Work Right to keep Britain safe
  • About
  • News
  • Contact
  • Campaigns
    • Asbestos & You
    • Construction Dust
    • Lungs
    • MSDs
    • Silica
    • Stress
    • Working Minds
    • Your health. Your future
    • Work Right Agriculture
  • Menu Menu
Back to: Campaigns

Work-related Stress

Prevent, reduce and manage stress in the workplace

People feel stressed when they can’t cope with pressures and demands put on them, along with other issues. This can lead to chronic physical and mental health conditions.

Stress, depression or anxiety account for a huge 51% of all work-related ill health cases and 55% of all working days lost due to work-related ill health. It’s not just the people who feel this way that are impacted, it also has a big effect on business and our economy.

Recognising the signs of stress will help employers to take steps to prevent, reduce and manage stress in the workplace. Do the right thing and protect your workers from work-related stress.

Stressed out man on computer

What should you do?

Employers have a legal duty to protect employees from stress at work by doing a risk assessment and acting on it. The earlier a problem is tackled the less impact it will have.

If you already have a risk assessment in place, consider whether you need to re-assess the situation due to changes and challenges brought about by coronavirus that may have created new stress.

Six key factors to consider

Employers should assess the risks in the following areas to manage stress in the workplace. If not properly managed, they are associated with poor health, lower productivity and increased accident and sickness absence rates.

  • Demands – workload, work patterns and the work environment
  • Control – how much say the person has in the way they do their work
  • Support – encouragement, sponsorship and resources available to workers
  • Relationships – promoting positive working to avoid conflict and dealing with unacceptable behaviour
  • Role – whether people understand their role within the organisation and whether the organisation ensures that they do not have conflicting roles
  • Change – how change (large or small) is managed and communicated.

Help and guidance

Visit https://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/ for a range of practical support and guidance available including risk assessment templates, a talking toolkit to help start conversations, workbooks and posters.

  • Work-related stress and how to tackle it.
  • Complete or review your risk assessment for stress.
  • Learn more about the six key factors and download the management standards workbook.
  • Download the mobile app to help you better understand the law and what is required to protect employees.
  • Access the automated stress indicator tool (SIT) to measure your employees attitudes and perceptions towards work-related stress – free to use for up to 50 employees.

You can also sign up for free email updates and follow the conversation on HSE’s social media channels Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Contact Details

Corporate Communications
2.2 Redgrave Court
Merton Rd
Bootle
L20 7HS
campaigns@hse.gov.uk
Facebook Icon
Linkedin Icon
Twitter Icon

Register for Work Right Newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter to stay updated.

Register now

Work Right
  • Cookie Policy
  • Accessibility Policy
Scroll to top

This site uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.

Accept

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refuseing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Accept settingsHide notification only