Following up from blog regarding my own personal experience of stress, I feel I need you give you some food for thought on how you can improve your management of stress at work and be confident to apply the HSE's Management Standards.

The Risk Assessment Process

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 puts a legal duty on employers to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of reasonably foreseeable risks, and to put in place controls to eliminate or reduce those risks so far as is reasonably practicable. A risk assessment is a careful examination of anything in your workplace that could cause harm or illhealth. Don't complicate the process and try to reinvent the wheel. The HSE's five steps to risk assessment is straightforward:

• Identify the hazard - something with the potential to cause harm.
• Estimate the risk - consider who can be harmed and how? What is the likelihood of that happening and what would be the potential consequence if it should happen.
• Evaluate the risk - consider, have I done everything I need to do to keep my people safe or do I need to put in further controls?
• Record your findings - if you have five or more employees you must have your risk assessments in writing. But even if you have a small team, it is good practice to have a written record.
• Review - again a legal requirement - but this keeps us on our toes, because we are always trying to improve.

The Health and Safety Executive have given you a very simple hierarchy of control to apply to your identified hazards. There are complicated ones, but let's keep it simple.

• Eliminate
• Reduce
• Prevent Contact
• Safe Systems of Work
• PPE

Okay, let's apply the above to the HSE's Management Standards Guidance: 

Demands 

• The organisation provides employees with adequate and achievable demands in relation to the agreed hours of work.
• Peoples skills and abilities are matched to the job demands.
• Jobs are designed to be within the capabilities of employees.
• Employees’ concerns about their work environment are addressed.

Control

• Where possible, employees have control over their pace of work, e.g. have a say over when breaks can be taking.
• Employees are encouraged to use their skills and initiative to do their work
• Where possible, employees are encouraged to develop new skills to help them undertake new and challenging pieces of work.
• The organisation encourages employees to develop their skills.
• Employees are consulted over their work patterns.
   

Support

• The organisation has policies and procedures to adequately support employees.
• Systems are in place to enable and encourage managers to support their staff.
• Systems are in place to enable and encourage employees to support their colleagues.
• Employees know what support is available and how to access it.
• Employees know how to access the required resources to do their job.
• Employees receive regular and constructive feedback.

Relationships

• The organisation promotes positive behaviours at work to avoid conflict and ensure fairness.
• Employees share information relevant to their work.
• The organisation has agreed policies and procedures to prevent or resolve unacceptable behaviour.
• Systems are in place to enable and encourage managers to deal with unacceptable behaviour.
• Systems are in place to enable and encourage employees to report unacceptable behaviour.

Role

• The organisation ensures that, as far as possible the different requirements it places upon employees is compatible.
• The organisation provides information to enable employees to understand their role and responsibilities.
• The organisation ensures that, as far as possible, the requirements it places upon employees is clear.
• Systems are in place to enable employees to raise concerns about any uncertainties or conflicts they have in their role and responsibilities.

Change

• The organisation provides employees with timely information to enable them to understand the reasons for proposed changes.
• The organisation ensures adequate employee consultation on changes and provides opportunities for employees to influence proposals.
• Employees are aware of the probable impact of any changes to their jobs and the timetables for changes and know how to access support.
• If required, employees are given training to support any changes in their jobs.

Is this what your organisations provides? If not, carry out a risk assessment and plan to improve your management of work related stress. Take it one step at a time and address each of the six factors.

Let's apply this process to two of the scenarios used in the blog: "Stress Was The Trigger That Set Off A Catastrophic Physical Reaction"

Scenario One

Imagine working in an organisation where psychological safety was nurtured and valued. You worked effectively with the team and on your own iniatitive and thrived both professionally and personally. Then a family member was brought into the business and your psychologically safe place of work became toxic. The role you played in the business was threatened and lines blurred, and instead of feeling happy to be at work, anxiety became a constant companion. You found it hard to get to sleep at night and woke up early morning with a feeling of dread. What would you do?  Would you resign or internalise the anxiety and be unhappy?  This is where change was forced upon you and there was nothing you could do about it.  I would consider this a major stressor that would have the potential to cause mental harm.

The workplace situation was that a new employee, who was a family member of the Managing Director was being added to the team. The potential hazard would be perhaps, this might upset the working dynamics of the team, or a member of the team may feel that they were being pushed out. It might also be that members of the team who loved the tasks they performed well, lost some of those and felt less valued and useful.  If the risk assessment process was put in place, the story might have a different ending and a lot of work related distress could have been avoided.

Identify the hazard - Introducing a new employee who was a family member.

Estimate the risk - Who could be harmed and how? Any member of the team who felt vulnerable to the changes and also the new employee might not feel as welcome as he/she should be.. What would be the likelihood of harm and potential consequence? The new employee may feel anxious due to perhaps an atmosphere of distrust and unfairness. The team may feel worried about how it would effect them going forward. (should any member of the team have any additional stressors, this would leave them extremely vulnerable to harm). This could result in any member of the team suffering from stress, anxiety or depression. With more than half of the people absent from work in the UK being due to this reason, there is a high risk this could have been the outcome.

Evaluate the risk - Consider if that is an acceptable risk. If not, apply the hierarchy of risk control to eliminate or reduce the risk so far as is reasonably practicable. An experienced manager should communicate with the team with empathy to mitigate any serious consequences.

Record the findings - Apart from  the legal requirement, having this written down provides a record of considerations and solutions.

Review - An opportunity to reflect on how this was managed and the outcome of the problem.

This manager would have fully met the requirement to reduce the risk 'so far as is reasonably practicable' and perhaps this employee might not have decided to resign. It's their decision, however it would not be due to poor management decisions.

Scenario Two

Another situation that could occur is that you would be promoted from being 'on the tools' to a managerial position. You were an exemplary operative and knew the workplace inside out and indeed were very familiar with all of the team. But you have no formal management training and don't want to let the boss think you are not up to the job. Do you speak to your manager and explain that you would require some training?  Do you say nothing and internalise your anxiety and insecurity and increase the risk of you suffering from the harmful effects of stress?  Here again is a potential major stressor that could cause mental ill-health, not just for you, but your team who you might be taking your frustration and unhappiness.

Applying the risk assessment process in this case would be more straight forward than the first scenario, nobody said it would be easy!

Identifying the hazard - The managerial inexperience of the newly promoted operative could have resulted in him feeling inadequate and his team not giving him the respect he deserved.

Estimate the risk - This is highly likely and easily sorted, this person will be sent to a good managerial course, have the support of senior management and subject to constructive feedback and mentoring.

Evaluate the risk - I feel that this is an excellent plan and with the support and mentoring, all should be good

Record your findings - A record of considerations and solutions that can be applied to other areas of the business.

Review - Subject to active review by management so that any problems can be mitigated without anyone suffering from the harmdul effects of stress.

The manager would have reduced the risk by providing effective training for the new position and also had a safe system of work by having a monitoring and mentoring strategy in place.

Managing stress at work is challenging, however the rewards to people and to organisations are numerous, if you would like to reduce the risk of people being harmed by stress in your workplace and don't know where to start, then give me a call. I am dedicated to tackling work related stress head-on.