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May/June 2023 issue

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Managing the wellbeing-stress-mental health continuum

Open-access content Monday 18th December 2017
From the archive:  Just so you know, this article is more than 3 years old.

The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) issued Stress Management Standards in 2004 as a framework for employers to check whether they were putting workers under unreasonable pressure and depriving them of the support and resources that would allow them to work efficiently.

In the global recession at the end of the decade, the corporate interest in stress waned as many organisations adjusted to budget cuts by retrenching to safety management.

As economic skies have lightened, the issue has crept back up the agenda, this time accompanied by a broader concern about worker physical wellbeing, driven by increasingly worrying data confirming what we always half-knew: poor diet and lack of exercise correlate with higher sickness absence.

Public campaigns to end the informal code of silence about mental health problems have also created a following wind. Consciousness is spreading that mental illness is no more a sign of weakness than a physical ailment and should not define those coping with it in the eyes of friends, family and colleagues.

Both the recent Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employment and the government's unqualified acceptance of its recommendations reflect the growing belief that poor wellbeing, work stress and mental health conditions are all parts of the same spectrum and that poor management of its elements are contributors to the UK's problem of low productivity.

As a result of the government endorsement of the review, the HSE will now be tasked with developing new guidance that goes beyond its previous functional approach which focused on work stress in isolation.

Good thing too. With a holistic approach to mental health comes the acceptance that employees have home stressors, whether emotional or material, that reduce their tolerance of whatever they have to cope with in working hours.

If we see employees as containers likely to come part-filled with these kinds of domestic concerns, it becomes more important to keep the levels of demand on them within practicable limits to avoid stress levels overflowing, leading to sick leave. (One day we may take the same expanded view of exposure to physical agents such as diesel fumes.)

This approach does not come close to trying to wrap anyone in cotton wool. Instead it pushes organisations to tackle factors inimical to good performance, such as bullying and underresourcing.

The broad view recognises that employers cannot shrug off stress -- as the HSE did in 2007 -- by saying it is multifactorial, with non work contributors, so it is not our job to control. Instead, as the Stevenson/Farmer report acknowledged, it should be managed well precisely because there is a non-work component to the hazard that we cannot easily contain.

The Stress Management Standards were a good resource for early attempts to tackle the problem. Whatever the HSE does to build on them now will be welcome.

You may also be interested in...

 Why OSH need not be a second career

Monday 18th December 2017
One UK university, for example, invites its students to consider these factors: skills, interests, values and motivations, personality, contacts, qualifications and location. Are you a communicator or an organiser? it asks them. Creative or scientific? Money-oriented or into helping others? Outgoing or cautious?
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 The Safety Anarchist: relying on human expertise and innovation, reducing bureaucracy and compliance

Wednesday 13th December 2017
Rating: His latest book offers inspiration from the brighter side of anarchism, encouraging the reader to reconsider human autonomy and self-determination, appreciate the pride of workmanship and visualise a world of work free from the coercion to comply with corporate policy and ridiculous rules in which the workers themselves had no say.
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 Simplicity in safety investigations

Monday 11th December 2017
Rating: Long makes a virtue of this “recombinant innovation”, making new techniques by combining existing ones.
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 X is for expertise* (and Y is for you)

Thursday 7th December 2017
Is there a difference between “competence” and “expertise”? Should we present ourselves to our colleagues as experts, with a ready solution to their problems, or just as competent peers who can provide support?A typical dictionary definition of an expert is “a person who is very knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area” and definitions of the noun “expertise” all share that pairing of knowledge or skill. The use of “or” is perhaps surprising; can you be an expert with only knowledge but no skill, or skill but no knowledge?
Open-access content

 W is for worker involvement

Tuesday 21st November 2017
Clause 5.4 of ISO 45001 gives detailed instructions on measures that would show compliance with the participation requirements. These include making available the time, training and resources necessary for participation, and giving workers access to safety and health information. Equally important is the onus on top management to find out why people do not participate and then to remove the barriers. A note adds that barriers may include “failure to respond to worker inputs or suggestions”.
Open-access content

 Clocking on

Wednesday 13th December 2017
If you didn’t know what Dr Michael Hastings does for a living, his desk at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (MRC) provides some clues. Academic papers plus a plastic model of the human brain suggest that he’s a neuroscientist. But the mimosa sapling is the real give away, because Hastings studies the body clock and mimosa has a seminal place in our understanding of circadian rhythms.
Open-access content
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