The HSE’s new guidance sends a clear message that the body is committed to treating mental health as a legal health and safety breach. But what should employers take from this guidance? (see feature here).
Victoria Makepeace, Head of Health & Safety at HR consultancy Neathouse Partners recommends that small and medium sized businesses should “be embedding simple, scalable actions, such as regular check-ins, clear communications around expectations, and early support signs for staff showing signs of strain”.
As for larger corporations, she advises a “data driven approach using employee surveys and absenteeism trends to target interventions and report transparently on mental health and wellbeing outcomes”.
Deloitte is ‘HSE ready’
Deloitte UK, which has published reports on what poor mental health costs UK employers (£51 billion), says it’s confident it’s HSE-ready.
“We’ve always been committed to providing robust support and fostering a culture where discussing life’s challenges is openly accepted,” says Daisy Black, Deloitte UK Director of Inclusion and Wellbeing.
As concrete examples of what Deloitte is doing, she gives its Wellness Advisory Team which “provides comprehensive support, from facilitating workplace adjustments to specialist health referrals” aimed to provide solutions that fit all employees.
Difference between large and small employers
Sara Henna Dahan, compliance manager at VinciWorks, expands on the differences between large and small employers, saying “for larger organisations, the risk is assuming that central policies are enough and for smaller employers the risk is thinking that a more informal approach will do”.
But in both cases it comes back to being able to prove that you have identified stress risks, put effective controls in place, involved staff and reviewed whether those controls are actually working.
“The University of Birmingham case matters because the HSE found that the university did not have appropriate arrangements in place for managing workplace stress and could not demonstrate that it was managing the risks associated with excessive workloads,” she says.
“The inspections followed a complaint from the university’s UCU branch, which said it had been raising concerns about excessive workloads and burnout for more than three years.”
No brainer
Dr Carolyn Yeoman says that if you correctly use the HSE Management Standards Approach then you will comply with HSE requirements and ‘tick the compliance box’. However, the HSE itself states that the Management Standards Approach is not the only approach that can be used to achieve compliance.
The ISO 45003 psychosocial risk management framework is one such approach, so organisations could choose to tap into this existing framework, rather than create a new one specifically to satisfy HSE requirements.
“It’s a no brainer when you think about it,” says Dr Yeoman. “ISO gives you the framework to consider psychosocial risk at a wider level, with a potentially bigger impact whilst also satisfying the requirements outlined in the new HSE guidance.”
More clarity in future
While the HSE’s new guidance brings much welcome clarity to what’s required by employers, there are still some questions over what ‘good’ looks like, especially from one industry to another, and one company size to another.
Thomas Blakey, Head of Occupational Health and Wellbeing at National Grid, who chairs a utility sector group for the HSE, believes that there will be more clarity from the HSE on this in the near future.
“We’ll start to see what the HSE sees as best practice in different organisations. There is a gap there at the moment because, for example, if you ask us what we do at National Grid, that will be very different from what an investment bank does. So we need to think of best practice in different ways.”
He’s hopeful that over the next 18 months we’ll start to see “clear demonstrations” of what the HSE means by good practice, as well as what they want to see more of in different organisations.
This HSE guidance, alongside the Keep Britain Working Review and the updates to the Employee Rights Act all show that momentum is building around employee health and wellbeing and the need for it to be taken seriously as a business-critical risk.
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