Stress: health and safety managers feeling the strain
July 30, 2004
While often charged with lowering stress levels in organisations, health and safety managers themselves are suffering from unreasonable workloads, uncooperative colleagues and employers with little buy-in.
Stress may be health and safety issue but that doesn't stop health and safety managers from feeling the strain with only a third saying they can meet the demands of the job without working extra hours.
The survey of 500 health and safety professionals by ORC suggests that most feel they can handle the demands of their work, however, they have to put in extra hours and only a third say their workload is reasonable, well below the 200 organisation ORC cross-profession average of 59%.
Workloads appear exacerbated by a lack of cooperation from the people the managers work with. Under half said they get colleague buy-in when it comes to getting work done, again lower than the average, this time of 80%:
"These findings are certainly interesting. The group charged with measuring and managing workplace stress experience stress and related issues at work to a greater extent than other staff.
"It demonstrates the importance of organisations objectively measuring stress to gain insight into how the issue affects different sectors of the UK workforce," says ORC's Sally Nicholls.
Professionals appear spilt over the potential of the situation to change. Half the respondents do not believe they will feel less pressurised at work in six months time, while only 17% feel their level of work pressure will reduce.
Their organisations are not engaging with the need to reduce stress levels, they say. Only 27% said their firm was committed to tackling stress while only 14% felt stress was factored into major workplace changes.
A recent CIPD report suggested that half of employers have seen an increase in stress related absence over the year, which firms are trying to combat with training (55%), staff surveys (51%), risk assessments (57%) and improving work-life balance (61%).
Just over half of health and safety managers (52%) said that they could maintain a good work-life balance, but ORC points out that this is 12% lower than the average across a range of professions across industries.
This story originally appeared on the HR Gateway website.
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