Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Management standards for stress
Work-related stress is a major cause of occupational ill health. That means sickness absence, high staff turnover and poor performance in your organisation. HSE’s Management Standards will help you, your employees and their representatives manage the issue sensibly and minimise the impact of work-related stress on your business. In fact, it might help you improve organisational performance.
The Management Standards represent a set of conditions that reflect high levels of health, well being and organisational performance. Following the advice on this site will enable you to identify the gap between your current performance and these conditions. It will also help you to develop your own solutions to close this gap.
This advice is aimed at anyone with responsibility for tackling work-related stress in your organisation. That might be the person who has responsibility for co-ordinating your stress risk assessment, human resources managers, health and safety officers, trade union representatives or line managers.
The process outlined here is not law, but following it can help you meet
your legal duties. This advice does not replace HSE’s existing stress
guidance pack ‘Real Solutions, Real People’. It provides further
practical information, advice and tools on how to assess the risks from
work-related stress in your organisation.
The International Stress Management Association has produced a leaflet showing how employees can work with their employers to tackle work-related stress using the Management Standards approach. The leaflet is supported by HSE, Acas, TUC and the CIPD.
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