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HSE Attempts To Tackle Work Related Stress Ineffective - So Far!

A new report out this month shows that to date the HSE's Management Standards for tackling work related stress has had little to no affect so far.

HSE Psychosocial Working Conditins report - click to downloadWhilst the HSE points out in its report entitled, Psychosocial Working Conditions in Britain in 2008, that "The lack of impact to date of the Management Standards could reflect the long latency between organisations first implementing the process and benefits being realised."; many believe that the real reason has more to do with job design and lack of concern by employers.

The report admits that, " In the 2007 report it appeared that an improvement in population level working conditions may be emerging, however the 2008 results do not show a continuation of that trend. There is no longer a downward trend in the number of employees reporting that their job is very or extremely stressful and little change in the number of employees aware of stress initiatives in their workplace or reporting discussions about stress with their line managers."

This of course is no surprise to Union Safety Reps and those working within the occupational health and health services fields. Many believe that the only thing that will change the situation in the UK will be when employers pay a penalty for causing ill health amongst their workforce due to work pressures, job design and breaking health and safety laws.

In order to compile accurate data, all the interviewees were asked three additional questions about stress. The first asked the interviewee how stressful they found their job to be and was answered using a balanced 5 point Likert scale, with responses ranging from 1 = “Not at all stressful” to 5 = “Extremely stressful”. The remaining questions asked about initiatives to reduce stress in the workplace and discussion of job stressors with
managers and required yes/no/don’t know responses. These later questions were used to provide a surrogate indicator of visible employer activity on stress. The question on job “stressfulness” has been used elsewhere and the responses “very” and “extremely” stressful were identified as indicators of high job stress (Smith et al.
2000).


The report also details an indication of whether employers are taking any visible measures to reduce stress in the workplace, respondents in both March and April surveys from 2004 to 2008 were asked whether they were aware of any initiatives undertaken by their company to reduce stress at work in the previous 12 months. The figures show there is no significant change over time with around a third of respondents indicating the presence of stress initiatives at work each year.

With regard to discussions with Line Managers about Stress, respondents in both March and April surveys from 2004 to 2008 were asked whether they had discussed work-related stress with their line manager over the last 12 months. There was no trend over time with just over one third of British employees reporting such discussions.

Overall working conditions have not improved at all, with the report stating:

Generally the findings show little change in working conditions in Britain between 2004 and 2008, although there is a significant improvement in the Change scale this time period. From a visual inspection of the data up to 2007, it appeared that there may have been the beginnings of an upward shift across the majority of working conditions scales. However in 2008 many of these scales returned to previous levels and there is no longer any sign of a general improvement.

The full 35 page report is available to download here

Source: Unionsafety



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