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[forum admin]

More than half of HR and health and safety staff believe too much is expected of businesses after recruitment in protecting workers from stress, according to the findings of a survey undertaken by law firm Pinsent Masons LLP. 

During a series of seminars on stress and psychiatric injury at work, 54% of senior HR and health and safety staff polled felt there was too much of a burden on businesses to combat workplace stress. In addition, 79% of attendees said they could identify specific costs to their businesses relating to stress. This was from three main areas: absenteeism, poor performance, lost time engaged in handling issues arising from stressed staff.

Employment partner at Pinsent Masons, Selwyn Blyth commented on the findings: "It's clear that businesses feel under pressure to deal with stress in the workplace, and that it affects the bottom line, but how to tackle it is not so clear. This could partly be down to the nature of stress and how it is diagnosed, as it can be difficult to define where the line is drawn. 

“Discussion during our seminars also raised the point that HR and health and safety rarely work closely together to tackle stress - this could explain the apparent difficulty that some organisations have in dealing with the issue. 

"As you'd expect, health and safety teams tend to manage monitoring and risk assessment and are adept at these organisational controls. However, the solution to the risks identified often rests with HR teams – things such as effective dispute resolution, good appraisal systems, clear job descriptions, and effective change management for example. The introduction of the new 'fit note' next year should enable organisations to address stress-related absence in a more effective way, but a closer relationship between HR and health and safety is equally important and is something organisations can implement straight away.

"Caution should be taken to avoid just 'bolting on' stress management to existing procedures however. Delegates agreed that it is best integrated into existing management development schemes, and as such can form part of a values or wellbeing programme."

[Robin Tetley]

I think as long as a job description is carefully laid out and agreed to beforehand it isn't really an employers obligation to make sure an employee is not overly stressed.

I mean if that employer is putting way to much pressure on the employee that's different but if the employee gets stressed because of (I guess what American health insurance companies call) a pre-existing condition or simply because they are partial to stress out for no particular reason (as I sometimes am) then it's down to the employee alone to sort his or her problems out.

I hope that made sense.

[Malcolm]

I disagree actually. If somebody is prone to stress that information should really be found out at the interview stage (if the interviewer is any good) and therefore no stress at all should be put on that prospective employee.

[Robin Tetley]

But if someone is prone to stress, as I possibly am, being honest, that isn't going to be admitted at the interview stage. You want to present the best version of yourself at an interview so despite the fact that in a competency based interview the interviewer may say: "Now don't tell us what you think we want to hear tell us the truth" you're still going to try and get that job therefore telling them what you think they want to hear.