Guide to stress risk assessment
Managing stress and mental health at work is crucial for moral, legal and financial reasons. HSE annual statistics show 776,000 workers suffering from work-related stress, depression or anxiety (new and long-standing) in 2023/24. They also show 16.4 million working days lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2023/24.
As well as the costs to society, employers can face a huge list of costs arising from failing to manage stress at work, including employee turnover, HR burden, grievances, harassment or bullying claims, litigation and reputational harm.
Stress can be risk assessed, in the same way as any other risk at work, either at an individual level or an organisational level.
Why is stress risk assessment important?
Everyone has a state of mental health, in the same way that everyone has a state of physical health. It can fluctuate too, just like our physical health.
Long-term stress can be deeply harmful to both mental and physical health. It can contribute to physical and mental illness including musculoskeletal issues, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, anxiety disorders and depression.
Is stress an illness?
Stress is not normally considered an illness or a mental health problem. A little stress can be helpful in many circumstances, even at work. It can make people feel energised and help with completing tasks.
Stress can, however, cause mental health problems. Mental health problems can also cause stress too. That means that stress, if not managed properly, can be a big problem for employers.
Sometimes, people can carry on working whilst they’re unwell. This is called ‘Presenteeism’ and it has huge associated costs for employers too. There are also a number of laws that employers must observe, when considering how to manage the risks from stress.
Stress risk assessment and the law
The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 places a legal duty on employers to take reasonably practicable steps to ensure the health, safety and welfare of employees. Notably, this includes psychological, as well as physical health and safety.
The law also places a duty on employers with more than 5 employees to assess risk. The law says employers must identify hazards to health, assess the risks and put in place preventive and protective measures to control those risks.
The same laws also require organisations to provide information, training and instruction to employees about their health and safety.
Employers also need to be mindful of the Equality Act 2010. A mental health condition could be considered a disability if it has a long-term effect on a person’s normal day-to-day activities. If a condition lasts, or is likely to last, for 12 months, “reasonable adjustments” may well need to be considered.
Conducting a stress risk assessment
Because what is and what is not ‘reasonably practical’ is ultimately a legal decision, employers can be faced with balancing a risk at work (noise, machinery, stress) with the costs, time or hassle involved in mitigating the risk.
A stress risk assessment is often suggested by occupational health clinicians to help an employer support an employee. It may sound a difficult process, but it’s very straight forward.
The assessment is best conducted by the line manager, rather than an HR professional. This is because the line manager should have the best understanding of the role, the challenges and demands and what adjustments may be possible or practical.
A stress risk assessment is a structured process to allow you to identify and record the presence or absence of specific workplace stressors. An agreed action plan to address these can then be drafted.
The HSE Management Standards are a very good framework for the risk assessment. This is because they are freely available, widely recognised and very easy to work with. The HSE Management Standards codify the main factors which cause work-related stress, if they are not well managed.
HSE Management Standards
- Demands: workload and the work environment
- Control: how much say workers have over the way they do their work
- Role: are workers clear on their roles and responsibilities?
- Support: how employees are supported by their organisation and line manager
- Relationships: how the organisation promotes positive working relationships or deals with bullying or harassment
- Change: how change is managed and communicated
If you do not have the materials in-house to conduct a risk assessment, the HSE has free tools available for any business to use. The aim is for the line manager to ask open questions such as “What impacts you negatively at work?” and record the answers relevant to each part of the Standards being discussed.
If the answer to “What impacts your workload negatively?” (when risk assessing “Demands”) is “I have to work 12 hours a day to get the work done”, the next step would be to record the risk as something like “Working long hours”.
Mitigating steps
Once a risk has been identified, steps to mitigate the risk can be identified too and recorded on the risk assessment. Continuing with the same example about working long hours, a way to mitigate the risk may be to “reduce workload”, “provide more support” or “use flexible working”.
If an employee makes suggestions to mitigate the risk, they should be recorded on the risk assessment too. It is up to the business to decide whether any mitigating steps are practical or reasonable or not.
If someone has been identified as having work-related stress, the manager should update the stress risk assessment regularly. This is particularly important if there are further changes to the role or the environment. Regular one-to-one meetings to monitor progress or adjustments are essential.
Deciding what to do after a risk assessment
As the purpose of the stress risk assessment is to identify, record and mitigate the elements of a role or environment that may be causing work-related stress, it is possible an employer may not always agree with the employee’s views.
If an employer does not agree with the information obtained during a stress risk assessment, they should seek independent professional advice at the earliest opportunity. It is essential to fully investigate any concerns raised by an employee, always following the ACAS Code and any company Policies closely.
It is for management to decide what steps can be taken to support an employee or not, in exactly the same way as considering ‘reasonable adjustments’ to support someone with a physical disability.
If the business does not agree with the employee, or cannot reasonably accommodate the risk mitigations identified, then it is up to the employer to consider whether a capability dismissal or performance management framework is justified. ACAS has lots of relevant free advice for employers.
There is lots of general advice to help manage stress at work available too.
Supporting employees
The HSE expects organisations to support employees when it comes to psychological health and safety. This should include:
- training on stress, mental health awareness
- integrating stress risk assessment into management tool kits
- signpost employees clearly to support (e.g. EAPs)
- regularly review any stress risk assessments
Summary of key steps for businesses
- Undertake an individual or organisational stress risk assessment
- Implement an action plan as a result of risk assessment outcomes
- Integrate stress risk assessment into line management responsibilities
- Signpost employees to support e.g. EAPs
- Providing information and training to employees
- Provide access to professional support and occupational health proactively
About Occupational Health Assessment Ltd – a nationwide occupational health provider
Occupational Health Assessment Ltd provides rapid access to expert occupational health support for businesses across the United Kingdom. Appointments are available nationwide within two days.
With a unique occupational health assessment service, night worker health assessments, fitness certifications and access to clinics in Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Northampton, Nottingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Stoke, Surrey and more, the business provides high quality, expert medical advice.
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