Corporate stress management, employee risk management, employee consultations and surveys, stress audits. Training, coaching and mentoring, training assessment, coping skills, anxiety management, competency.
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Best Practice
Most of our clients wish to meet their legal duty to undertake stress risk assessments using the Health and Safety Executive’s ‘Stress Management Standards’.
These standards are not a legal requirement in themselves, but they a methodology that if followed would normally be considered as ‘deemed to satisfy’ the risk assessment requirements of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations with regards to stress.
Employee Consultation Response Data Analysis
Not a risk assessment in itself, but provides valuable data on potential stress hazards, who might be affected by those hazards, areas where further investigation is needed and areas where appropriate stress risk minimisation will probably be effective.
For many organisations the employee consultation data analysis will provide all the information they need to start to implement stress risk minimisation, however the stress manager will need to ensure that all known reactive stress issues have been assessed, records, such as accident records, have examined for stress influences, the relevance of industry known stress hazards have been considered, identified and assessed, plus any employee highlighted concerns examined and assessed.
Assessment Indicators
The HSE uses the standard “low Risk, Low Medium Risk, Medium Risk, High Risk” range in their Stress Management Standards, however there is no reason why you cannot use the same indicator range as you use for your day-
Stress Risk Assessment Reports
Stress risk assessments reports will usually contain a lot of loosely supported indicators that stress exists, often with little hard evidence on the causes of the identified stress hazards. Risk assessments can often only be based on comparators, incidents and losses being experienced. Sometimes the risk assessment must be based on the professional opinion of the stress management consultant who will use their experience of other organisations and incidents to give an assessment. This type of report often causes problems with managers who expect hard facts, clear evidence, precise measurements and strategic solutions, but this ‘fuzzy’ result cannot be avoided.
Stress is a very personal response involving personal perceptions, phobias, unrealistic expectations and inappropriate responses. Some corporate stressors can be unavoidable and require specialist coping skills training. Stress is a symptom of an inability to cope with problems and events. The root cause can be very deep and complex, and could require a long term strategy to reverse.
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