Stress

This page gives advice on the causes of stress in the workplace and good practices for avoiding and dealing with its effects.

You will also find details of legal duties and obligations relating to work related stress and links to further information.

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Good practices:

What is stress?

The Health and Safety Executive defines stress as "the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on them".

There is a difference between stress and pressure. We can all experience pressure on a daily basis, and in fact we need it to motivate us and enable us to perform at our best. It is when we experience too much pressure, without the opportunity to recover, that we start to experience stress.

Everyone can feel stressed, when we feel as if everything becomes too much to handle, or when things get on top of us and we feel we are unable to cope with the demands placed on us, both at home and at work.

Stress can affect different people in different ways and is often a result of a combination of factors both in our work life and our personal life.

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Why is stress a workplace issue?

All employees within an organisation can be vulnerable to stress depending on the pressure they are under at any given time.

Stress can be caused by work as well as by personal issues and problems outside the workplace (e.g. financial or domestic worries). Whatever the cause, stress can leave employees feeling unable to cope with the pressures of work with the result that performance at work suffers.

A recent study has indicated that:

  • Work related mental health problems, including stress, accounted for 9.8 million working days lost.
  • It is estimated that the total cost of mental health related sickness absence in Scotland amounted to around £690 milllion.
  • Employees in large workplaces lost on average 0.57 days per worker due to work related stress, in medium sized organisations 0.54 days per worker and in small workplaces, 0.3 days per worker.
  • On average every person suffering from work related stress took 27 days off work.

Research has also shown that work related stress can have adverse effects for organisations in terms of:

  • employee commitment to work
  • staff performance and productivity
  • staff turnover and intention to leave
  • attendance levels
  • staff recruitment and retention
  • customer satisfaction
  • organisational image and reputation
  • potential litigation.

More than half of the Scottish workforce is employed by a small or medium sized enterprises. The impact that work related stress has on small units or teams can be more marked than in larger organisations. For example, losing just one colleague for an extended period with a stress related illness can have a dramatic impact on the workload and morale of the rest of the team.

There is now convincing evidence that prolonged periods of stress, including work related stress, have an adverse effect on physical and mental health and well-being.

Stress can also lead to behaviours that are harmful to health, such as skipping meals, drinking too much caffeine or alcohol, or smoking.

Mental and physical ill health represent personal losses to individuals and costs to organisations, whether through sick pay for those who are absent from work or by poor performance from those who attend work.

By taking action to tackle the causes of stress in your workplace, you can prevent or reduce the impact of these problems on your organisation.

Successful programmes of workplace stress management have seen a marked reduction in sickness absence and staff turnover – good news for employer and employee alike.

Staff morale improves, people feel valued and the overall result is a healthier and safer working environment.

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Legal duties and obligations around stress

HSE Management Standards for Work-Related Stress
These standards from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are intended to meet the existing legal obligations under health and safety legislation.

Although the Standards contain no new laws, Enforcing Authorities have the power to act against employers who do not take steps to reach the Management Standards.

Employers have a duty to ensure that risks arising from work activity are properly controlled. The Management Standards approach helps employers work with their employees and representatives to undertake a risk assessment for stress.

HSE expects organisations to carry out a suitable and sufficient risk assessment for stress, and to take action to tackle any problems identified by that risk assessment. The recommended stress risk assessment from Healthy Working Lives is Work Positive.

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Management Standards for Tackling Work-related Stress

Visit the HSE's Management Standards for Tackling Work Related Stress website (external site)

Aims of the Standards
The standards and supporting processes are designed to:

  • help simplify the risk assessment for stress
  • encourage employers, employees and their representatives to work in partnership to address work related stress throughout the organisation
  • provide the yardstick by which organisations can gauge their performance in tackling the key causes of stress.

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The Six Key Areas of Work Design

The Management Standards cover six key areas of work design that, if not properly managed, are associated with poor health and wellbeing, lower productivity and increased sickness absence. In other words, the six Management Standards cover the primary sources of stress at work.

These are:

  • Demands - such as workload, work patterns, work environment and training.
  • Control - such as how much say the individual has in the way they do their work.
  • Support - such as the encouragement, sponsorship and resources provided by the organisation, line management and colleagues. This can also include work life balance.
  • Relationships - such as promoting positive working to avoid conflict and dealing with unacceptable behaviour.
  • Role - such as whether people understand their role within the organisation and whether the organisation ensures that they do not have conflicting roles.
  • Change - such as how organisational change, large or small, is managed and communicated within the organisation.

Stress Audits

Carrying out a stress audit is one of the best ways to find out if stress if a problem within your workplace. A stress audit involves talking to staff, either individually or in groups, to find out where there may be problems.

Work Positive

When managing safety and health in the workplace it can be useful to get feedback from staff on their health needs and risks to safety and health at work. This resource is designed to support workplaces to do this using evidence based surveys. By using this survey manager you are also helping to create population wide trends which:

Provides employers with useful benchmark data so they can compare their workplace with others of similar size or sector, and

Provides the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives with useful information about the most common health needs and risks at work so that we can continue to support employers and employees across Scotland to reduce risks and improve the health of our nation. We do this by providing advice, practical tools and services to employers across Scotland.

Work Positive Survey

Five steps to Risk Assessment INDG163.

  • It is one of HSE's recommended stress risk assessments.
  • It incorporates the HSE Stress Indicator Tool (first 35 questions in the Work Positive survey) to allow you to benchmark your results against data held by HSE.
  • You can compare your results against other workplaces of similar sector and size.
  • It includes monitoring questions that provide baseline data on the impact of pressure at work in your workplace (for example impact on sickness absence, morale and performance).
  • You can set up the survey to provide results for your whole workplace as well as results for individual departments, locations and/or roles. This allows you to identify hotspots and target your resources where they are most needed.
  • Support to carry out the risk management process can be provided by your local Healthy Working Lives Adviser. You can also access free Work Positive stress risk management training courses to help you to plan and implement the process.

Click here for the Work Positive Stress Audit Tool link http://surveys.healthyworkinglives.com/.

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Good practices around occupational stress

Employers can manage stress in the workplace by taking steps to reduce the risk of their employees experiencing stress in the first place and by supporting those who do encounter stress.

Meanwhile, individuals can act on a personal level within their home and work environments to reduce sources of stress and to combat its effects.

Not all employers will have the time or resources to introduce all the examples listed below, especially in small organisations. However, the principles of how to control and manage stress still apply and all employers have a legal obligation to take work-related stress seriously.

  • Self help for stress- the Scottish Government’s Steps for Stress campaign offers support and advice on dealing with stress
  • Provide regular activities or events highlighting the impact of stress and how to cope
  • Offer stress management, relaxation or discounted access to leisure facilities
  • Training in stress awareness and management
  • Workplace policies on stress
  • Employee assistance programmes such as counselling

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  • Self held for stress - the Scottish Govervment's Steps for Stress campaign offers support and advice on dealing with stress.
  • Provide regular activities or events highlighting the impact of stress and how to cope.
  • Off stress management, relaxation or discounted access to leisure facilities.
  • Training in stress awareness and management.
  • Workplace policies on stress.
  • Employee assistance programmes such as counselling.

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Further information on stress in the workplace

  • Email your query now
  • Call our Adviceline on 0800 019 2211
  • Work Positive - http://surveys.healthyworkinglives.com/. A comprehensive site that guides Managers through the stress risk assessment process and methods of managing and controlling stress in the workplace.

HSE Work-related Stress pages (external site)
These pages from the Health and Safety Executive provide advice on stress at work for individuals and employers, full details of the Management Standards for Tackling Work-Related Stress and download links for many useful tools, including sample policies and stress risk assessments.

The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) (external site)
ACAS provides confidential help on all employment matters. Telephone the Acas Helpline on 08457 47 47 47 or visit the ACAS website (external site).

Free guidance from the Health and Safety Executive
Note – all links are to external pages on the HSE website giving options to download or order these resources:

Priced guidance from the Health and Safety Executive
Note – all links are to external pages on the HSE website giving options to order these resources:

→ View The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.

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Last reviewed on 09 January 2012

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