HSE supports National Stress Awareness Day 2008

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is pleased to support National Stress Awareness Day with the launch of a new and improved stress management standards analysis tool and user manual. This year’s campaign is focused on taking positive action. One of

HSE Chief Executive Geoffrey Podger said:

"We must make a conscious effort to deal with work-related stress as we lost over 13.5 million working days to stress last year.

"Pressure is part and parcel of all work and helps to keep us motivated, but excessive pressure can lead to stress which undermines performance, is costly to employers and can make people ill. The Stress Management Standards highlight the components of good organisation, job design and management that keep stress levels in check and enhance productivity.

"We are working towards improving the management standards process and enhancing the analysis tool is the first step to making this happen."

In 2007/08 work related stress, depression and anxiety cost Great Britain in excess of £530 million. The number of workers who reported new cases of work-related stress increased by 237,000.

Many successful organisations use the HSE Management Standards. In this simple approach, employers work together with employees and their representatives to bring about a reduction in levels of work-related stress.

Following this year’s theme of ‘Don’t worry take action’ HSE are taking steps to make acting on potential problems easier.

The Analysis Tool is one part of the Management Standards process and allows organisations to identify areas of potential stressors at work. The main improvement to this version is the option to benchmark against either data drawn from organisations in both the private and public sector, or the current data from the Psychosocial Working Conditions (PWC) survey 2004. The revised Analysis Tool User Manual includes a full description of the two data sets.

A brand new HSE stress website will be launched in February 2009, which will include all the latest information about the Management Standards plus an extra tool for line managers.

Article created by Editor. (info@safetynetscotland.co.uk)