Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council – Stress case study

Who are they?

Doncaster Metropolitan Borough is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, covering 224 square miles and the Council serves a population of approximately 290,000. It is led by one of only 12 Elected Mayors in the country and consists of 6 directorates.

Number of Employees:

14,200

Business Sector:

Local Authority

Why Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council decided to manage stress using the Management Standards:

In September 2007 the Council introduced a revised Stress Management policy to provide managers with support, advice and tools to effectively manage work-related stress. We based this revision on the HSE Management Standards for work related stress and it complemented our existing Managing Attendance Policy.

What did we do?

We established a Corporate Stress Steering Group in November 2007 to implement the Management Standards across the Council, develop an action plan and put together a series of practical solutions to tackle work related stress. Chaired by a Director to ensure senior management buy in, the group’s membership comprised of representatives from Human Resources, Organisational Development, Health & Well Being, Corporate Safety, directorate representatives and Trade Unions.

We used the HSE Indicator Tool as part of the data gathering process. In April 2008, we distributed 3,500 questionnaires at random to a sample of staff throughout the council including schools staff. The Council’s Employee Survey complemented this and helped to identify further stress related issues.

Each directorate received its results from both surveys to discuss with staff, before putting actions in place. Some directorates opted to feedback to managers and present findings to their staff.

We also organised a number of focus groups, using the results from the Employee Survey as discussion points.

Finally, a few smaller teams across the council held their own meetings to concentrate findings at a lower level.

What we found

Following findings from both surveys and discussions, we put a number of directorate corporate actions in place:

The Leisure and Culture service:
- an open door policy to encourage staff to discuss any issues.
- a work shadowing programme to enable staff to increase their knowledge of each others roles and responsibilities.
- weekly staff training sessions on teamwork and relationship building to promote mutual respect between employees.
- staff rotas and working patterns are now regularly reviewed to accommodate each employee’s circumstances where possible to address work life balance issues.
Adult Services delivered a Managing Attendance ‘master class’ to approximately 80 people as one way of tackling the high sickness absence figures within the directorate.
All senior managers in the Strategic Housing Service area benefited from a presentation on stress management. Managers and staff have also attended stress management training.

On a corporate level:
- we communicated and implemented a corporate survey action plan from staff feedback. It also covered bullying and harassment.
- Stress Management at Work intranet page with advice on coping and dealing with stress at work and details of available support across the organisation.
- We kept our staff up to date on a regular basis through articles in the Council staff magazine, Spotlight, giving helpful tips and hints for both managers and employees.
- Two training courses re-introduced for managers and employees to raise awareness of dealing with and managing stress in a better way. We also developed two e-learning modules for all staff and managers.
- We continue to brief our managers to support their understanding of the Managing Attendance policy and in particular, how to deal with stress related absence.

Challenges

We originally found it difficult to ensure enough responses to the stress survey. We received 869 completed surveys, resulting in an overall response rate of 24.83%. The number of surveys returned represented approximately 5% of the workforce at that time. To ensure a better response rate and more robust evidence base, we included stress-related questions in our Employee Survey and made it available on-line. We also provided paper copies and promoted the survey more through senior and lower level management. Individual directorates also conducted their own stress surveys.

We faced further challenges trying to implement the action plans across the organisation. We asked directorates to add service specific stress management actions to the corporate plan, but they did not always fully engage with this. On reflection, we decided to re-launch the Corporate Stress Action Plan as a good practice guide representing best management practice. Directorates then addressed the most important issues.

It was sometimes difficult to get full directorate representation on the Corporate Stress Steering Group. This meant we were unable to implement fully the Management Standards throughout the organisation. The Corporate Leadership Team decided that we needed a change of approach to improve responsibility across the organisation.

Learning from our challenges: a change of approach

In November 2009, we disbanded the Corporate Stress Steering Group, putting the Corporate Leadership Team in charge to drive forward the stress agenda. We put the following actions in place:

A new stress management framework in which everyone is aware of their roles and responsibilities. We also request a regular update from each directorate, outlining their current approach to managing stress.
We introduced a stress risk assessment and factsheet to act as a diagnostic tool for individuals. It also helps managers and employees pinpoint the causes of work related stress and enable them to agree actions.
We now have a Stress Management Good Practice Guide, as commended by the HSE and, based around the Management Standards.
We have also held a number of stress/wellbeing events.

How has this helped?

The number of stress related sickness days lost has reduced by 13,194 from 39,699 days for 2008/09 to 26,505 days for 2009/10.
More managers and staff take advantage of training and development opportunities. This has given employees the opportunity to gain new skills and raise their awareness of stress management.

What next?

A review of the Managing Attendance policy and Stress Management policy is to take place later this year.
A further Employee Survey is planned for November 2010 where stress related questions will be included to help us gather further comparative data.