To coincide with International Stress Awareness Week, Alex Minett, Head of Products & Markets at CHAS, offers seven tips for managing workplace stress.
Workplace stress can lead to poor health, lower productivity and increased accident and sickness absence rates if not properly managed.
Stress – the body’s response or reaction to excessive or prolonged pressures – can cause a range of mental and physical ill health conditions or trigger pre-existing conditions, including depression and anxiety, back and shoulder problems, heart disease and some cancers.
In 2019-2020, 17.9 million working days were lost to work-related stress, depression or anxiety, accounting for 51% of all work-related ill health cases and 55% of all working days lost due to ill health, according to the latest HSE statistics (2).
The rate of work-related stress, depression and anxiety has also shown signs of increasing in recent years and this has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with employees juggling work with personal demands while adapting to home working. But there are a number of ways we can reverse this trend by tackling the source of the issues within our own workplaces.
1) Carry out a stress risk assessment to help you identify problem areas and the steps that should be taken to control them. Gather data to help identify issues including rates of sickness absence, how much sickness was due to stress and anxiety, staff turnover, employee relations, and grievance and disciplinary issues. As stress is considered a hazard, employers have a legal duty to protect their employees from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. HSE has a risk assessment template available at: www.hse.gov.uk/stress/risk-assessment.htm. HSE’s stress management standards (https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/wbk01.pdf) can also help to simplify this process by identifying and managing six areas of work design that can affect stress levels: demands, control, support, relationships, role and change.
2) Work together to decide what actions to take to achieve the steps you have outlined. As stress is often a symptom of poor employment relations, managers should take all employees’ opinions into consideration. These ideas can be used to help form the basis of a company policy that informs employees of what to do should they feel stressed at work, or if they are experiencing mental ill health. Ideas can be shared through attitude surveys, specific stress-related audits or focus groups, discussion groups, action planning meetings, and/or one-to-ones.
3) Set up a wellness programme if you want to provide extra resources and support, and appoint a steering group to lead the process. Involving everyone in the organisation, from senior management to front-line staff, should make implementing the programme easier. Consider bringing an independent adviser such as a psychologist into your discussion groups so they can act as the facilitator and create a non-judgemental environment to encourage people to contribute. Ensuring that the expertise of staff is valued will also result in greater ownership of any changes that are implemented.
4) Communicate regularly with employees to ensure they’re being challenged but not overloaded with work. Provide support if they are experiencing unreasonable work demands to avoid the risk of burnout, stress and anxiety. Reminding staff to take regular short breaks can help them to recharge and refocus, while offering flexible working hours can help to maintain a work/life balance, thereby improving productivity and morale and reducing the risk of work injuries. Excessive workloads may not be as easy to identify among remote workers, so organise catch-ups by phone or video call to keep regular channels of communication open. Encouraging all employees to regularly talk to their co-workers can provide support in the form of a team atmosphere to help them better manage stress. Keeping employees in the loop about any changes taking place at the company will also build trust and help to minimise any uncertainty surrounding job security which can lead to stress.
5) Make access to independent advice and support available. Confidential employee assistance/counselling services or appointing existing employees as dedicated Mental Health Champions to provide peer support can be useful if someone has a problem they cannot discuss with their manager. Likewise, you could also assign a certain employee or group of employees the task of making the workplace safe, comfortable, and ergonomically correct. They can collect grievances and find solutions to valid complaints that other employees may be reluctant to discuss directly with their superiors.
6) Offer training and education to all levels of staff that promote wellbeing and resilience in the workplace. The first line of defence against job-related stress should be modifying the work environment. Educating employees on the symptoms, causes and treatments for stress can also be beneficial. Management can learn how to recognise stress in those they work with and what they can do to prevent it from becoming a problem by taking a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) course, for example. Employees can be given tools and techniques to help them identify their own issues and deal with them. Goals can also be set for wellbeing improvement. Recognise and praise the completion of training where possible, and regularly assess the training programmes by asking those who have taken part for their input.
7) Create a positive culture that removes the stigma associated with mental health issues and encourages early reporting and therefore intervention. Incorporating mental health into HR policies and procedures, and into core training as described in the previous points, will help to achieve this. But also think about making literature available in the workplace or on the intranet, putting up posters/infographics and hosting fun and informative virtual or live events to raise awareness as part of your wellness programme. Undertaking physical activity is also one of the best ways to reduce stress, so why not organise a walking club at lunch time or a competitive steps challenge to encourage employees to use the stairs and not the lift?s for mana
Find out how CHAS can help ensure health & safety issues, including workplace stress, are taken seriously throughout your supply chain by calling CHAS today on 0345 521 9111 or by visiting www.chas.co.uk
