Work-related stress costs UK businesses around £3.8 billion per year, with a total of 12.8 million working days being lost to stress, depression and anxiety in 2004/5 (source: HSE).An employee suffering from work-related stress will take, on average, 28 days off per year compared to the national average of 8 days per year. Can you afford to loose your staff for an extra month each year?
Trent Safety People can work with you to assess possible psychological hazards that may affect the health of your employees. Whilst some pressure is good for us and makes us feel alive and challenged, too much pressure over a prolonged period can be detrimental to our health. What may be exciting to one person may be terrifying to another and the individual differences in how people perceive the stress they are under and ‘cope’ with it, make determining factors that may cause stress, very difficult. In the work place the complexity of the issue often means resources are put into training and provision of employee assistance programs that help employees cope better and manage their stress, rather than preventative measure to identify the cause and reduce its impact.
Stress Risk Assessment
Employers have a responsibility for the psychological well being of their employees as they do for their physical health & safety. Carrying out a risk assessment for work-related stress is a proactive way of ensuring that the work environment, work load and management practices are not causing employees to suffer from stress.
Each of our specialists is an Occupational Psychologist who is certified to carry out Risk Assessment for Work-Related Stress. Using interviews and focus groups, employees are engaged in the process to identify the core issues apparent in their work situation. Symptoms of work related stress will vary between individuals making it extremely difficult to identify, therefore a one size fits all, paper based exercise will not be sufficient to identify this complex risk.
Our philosophy is that the employee is the 'expert' in their own work environment. A bespoke questionnaire is then developed with specific reference to these core issues and in combination with the HSE Management Standards, is distributed to all employees. Staff buy in is high because they feel an integral part of the assessment process, not external to it. On identifying key concerns in all work areas we are able to develop practical, relevant and workable solutions that staff have confidence in and feel ownership towards.
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Rehabilitation of Employees back to work
If you currently have employees on long term absence with a work-related stress issue or depression, anxiety, we can help to plan the staged return for that employee to ensure they don’t relapse after a few months. Counselling and coaching services are available to assist in tackling issues and building confidence in employees that have been out of the work environment for a long time. Managers/supervisors may also benefit from some support and assistance in helping an employee back to work after a work-related stress absence.
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