By law, every organisation should be compliant with The Health & Safety Act 1974, which means that unless you can provide evidence your staff are not impacted by stress at work, a stress risk assessment is necessary.
How do you create a risk assessment for stress?
- Understand the risk factors. Engage your staff and listen to what they have to say about workload pressure, roles & responsibilities, department structures, communication, policies etc. Anything that might be a cause of stress.
- Collate the information into the six risk factors (see hse.gov.uk) and establish who might be at risk. Remember that every individual is different and stress impacts in different ways. It is not a one size fits all process and may take some time to get right.
- Document what controls are already in place to mitigate the risk of stress in each risk area.
- Document what further actions may be necessary
- Ensure there is ownership of each risk factor and actions plans to carry out changes.
- Communicate to your staff
- Ensure the assessment is reviewed and updated as necessary
The toughest part is making sure this becomes a live and important part of working culture in your organisation and not a tick box exercise.
The cost of absence is on average £554 per employee per annum (CIPD.co.uk) but this number varies dependign on where you look, some suggest it’s as high as £1,000 per employee per annum. Although absence through stress is at an all-time high (57% of all work-related absence) it’s not the true figure. Having a common cold would not be classed as a stress related absence, however stress lowers the immune system and puts individuals at higher risk of catching common viruses. Migraines are another reason for absence commonly linked with stress.
Having a risk assessment gives you the power to address issues that are not only contributing to absence, but also poor productivity otherwise known as presenteeism.
