Dealing with individual concerns

Your surveys and focus groups may identify that some individuals are experiencing problems that the majority of employees are not. You have a duty of care to protect the health and well-being of these individuals, too.

It is essential that you develop ways for employees to raise their concerns. These could include:

• create an environment where employees are encouraged to talk, both formally and informally, to their manager or another person in their management chain;
• remind employees that they can speak to trade union representatives, health and safety representatives, or human resources personnel;
• encourage employees to talk to someone in the organisation or seek advice from occupational health advisors, or their GP if they are concerned about their health;
• introduce mentoring and other forms of co-worker support;
• provide employee assistance (counselling) services.

There is information available in the managing work related stress sections on how you can respond to individual employee concerns.