Step 4: Record your findings – develop and implement action plans

1. Identify the risk factors

   Step 1 - Identify the stress risk factors: understand the Management Standards.

2. Who can be harmed and how

   Step 2 - Decide who might be harmed and how: gather data.

3. Evaluate the risks

   Step 3 - Evaluate the risks: explore problems and develop solutions.

4. Record your findings

   Step 4 - Record your findings: develop and implement action plans.

5. Monitor and review

   Step 5 - Monitor and review: monitor and review action plans and assess effectiveness.

By now you will have consulted your employees, explored areas of concern and taken some initial steps to develop some proposed solutions. It is important that you record your findings – to do this you could produce and disseminate an action plan. An action plan will:

• help you set goals to work towards;
• help you to prioritise;
• demonstrate that you are serious about addressing employees' concerns;
• provide you with something to evaluate and review against.

Develop your action plan/s

Overall action plan

The steering group should be responsible for collating the relevant sections of the various preliminary action plans into an overall action plan for the organisation, or part of the organisation.

The steering group may want to focus on the strategic, organisational actions in developing an overall action plan. You may also find it useful to have sections aimed at different levels of the organisation.

When formulating your action plans it is important to ensure that the actions suggested:

• are given an order of priority;
• have sufficient resources allocated to them;
• are assigned to an individual or function; and
• have an agreed timescale for completion.

You might find the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) acronym useful.

There is no prescribed method or format for an action plan. However, there is a template and worked example [PDF, 31KB] that you may want to use.

You need to agree the action plan with employees, senior management and employee representatives, and also share the final plan with employees.

Implement your action plan/s

To realise any benefits, the agreed and approved overall action plan and any lower level plans should be implemented as planned. Depending on the level of the plans, e.g. board, department or team, actions may be implemented at the appropriate levels within the organisation.

Procedures should be in place to record actions taken, plans developed and to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of specific actions.

You are now ready to move on to Step 5 – Monitor and review.