, it seems to reinforce the trend (downward spiral?) towards a ‘blame culture’ where people do not take responsibility for their individual actions. A lack of ability (or sometimes training) in the area of taking responsibility is a constituent factor which increases stress.
I hope that the overall effect is a positive one. Being silly (I hope) – Could the management of the NHS Trust sue the HSE for causing them stress???