In good keeping with Stress Awareness Month’s (April’s) theme of taking action and ‘being the change’, there’s much going on when it comes to making progress embedding health and wellbeing as business as usual.
There’s Keep Britain Working’s vanguard sprints insights update published here, the new requirements of the Employee Rights Act and the Health and Safety’s Executive’s Principle fresh guidance on spot checks. (Not to mention our own Leaders’ Lunch on 11th June hosted by Visa Europe).
But this latter update from the HSE is potentially the most significant as it’s the first time that the governing body has set out so explicitly what it expects of employers.
Clear message from the HSE
According to legal experts that specialise in this area – like Victoria Makepeace, Head of Health & Safety at HR consultancy Neathouse Partners – it sends a clear message that the HSE is determined to treat mental health as a legal health and safety breach:
“The HSE’s decision to increase monitoring of workplace stress management highlights just how seriously psychological wellbeing is now being treated as part of employers’ health and safety duties. We welcome this focus. Stress isn’t just a wellbeing issue, it’s a productivity and compliance matter.”
There may not (yet) be much case law on actions taken against employers regarding stress but that looks set to change. Notably, this new guidance is released amid Birmingham University’s high profile investigation, following the ‘notice of contravention’ served by the HSE in December, marking a new precedent.
New guidance gives employers vital clarity
HSE Inspector Jenny Skeldon created a video explaining what the body will be looking for when it inspects businesses, both large and small.
In the video, she outlines what the HSE will be looking at during their inspections, including Occupational Health data, sickness absence data, and speaking to managers, employees and trade unions.
The video also covers:
- The six key areas of stress: Demands, Control, Support, Relationships, Role, and Change
- How inspections follow the Plan, Do, Check, Act approach to managing risks
- Practical leadership actions using the Five R’s: Reach out, Recognise, Respond, Reflect, Make it Routine
You can see the video in context on the HSE’s information and access tools, guidance, and real-world examples, on HSE’s Working Minds pages.
Dr Carolyn Yeoman, a chartered business psychologist, who worked at the HSE for two years, welcomes this clarity because, according to her, one of the major reasons employers haven’t embraced the guidance before now is that they haven’t known how to:
“A lot of my clients read the guidance and say to me ‘ok, we’ve read the guidance but how do we actually do it?’ The new guidance makes this a lot clearer.”
Has the HSE got ‘teeth’?
Historically, another reason that many organisations haven’t made a start is because they haven’t felt that the HSE genuinely had the teeth or commitment to follow through on spot checks. This may have been the case in the past but this guidance suggests that there has been a real shift from the HSE more recently.
The Birmingham University case has made many organsations sit up and take notice.
Dr Yeoman also points to a very recent case, when the High Court ordered the Jockey Club to pay nearly £1million to an employee for breaching its duty of care and causing a psychiatric injury:
“This wasn’t the HSE, but it has raised the profile of stress again and sends a clear message that organisations need to get a real handle on their employees mental health risks and start looking at root causes not just applying sticking plasters. For too long the UK hasn’t been taking this seriously enough. Too many employers are still taking what I call a ‘bikes and bananas’ approach to wellbeing, rather than a strategic evidence-based one.”
Employers are taking action
However, Dr Yeoman is starting to see a change in attitude across businesses as a whole, with more employers realising they need to take strategic action on workplace stress. Nevertheless, she does have some doubts about the HSE’s capacity in terms of resource.
She’s not alone, with others also echoing this worry.
But, even if the HSE doesn’t have enough resource to do widespread spot checks, the question for employers is: are you willing to take that risk?
Birmingham University reputational damage
After all, a single complaint can be enough to trigger an investigation if it meets HSE’s criteria of being a credible concern regarding a risk of harm, or breach of law.
Seeing what Birmingham University has gone through in terms of reputational damage has shot the topic to the top of the C-suite’s agenda. It’s prompted conversation about treating stress as a business risk (rather than just a wellbeing risk) with leaders at a more elevated level than ever before.
This is particularly important given that many, like Dr Yeoman, believe that “at the moment the biggest single stressor other than workload is poor leadership”. It’s also crucial because the HSE’s Skeldon specifically talks about the need for senior management to be “proactive, visible in their commitment and involve employees in their solutions” in her new video guidance.
Next step: working out good practice
“The coverage of Birmingham University, in media and all over LinkedIn, has helped because leaders can clearly see the consequences of not taking this seriously,” says Thomas Blakey, Head of Occupational Health and Wellbeing at National Grid, who chairs a utility sector group for the HSE to look at what best practice looks like for the sector.
“It doesn’t even have to go to the point of an enforcement notice for it to reflect badly on an organisation and affect key things like attracting talent, which can be challenging at the moment.”
While he takes on board concerns about whether the HSE has the necessary teeth or resource to keep momentum going, he doesn’t believe this case is a one off. In fact, he predicts that “we’ll see a business, say in the FTSE 100, that is likely to have contact on their stress management approach over the next 18 months”.
Momentum increasing
Other commentators agree adding, too, that they anticipate the HSE stress team size will grow in the near future.
As for commitment to the cause, from his experience so far chairing the HSE utilities group, Blakey sees this both from the HSE and his industry, other utility companies as well as suppliers.
“The HSE team regularly gives us updates about the direction they are planning to go, and I can definitely say that the utility sector as a whole is taking this issue seriously. From what I can see, the HSE’s momentum is only going to increase more and more.”
You might also like:
