10th April 2010
Following recent legal rulings, EHPs need to have a good understanding of the causes and effects of stress. Jeremy Stranks reports.
Where does the EHP stand on stress? What is the plan of action if employees make formal complaints to the local environmental health department about stress arising from, say, bullying and harassment, enforced change in work practices, work overload or management style?
In recent years, there has been considerable activity in the civil courts on the subject of psychiatric injury arising from stress at work. The High Court decision in Walker v Northumberland County Council (1994) in which a senior social worker was given leave to claim up to £200,000 damages against his employers, Northumberland County Council, for allowing him to work to the point of breakdown, was a landmark case which focused attention on the question of stress in the workplace. This has been followed by the Court of Appeal Guidelines and Judges’ Rules on the subject.
The HSE has also recognised the problem of stress at work by issuing its Management Standards for Stress.
Clearly, employers have a duty under the Health and Safety at Work Act to protect the health of employees. ‘Health’ is defined as ‘a state of physical and mental wellbeing’. However, health protection legislation, such as the Control of Noise at Work Regulations and the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations, is directed at protecting the physical health of employees only. No legislation exists regarding protecting their mental health, and any enforcement action could only be taken under the broad provisions of the HSWA.
Responding to this type of complaint requires an EHP to have a good understanding of the causes and effects of stress and, in particular, strategies for managing stress which an employer can implement. Here, the Management Standards provide excellent help in determining what needs to be put in place by the employer concerned. These standards deal with six specific aspects of the stress management process.
Investigation should be based on discussions with individuals and groups of individuals, together with the response of the employer to allegations of stressful behaviour. For his to work effectively, there must be agreement by the employer concerned for such discussions to take place in a neutral environment where employees are free to discuss their concerns, the causes of stress and the employer’s responses. In effect, the EHP becomes a mediator, listening to both sides of the argument, and deciding on the action necessary.
Here we should consider the desired outcomes for eliminating or reducing stress based on the Management Standards.
Having analysed the complaints from employees and the causes of stress in a particular workplace, informal action by the EHP may be appropriate, in the form of a letter to the employer recommending a number of changes directed at reducing stress among employees.
However, where there is no positive response from the employer to implement changes in, for example, management behaviour towards employees, serving an improvement notice under the HSWA may be appropriate.
Such a notice must specify the risks to health, such as stress-induced injury, and reasonable measures to be taken to resolve the situation, such as implementation of some, or all, of the Management Standards or a stress management programme.
It should be recognised that, while there is doubt about the relative enforceability of the Management Standards, it is feasible that a court may take them into consideration as what is considered best practice in this area.
Jeremy Stranks FCIEH is a chartered EHP and the author of Stress at Work: Management and Prevention and Human Factors and Behavioural Safety (Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann)