Guidance: what you need to know
In our second article on workplace stress, we look in
more detail about what stress is...
Workplace stress: what is it and is it good for
you?
Headlines
- While work is basically good for us, excessive demands can
create stress
- An employer has a duty to avoid damage to an employee’s mental
health just as they have to avoid harm to physical health
- Recent compensation payouts for stress have reached over
£100,000
- Four out of ten senior HR professionals in the private sector,
and five out of ten in the public sector, singled out
stress as the main workforce health concern.
Introduction
In the Monday 3 August issue of Connect, “Good
practice: managing workplace stress”, we looked at how to use
the HSE management standards in a risk assessment to manage stress
in the workplace.
In this article, we define stress, look at its signs and
symptoms and consider what can be learnt about managing workplace
stress from legal cases.
What is stress?
The HSE defines work-related stress as “the adverse reaction
people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed
on them at work.” What is considered as excessive will vary for
each individual. For example, one may enjoy throwing themselves
into a new project, learning new skills and taking on more complex
tasks. Another may find this complexity stressful, and yet be able
to cope with repetitive, familiar work which the first person would
have found stressful.
What are the signs and symptoms of stress?
The HSE provides a list of signs
and symptoms of stress, which fall into three categories:
- Emotional symptoms such as anger, loss of motivation,
tearfulness and low self esteem
- Mental symptoms such as poor memory, inability to plan and
confusion
- Changes in behaviour including eating more or less, smoking
more and nail biting.
Signs of stress in a group are also given, including increases
in staff turnover, increased sickness absence and customer
complaints.
The physical signs of stress aren’t mentioned in this list, and
are only briefly mentioned by the HSE. A more detailed
list is available
at which includes high blood pressure, nausea, headache and sleep
disturbance.
Is stress good for you?
Some people will tell you that stress is good for you. What they
usually mean is that some pressure is good for you. Using the HSE
definition, stress is the reaction to the pressure, so it’s more
accurate to say that mild pressure is good for you – it can
motivate and energise. But too much can result in stress. This is
illustrated
by the following diagram.
Tasks where high vigilance is required for long periods of time
with little else to do (such as security jobs watching CCTV) often
result in poor performance – people miss the activity they’re
supposed to spot because they are so bored they aren’t performing
any more. This should be considered by managers as a form of
stress.
At the other extreme, when there’s too much pressure, for
example because a task is too complex for an individual, or there’s
simply too much to do, performance suffers, less is achieved and a
person suffers stress.
How much pressure is too much?
It’s obvious to say that different people cope in different
ways, and yet much that’s written about stress talks about it as if
there is a given level of pressure that people can take. The
factors that influence an individual’s response to pressure
include:
Ability – has the person the aptitude and the
training needed for the task they’re doing? As a simple example,
ask someone familiar with Excel to produce a simple graph showing
sales across three product lines for the week, and they can
complete the task in five minutes. Ask someone without the skills,
and it could take over an hour, and still not be completed
correctly. The first person will have the same workload, but no
stress; the second person could be very stressed.
Personal circumstances – are there pressures at
home that are creating stress, and making it more difficult for the
person to cope at work?
Support – employees will cope better with work
pressure if they feel supported by colleagues and management, and
know there’s a way of reducing the pressure if it gets too
much.
Health – pre-existing health conditions such as
hypertension (high blood pressure), heart conditions or existing
mental health problems may affect an individual’s ability to cope
with work pressure.
Your responsibility – learning from others’ mistakes
One of the deciding factors in legal cases on stress has been
whether the employer could have reasonably foreseen circumstances
leading to the damage to an employee’s mental health.
Organisations should therefore take note of reasons given in
sick notes for absences, as well as any conversations or emails
where staff mention they are feeling overworked or under pressure.
It’s the patchwork of such small evidence that can turn a case for
compensation.
As an example, take the case of school teacher Mr Barber who
first won his case – then lost when the employer took the case to
the Court of Appeal but was finally compensated following a
judgment
from the House of Lords. Line managers and supervisors at all
levels need to be aware of the signs of stress, and need to know
who to contact for advice if they believe an employee may have a
stress-related problem.
The second point is how an organisation fulfils its duty of
care. The 2002 Court of Appeal judgment on
the case of Mrs Hatton led some employers to believe that provision
of a work-based counselling service would be defence against a
claim for compensation for stress. However, counselling should be
seen as a means of identifying stress, not the solution to it. In
2007 the
Court of Appeal decided that Intel’s compensation payment of
over £134,000 would have to be paid, because although they had
provided counselling to an overworked employee, they had done
nothing to deal with the actual problem – too many and
conflicting demands.
Yet in 2008, the Court of
Appeal had to take O2 to task on a similar issue, where the
company had cited their counselling service as defence against the
charge of breach of duty of care.
Confidential counselling can identify whether an individual is
vulnerable, but it’s clear from the Intel and O2 judgements that it
must be backed up with a process for considering the task and the
person. It’s not a defence to show that the same workload was not
stressful for other people. For example, in the
case of a police officer with high blood pressure, the Court of
Appeal found that his pre-existing health condition should have
been considered.
Links
HSE
Safety & Health Practitioner November 2007
Emplaw, February 2005