What next?

Remember to start talking!

Talk to people both individually and as a team. Talking about these things can make it easier for people to be open and honest. Remember the six causes of stress.

By talking and listening to your workers you’ll be able to assess whether your business has a risk to workers due to work-related stress or mental health, where those risks are, identify actions to prevent or tackle issues and comply with the law.

To be compliant you need to:

1. Do a risk assessment
   • Talk to your workers
   • Check your sickness records
   • Are people leaving a specific job or team more regularly?
   • What problems are being experienced?
   • How many people are affected and where are the problems happening?
   • Are they due to the work or the workplace?
2. Make a record of any risks identified
3. Take steps to prevent or reduce those risks
   • Talk to the workers they are the experts in their jobs
   • Agree with them, the steps to take – if they help decide how to tackle the problems, they will be more likely to make them work
   • Put the actions in place, for example provide identified training or review systems
4. Think about how you’ll know if they’ve worked or not
   • Get feedback from workers
   • Check you are getting the results you expected
   • If they aren’t working change them
   • Check they haven’t just moved the problem elsewhere or accidently created new stressors
5. Record what you have done (unless you have fewer than five workers) and agree a time to reflect and review the situation later – make reviews part of the routine, especially when things change in the business.

Remember HSE’s tools can help:

• Talking Toolkit
• Return to work tool
• HSE App
• Risk assessments

Back to Routine