Managing Stress is the Key to Success

Stress in the workplace has established itself as one of the key issues for employers and their advisers with a number of high-profile cases in recent years. Employers need to take positive action to prevent it.

One in four workers know a colleague whose mental well-being has suffered as a result of workplace stress, according to a new survey.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have usefully defined stress as 'the reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them'.

Half of workers believe that stress in the workplace is a 'serious problem' and more than 40% believe their careers would suffer if they admitted to being affected by stress. Not only is stress in the workplace a serious problem, however there is still a powerful stigma attached to admitting to being stressed at work.

The survey also revealed that more than 50% of workers believe their employers are unaware of the extent of workplace stress.

The level of compensation can be high, particularly where the employee never works again. The case of Walker v Northumberland County Council [1995] IRLR 35, HC is probably the best known example of a stress claim. Mr Walker was a social worker with a heavy workload of child abuse cases. He had a nervous breakdown and returned to work some five months later having been promised assistance and a reduced workload. The promised assistance did not materialise and Mr Walker suffered another breakdown. The High Court held that the Council was liable for psychiatric damage caused to him through stress. The Council had failed to provide assistance or reduce his workload and therefore was in breach of their duty of care. The risk was reasonably foreseeable. The Council made a payment of £175,000 to the employee in an out-of-court settlement.

This case made it clear that an employer's common law duty to provide a safe system of working for employees includes a duty to protect them from psychiatric harm and that failure to do this could lead to claim where the harm is reasonable foreseeable.

The key is to manage stress effectively, so that instead of spiralling out of control, the pressures of the workplace can be harnessed and put to positive effect. All employers have a duty to be pro-active and to take the initiative rather than simply adopting a re-active approach.

A survey also found that while a third of manager's deal with stress by having a drink or two after work, the most common means of coping with work work-related stress is to exercise and keep fit (65%), followed by eating healthily (63%) and getting a good night's sleep (59%).

The study was conducted by the Aziz Corporation communications consultancy.

Vanessa Monroy - Qdos Consulting Limited

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Posted 01/12/05

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