Step 3: Evaluate the risks – Explore problems and develop solutions

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.

The primary aim of this step is to take the output from the previous step, data collection and analysis, and discuss the conclusions with a representative sample of employees and work with them to develop solutions.

Data analysis can only provide a broad indication of the underlying issues affecting the health of employees. If you want to know what is affecting employees you have to ask them!

"Peer support showed as a problem on the staff survey but not in focus groups!"
NHS Trust

Read more about evaluating the risks

How you choose to evaluate the risks will be dictated by your organisational structure and the way you have chosen to follow the Management Standards approach.

Why focus groups are helpful

Focus groups can be helpful because:

• issues highlighted as important in Step 2 may not turn out to be the most important issues for your employees;
• even when the data appear to suggest clear hot spots, it is important to check this out with your employees;
• new issues often emerge during these group discussions. This may reflect more recent changes in working conditions (e.g. as a result of organisational change). However, it can also be because group techniques such as focus groups allow employees to discuss, analyse and articulate issues in ways that they may not previously have had the opportunity to do.

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Link problems to solutions using focus groups

Focus groups, or similar discussion groups, also allow you to explore possible solutions to problems.

It is critical that your employees and their representatives participate in this process as:

• they are often closest to the issues identified;
• they may know better what will work and what will not work in practice;
• they are more likely to help ensure the success of any agreed actions if they have taken an active part in developing and agreeing solutions.

Groups of between six and ten people work best, but the numbers of your employees involved in this stage will depend on the size of your organisation and local circumstances.

During the focus group or discussion group, you may find it useful to consider the 'States to be achieved' of the Management Standards, and whether this good practice is actually happening in your organisation. You may find that this can help provide structure to some of your discussions.

For further information on setting up and running focus groups see 'How to organise and run focus groups' [PDF, 170KB]

If you use your own approaches to consultation with staff and their representatives and not focus groups, it is important that all stakeholders (management, employees and their representatives) are represented in any consultation process and have a route into any forum used.

Find more information on how to develop solutions

Develop focus group action plans

• A key output from the focus group would be a proposed or preliminary action plan, containing suggestions and recommendations for action at different levels of the organisation.

Since there are likely to be a number of different preliminary action plans produced by different focus groups, it is likely that these will have to be reviewed and turned into an action plan for the organisation. For more information on this see Step 4 – Developing an action plan.

Communicate the results

You should keep management, employees and their representatives updated as you go through this process. For example, it is a good idea to share with focus group participants the outcome of the focus groups soon afterward.

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Deal with individual concerns

Each of the six Management Standards requires that you have systems in place to deal with individual concerns.

"Feeling is that despite difficulties the focus group approach has worked well and feedback from staff has been very good."
Government Department

"What would you do differently? Realise that improvements are driven by 'bottom-up' methods of change."
Sandwell Local Authority

Read more about exploring problems and developing solutions

You are now ready to move on to Step 4, Record your findings.