August 2004

Stress: Health And Safety Managers Feeling The Strain

Having the responsibility for reducing workplace stress can be stressful in itself. This responsibility is often given to health and safety managers who themselves may be suffering from unreasonable workloads, uncooperative colleagues and employers with little buy-in. This is not a great recipe for success!

Two recent surveys have shown that those tasked with managing stress do not have the support and resources available to them to carry out a professional job. Stress may be regarded as a health and safety issue but that does not mean that responsibility for its management rests solely with the health and safety managers.

The first 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. Workloads appear to be 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. When this relates to the management of stress it makes the task almost impossible. The management of stress needs to be approached on a company wide basis with support from all senior and line managers; if the problem is not accepted it can never be addressed.

"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.

The second survey by the CIPD suggested that half of employers have seen an increase in stress related absence over the year, which they are trying to combat with training (55%), staff surveys (51%), risk assessments (57%) and improving work-life balance (61%).

The need to meet the six tests established by the Health & Safety Executive is driving more organisations to establish benchmarks of their current positions to then provide targeted support to the most important elements of their management systems.

Stress can not be managed in a haphazard way; it must be structured and supported by the whole company.

For more information on the management of stress, company wide audits and the six Health and Safety Executive tests, contact Steve Stones on 024 76 279 000.