Stress at Work

Jeremy Stranks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781136361814
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Work-related stress and resulting sickness absence costs the UK economy about £3.7 billion every year (HSE research). In this jargon-free guide, Jeremy Stranks explains what stress is and what causes it, how people respond to stress and cope with it, how stress can be evaluated and managed and what employers' legal responsibilities are.

Written for managers, HR professionals and safety reps, the emphasis of this book is strongly on practical advice and solutions. The author provides simple tools to measure and assess stress and shows how to deal with a range of stress-creating workplace situations, such as bullying, harassment and violence at work. The book also details how to implement a stress management system that complies with the new HSE Management Standards to avoid civil claims and criminal sanctions by the enforcement agencies.

End of chapter key points draw out the implications of the preceding text for the employer and an executive summary shows the main aspects that senior management have to be aware of. In addition, the book contains forms and templates to help with managing stress. These are also available for download on the companion website.

Stress at Work will also be a valuable reference for students on the following courses as part of modules concerned with Human Factors: NEBOSH Certificate and Diploma courses, MSc courses in Occupational Health and Safety Management, IOSH Managing Safely, British Safety Council diploma and NVQ level 3 and 4 courses in Occupational Safety and Health.

Jeremy Stranks has 40 years of experience in occupational safety and health enforcement, management, consultancy and training. He is a founding member of NEBOSH and has lectured on numerous training courses on all aspects of health and safety. His company Safety and Hygiene Consultants offers companies advice in drawing up Health and Safety policies, writing risk assessments and audit procedures.

1

Introduction to Stress

The recent civil court decision in which a senior social worker was awarded £175 000 compensation against his local authority employer for allowing him to work to the point of breakdown raises the question as to whether claims for stress at work will be the significant legal issue of the next decade.

Other claims have followed, including the claim involving a ticket collector who received £375 000 in damages for post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the King’s Cross station fire.

Stress at work, and the potential for stress-induced ill health, has become a topical subject with many people. Furthermore, most people can describe stressful events and circumstances at work. Inefficient management, lack of decision-making by management, excessive working hours, uncertainty as to future employment prospects and the pressure of the job are some of the causes of stress described by employees.

1.1 What is Stress?

‘Stress’ is a word which is rarely clearly understood and there is no single definition of the term. It means different things to different people. Indeed, almost anything anyone can think of, pleasant or unpleasant, has been described as a source of stress, such as getting married, being made redundant, getting older, getting a job, too much or too little work, solitary confinement or exposure to excessive noise.

Stress can be defined in many ways, thus:

• The common response to attack (Selye, 1936);
• Any influence that disturbs the natural equilibrium of the living body;
• Some taxation of the body’s resources in order to respond to some environmental circumstance;
• The common response to environmental change;
• A psychological response which follows failure to cope with problems;
• A feeling of sustained anxiety which, over a period of time, leads to disease;
• The non-specific response of the body to any demands made upon it.

The CBI defines stress as that which arises when the pressures placed upon an individual exceed the perceived capacity of that individual to cope.

According to the TUC, stress occurs where demands made on individuals do not match the resources available or meet the individual’s needs and motivation. Stress will arise if the workload is too large for the number of workers and time available. Equally, a boring or repetitive task which does not use the potential skills and experience of some individuals will cause them stress.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) (1995) defined work stress as ‘pressure and extreme demands placed on a person beyond his ability to cope’. In 1999, the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) stated that ‘stress is the reaction that people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed upon them’.

According to Cox (1993), ‘stress is now understood as a psychological state that results from people’s perceptions of an imbalance between job demands and their abilities to cope with those demands’.

A further definition is ‘work stress is a psychological state which can cause an individual to behave dysfunctionally at work and results from people’s response to an imbalance between job demands and their abilities to cope’.

Fundamentally, workplace stress arises when people try to cope with tasks, responsibilities or other forms of pressure connected with their jobs, but encounter difficulty, strain, anxiety and worry in endeavouring to cope.

1.2 Defining Stress

A consideration of the above definitions of ‘stress’ produces a number of features of stress and the stress response, for example, disturbance of the natural equilibrium, taxation of the body’s resources, failure to cope, sustained anxiety, a non-specific response, pressure and extreme demands and imbalance between job demands and coping ability.

Fundamentally, a stressor (or source of stress) produces stress which, in turn, produces a stress response on the part of the individual. No two people respond to the same stressor in the same way or to the same extent. What is important is that, if people are going to cope satisfactorily with the stress in their lives, they must recognize:

• The existence of stress;
• Their personal stress response, such as insomnia or digestive disorder;
• Those events or circumstances which produce that stress response, such as dealing with aggressive clients, preparing to go on holiday or disciplining employees;
• Their own personal coping strategy, such as relaxation therapy.

1.3 Degradation of Human Performance

Human performance is directly affected by the environment in which people work and sound levels of working environment promote optimum levels of performance. Many factors influence the human system and performance can degrade as a result of a wide range of stressors, and in some cases the system breaks down.

Degradation of performance is particularly associated with the following stressors.

1.3.1 Diurnal (Circadian) Rhythm

Body rhythms tend to follow a cyclical pattern linked to the 24-h light–dark cycle and sleeping–waking cycle, that is diurnal rhythm. Interruptions in this rhythm, as experienced by, for example, casual workers, shift workers and night workers, can cause stress on operators resulting in reduced operational performance as much as 10 per cent below average performance.

In the case of night workers, adjustment may take place after 2–3 days and goes on increasing up to a period of approximately 14 days provided that the individual continues both to live and work on a night-time schedule, and does not return to normal daytime living at weekends.

Rotating shift patterns, for example, a week on night work followed by a week on day work, or the operation of 12-h shifts rotating from, for instance 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., noon to midnight and 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. on different weeks, can result in high levels of stress on operators and their families.

1.3.2 Fatigue

Fatigue commonly results from working excessive hours without rest breaks and adequate periods of sleep.

1.3.3 Lack of Motivation

Where there is no stimulation from management in terms of performance targets and the rewarding of employees for achieving these targets, employees rapidly become demotivated and their performance deteriorates.

1.3.4 Lack of Stimulation

Many jobs are boring, repetitive and demotivating resulting in a lowered level of arousal on the part of operators. Stimulation of performance can be achieved by job rotation, productivity bonus schemes (provided the rewards are seen to be fair to all concerned), working in small teams and, in certain cases, counselling of employees in an endeavour to reduce stress.

1.3.5 Stress

As stated above, a stressor causes stress. Stress is commonly associated with how well or badly people cope with changes in their lives – at home, within the family, at work or in social situations. As will be seen in Chapter 2, the causes are diverse, but include:

• Environmental stressors, such as those arising from extremes of temperature and humidity, inadequate lighting and ventilation, noise and vibration and the presence of airborne contaminants, such as dusts, fumes and gases;
• Occupational stressors, associated with too much or too little work, overpromotion or under-promotion, conflicting job demands, incompetent superiors, working excessive hours and interactions between work and family commitments; and
• Social stressors, namely those stressors associated with family life, marital relationships, bereavement, that is, the everyday problems of coping with life.

1.4 The Evidence of Stress

Research in the 1990s by Professor Cox of Nottingham University led to much of the HSE’s current guidance on the subject. Following an independent review of the literature, Professor Cox indicated that there was a reasonable consensus from the literature on psychosocial hazards (or stressors) arising from work which may be experienced as stressful or otherwise, and that these stressors may carry the potential for harm. According to the research there are nine characteristics of jobs, work environments and organizations which were identified as being associated with the feeling of stress and which could damage or impair health.

These characteristics are of two types, context or setting and nature:

1. The context or setting in which the work takes place, i.e.:
   • organizational function and culture
   • career development
   • decision latitude/control
   • role in organization
   • interpersonal relationships
   • the work/home interface.
2. The content or ‘nature’ of the job itself, in particular:
   • task design
   • workload or work pace
   • work schedule.

Further research released by the HSE gives an indication of the scale of the problem of injuries which are stress-related. In the report The Scale of Occupational Stress: The Bristol Stress and Health at Work Study CRR 265/2000 (Smith et al., 2000), it was estimated that there are 5 million workers suffering from high levels of stress at work. Important outcomes of this study were:

• Approximately one in five workers reported high levels of stress arising from work.
• There was an association between high levels of reported stress and specific job factors such as excessive workloads or lack of managerial support.
• There was an association between high levels of reported stress and certain aspects of ill health, such as poor mental health and back pain, together with certain health-related activities such as smoking and excessive alcohol intake.

What came out of this study is that stress is now a foreseeable cause of ill health and that employers need to take this factor into account when considering the means for reducing the running costs of the undertaking.

1.5 Stress as Opposed to Pressure

Not all stress, however, is bad...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction to stress
• 2. The causes of stress
• 3. Responses to stress
• 4. The evaluation of stress
• 5. Coping with stress
• 6. Stress in the workplace
• 7. Managing stress at work
• 8. The civil implications
• 9. The criminal implications
• Appendix: Stress audit
• 10. Executive summary
• Bibliography and further reading
• Index