Should a Stress Risk Assessment be carried out?

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Should a Stress Risk Assessment be carried out?

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Published in resilience, stress, health, wellbeing · Wednesday 30 Aug 2023
Tags: stressstressriskassessmentmentalhealthburnout
Work-related stress is a challenge to the health and safety of employees and to the health of their organisations. Employers should have a Stress Policy or a policy which includes work-related stress. There should be organisational level strategies to prevent and manage stress?

By applying a risk management approach, stress can be managed effectively. A risk management approach assesses the potential risks in the working environment when existing hazards could cause harm to employees. A hazard is an event or situation that potentially could cause harm.  

The risk assessment process does not happen once but is a continuing process which needs to be reviewed, either at specific time periods or when a change in the workplace takes place.

A risk assessment is the first step to successful risk management. A risk assessment will identify preventive measures which need to be taken in order of priority, and employees should be part of the process. Employees will have a different perspective and bring knowledge of what works and what does not work within their workplace.

Whether you have a small team or a larger team, and you would like to find out how they are getting on as far as stress, their mental health and potentially burnout then it would be very useful to ask each of them either to complete a short questionnaire or ask them questions around the six Management Standards or psychosocial hazards.

Some examples of the questions you could ask individually either by video or phone call could be:

·         Demands – do you feel you have too much or too little to do? Is your home workspace suitable to work in?

 
·         Control – are you able to work the hours you usually do, or would you prefer more flexible hours to meet your current                                                                  responsibilities?

·         Support – are you getting enough support from your manager and work colleagues?

·         Change – how are you coping with working from home or hybrid working?

·         Relationships – do you speak often enough with work colleagues and your manager/team leader?

·         Role – do you have a clear work plan since working from home?

Once you have collated the results, you could complete a Stress Risk Assessment with an action plan. This will ensure that you have a clear plan with timescales going forward. It is essential that you plan and prepare for the future as there could be major challenges to deal with due to many issues at work including higher levels of sickness absence and presenteeism, stress, and burnout.

Please get in touch here if you would like more information around support to carry out a Stress Risk Assessment and if you would like to have an informal chat on the phone.


Updated from 15/02/2021


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