The Workplace Stress Audit

What Is A Stress Audit?

The Workplace Stress Audit uses a questionnaire, which establishes the likely causes of stress, and its probable levels, in an organisation or group of individuals.

The Workplace Stress Audit is a valid tool, which can identify stress within departments, sections, job types, gender and age groups (as well as ethnicity, disability and grading bands), and establish likely stress levels and indications of impending health problems. The questions in the audit cover the main factors listed in the Health and Safety Executive's latest guidelines and management standards:

Demands
Control
Relationships
Change
Role
Support

This type of audit produces viable data from which recommendations can be made, so that limited resources can be targeted more effectively on the areas of greatest need.

Why Carry Out A Workplace Stress Audit?

The audit is the simplest and most effective way of finding out the levels of perceived stress that exist in an organisation and where particular problems lie.

The HSE has given three reasons why an employer should tackle stress:

1. Ethical

Employers do not generally wish to make their employees ill, and would even seek to prevent it as far as possible. Work-related stress can make employees ill, so the ethical approach is to do everything possible to prevent stress. That means, first of all, measuring how much stress there is, finding out what is causing it, and where it is in the organisation.

2. Legal

All companies have a legal obligation under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to make a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks to the health and safety that their employees may be exposed to whilst at work.

"It is the duty of all employers to make sure that their employees are not made ill by their work. Where stress caused or made worse by work could lead to ill health, employers must assess the risk. If necessary, [they] must then take reasonable steps to deal with those pressures."

HSE Guidance Notes (updated November 2001) Tackling work-related stress: 'A manager's guide to improving and maintaining employee health and well-being', HSG218

The Regulations require all employers to assess the risks to their own workers, and any others who may be affected by their work or business. This will enable them to identify the steps they need to take to comply with health and safety law. Companies with five or more employees should also record the significant findings of that risk assessment.

Failure to comply with these regulations can lead to severe criminal and financial punishments such as unlimited fines, loss of directorships, custodial sentences, Prohibition and Improvement Notices. All of these could have disastrous consequences on the business and also on the individuals concerned.

On top of this is the development of a 'blame culture' and a significant rise in litigation. An increasing number of employees have taken their employers to court for stress-related illnesses caused or made worse by their work, and have received large amounts of compensation from the courts. This has happened so frequently that insurance companies very often seek to settle claims out of court.

A Workplace Stress Audit can fulfil the greater part of the Risk Assessment requirements now demanded by the HSE.

3. Economic

The HSE, the CBI and others have produced figures that state that stress-related sickness absence is costing organisations between £350 and £500 per annum per employee. This is sufficient reason, in itself, to deal with the issue of work-related stress. There are also many other hidden costs associated with staff who are suffering from stress, such as: lack of commitment, high staff turnover, costly mistakes, and poor customer service.