As line managers and supervisors, you are responsible for the health and safety of your team and this includes ensuring that they are not affected by work related stressors. Your management style can have an impact on stress, so it is important that you are aware of good management practices and that you develop your management skills. It is also important that you recognise the signs of stress in your team and know what support to give team members who may be suffering from stress.
The HSE stress management competency indicator tool can help assess your effectiveness at preventing and reducing stress in your staff and identify your developmental needs.
Check the Management Development programme for relevant training opportunities.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) management standards identifies the following risk factors for work-related stress:
Find out more about the HSE Management Standards and implementing them.
Completing a stress risk assessment involves looking at current practice in relation to the HSE Management Standards and determining whether enough has been done to manage the risk or whether more needs to be done. It can be done with an individual or team and can be formal process using a risk assessment form (such as the one below), or an informal discussion using the standards as a guide. If you do an informal assessment, you should still make a record of the outcomes.
To support you with completing the Stress Risk Assessment, you can ask the individual or team to complete the following:
Occupational Health Advisors may recommend stress risk assessment for individuals who have been suffering stress. It is also a useful to carry out assessments for teams where there are stress related issues or are undergoing significant change.
If you need help with carrying out stress risk assessment, contact your Department's link Human Resources Manager/Officer.