Meeting with Health and Safety Manager, 30 March 2006
‘The indicator tool at the heart of HSE’s Management Standards approach is simple to understand and relatively easy to use. ‘
It’s been hard work….but that will pay dividends when planning and running future surveys. ‘
‘Have a look at the help and advice on work-related stress that HSE has to offer – it’s free!’
Sheffield College, a Further Education (FE) college offering a range of academic and vocational courses, has three main sites in central Sheffield (Castle, Hillsborough & Norton). The College currently has approximately 10,000 students and 1500 full-time equivalent staff. The College is due to run the HSE Management Standards for work related stress indicator tool amongst staff at its Norton campus immediately after the Easter holidays 2006.
The College has a well established Health & Safety Committee structure in place, with representatives drawn from the senior management team, trade unions and staff.
That Committee had already discussed the issue of work-related stress, including the pilot version of HSE’s Management Standards. Around 5-6 years ago it tasked a Working Group with using the Standards as the basis for developing a process for managing individual cases of work-related stress amongst College staff.
The Committee was a readily available forum to decide whether to join the Management Standards Implementation Phase One ( SIP1) project. Once the decision to join had been taken, it was relatively easy for the Committee to arrange the establishment of a tripartite Steering Group, chaired by a Management Board Member as Project Champion, to oversee implementation of the SIP1 project at the College.
The main ways used to communicate with staff: are email newsletter; straplines on payslips, message cascade via trade union representatives; and paper based mailshot.
Experience of other internal communications at the College indicates that email is good for one way communication, but doesn’t illicit a great deal of feedback. Paper based mailshots result in a much higher return rate. Consequently, the latter approach will be used when running the HSE indicator tool.
The principal source used by the College has been sickness absence data, reports from the Employee Assistance Program provider, and HR case work.
The College plans to run the Management Standards process at its Norton campus only in academic year 2005/06, principally because its other two sites are just starting/finishing major re-building programmes that the Steering Group considers may skew the results. These other sites will start using the SMS in 2006/07.
Subject to the results of the indicator tool survey , there are plans to run focus groups at Norton, based on the Health & Safety Committee structure already in place at that site, in the summer term 2006.
Work-related stress issues are already monitored and evaluated via the Health & Safety Manager’s regular written reports to the College-wide Health & Safety Committee and Organisational Development Committee. The College plans to use a similar reporting mechanism for the SIP1 project, with the Health & Safety Manager reporting to the SIP1 Steering Group.
The SIP1 project has cemented already good working relationships between senior management, trade union representatives and staff at the College by providing a forum (the SIP1 Project Steering Group) to discuss issues of common concern about both work-related stress and also other matters.
The main thing the College would have done differently would have been to arrange for the start of Management Standards implementation to coincide with the beginning of the academic year, rather than half way through it. The timing of some potential delays to the implementation of the Management Standards process, for example Ofsted inspections, can’t be predicted, but others, such as staff being away during College holidays, can be.
The indicator tool at the heart of HSE’s Management Standards approach is simple to understand and relatively easy to use both by those administering the survey and those participating in it. There are about the right number of categories to cover all the main issues of work-related stress, without making the survey unnecessarily time consuming to complete or administer. The associated user manual on the website is straightforward to use.
Ironically, the indicator tool is also one of the greatest weaknesses of the Management Standards process in the English FE college context, primarily because it requires a certain amount of locally based administrative support to run it. Such local support is not always readily available in FE colleges in England.
The College’s greatest challenge has been to try and maintain momentum in meeting the deadlines associated with SIP1 project implementation within the context of the academic year. College holidays have limited when some of the main elements of the SMS process, for example the indicator tool survey and focus group stages, can be run.
See 6 above.
The College has not done any formal quantification of the resources and associated costs committed to the SIP1 project to date. The Health & Safety Manager considers that at the early stages of the project the resources required to deliver it have probably been drawn disproportionately on the Health & Safety Department. He regards this as reasonable given that his Department has primary responsibility within the College for administering the the project.
Plan ahead with Management Standards implementation, particularly if you are an education institution where you have the added challenge of working within the confines of the academic year.
Tell staff what your proposing to do with the Management Standards approach before you do it.
Have a look at the help and advice on work-related stress that HSE has to offer – it’s free! There will however be cost implications with regard to implementing and resourcing the project.
In the English FE Colleges context, giving presentations at the AOC annual conference and the AOC regional health & safety group meetings would be most effective. Seminar presentations have the particularly benefit of providing opportunities for those considering a certain course of action to ask questions of those who have already done so.
The College considers that participation in the SIP1 project has been very worthwhile. Before the advent of the Management Standards there were considerable challenges in trying to address issues associated with work-related stress, with no guarantee that identified solutions were correct. The Standards have helped significantly in meeting many of these challenges.
The Management Standards process has given the College confidence that it does not require specialist support throughout the process of undertaking a risk assessment for work-related stress. Rather, it needs the appropriate resources and structures to do so, calling on specialist help and support as necessary in the course of that process.
It’s been hard work gearing up for the first Management Standards indicator tool survey, but that will pay dividends when planning and running future surveys.