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Management Regulations aka The Six Pack 

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Management Regulations aka The Six Pack 

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Responding to Harmful Workplace Stress - TUC Guide 

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Responding to Harmful Workplace Stress - TUC Guide 

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Old TUC Course but has lots of good info 

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Old TUC Course but has lots of good info 

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After years of austerity and being asked to do more with less, the pressure is taking its toll.

Facts and figures

In UNISON's 2017 Stress Survey 67% of members said their employers had never spoken to them about Stress.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) definition of work related stress is: The adverse reaction people have excessive pressures or other demands placed on them at work. The HSE reports that there were half a million workers suffering work related stress in 2015/16.

How does this issue affect our members?

Many of our members are feeling stressed overworked and underpaid too scared to take time out due to oppressive sickness absence policies and stuck at work with bullying managers, stress at work has become endemic. Many employees are under undue pressure.

According to the HSE, public sector workers are most affected with Education Health and Social Care, high on the list of most stressed out organisations.

What is UNISON calling for?

UNISON is calling for employers to ditch the "resilience agenda" where they tell employees to "toughen up" and to take stress seriously. Employers should risk assess stress in the same way that they would any other hazard.

The HSE stress management standards and the assessment tool are a great place to start for any organisation and they are autonomous - not manipulated to masks the real issues.

What are we doing?

We understand the need for employers to take responsibility for stress at work.

We also know that many have avoided this since the HSE Stress standards have come out.

With this in mind, we provide guidance for safety reps on raising stress as an issue at work, with guidance on the effects of stress (and worsening mental health) and also the "Guarding against Stress" toolkit on engaging senior managers on adopting the HSE Stress management approach to improve workers well being at work.

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Stress at work | Health and safety: key issues | UNISON National

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After years of austerity and being asked to do more with less, the pressure is taking its toll. In UNISON's 2017 Stress Survey 67% of members said their employers had never spoken to them about Stress. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) definition of work related stress is: The adverse reaction people have excessive pressures or other demands placed on them at work.

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Stress Briefing One - stress effect members

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The Management Standards approach suggests using a survey as one (but not the only) useful source of information on whether work related stress appears to be a potential problem for your workforce and, if so, who is likely to be affected and how.

Individual perceptions play an important role in predicting stress related ill health. Gathering the opinions of employees can be a useful indicator of the health of your organisation, and potential sources of work related stress.

The HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool

The HSE Management Standards includes a survey tool, called the HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool that can be distributed to all employees.

The survey consists of 35 items that ask about 'working conditions' known to be potential causes of work related stress. These working conditions correspond to the six stressors of the Management Standards. The employee answers according to how they feel about these aspects of their work.

All responses can then be compiled into an Excel-based analysis tool, the HSE Management Standards Analysis Tool [XLS, 4MB].

The tool computes an average figure for each of the six Management Standards for all respondents or particular sub-groups. The tool uses standard Excel functions to cut the survey results using demographic category data that were collected from employees who completed the Indicator Tool questionnaire.

You can also use the Management Standards survey tools as part of a customised 'pick and mix' approach. The ways in which you can do this are described in the HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool manual .

If you plan to use your own surveys

You may like to use your own annual employee surveys or your own specific survey of working conditions to investigate whether work related stress is likely to be a problem for your workforce and, if so, who is likely to be harmed and how.

If you do plan to do this, you need to:

Assess whether your survey covers all the relevant areas that are potential causes of stress for your workforce, eg which questions cover each of the six Management Standard areas?

Identify if there are gaps - Do you need to add additional questions? Or could you gather information about these areas in different ways, eg by discussing them with your employees?

Whether you use your own survey approach or the HSE Management Standards survey approach, the next step, communicating the results, is equally important.

How to communicate your findings

Once you have conducted and analysed your survey it is important to accurately communicate the findings to the board, the workforce and their representatives.

A survey is only the start of the risk assessment process and a broad indicator of the situation in an organisation. It is intended to provide a starting point rather than giving a clear diagnosis of all the likely sources of work related stress.

If there are areas that require action, these can form the basis of discussions with focus groups and a useful guide for future actions.

You should not use surveys in isolation but with other sources of information to give you a more informed picture.

Be sure to keep managers, staff representatives, trade unions and employees fully consulted and informed throughout the survey process so that the figures do not come as a shock.

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The Management Standards approach suggests using a survey as one (but not the only) useful source of information on whether work related stress appears to be a potential problem for your workforce and, if so, who is likely to be affected and how. Individual perceptions play an important role in predicting stress related ill health.

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General Managing Mental Health in Workplace Guide 

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General Managing Mental Health in Workplace Guide 