November 22, 2004—The UK’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched a new approach to help employers work with their employees to manage the risks from work-related stress. The Management Standards, informed by expert research linking job design to ill health, consist of six main factors that contribute to work-related stress: demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change. The standards help large organizations meet their existing duty of care and their duty to assess the risk of work-related stress.
At over 13 million days a year, work-related stress is the biggest occupational cause of working days lost through injury or ill health in the UK, says the HSE. With an average of 29 days lost per case, it costs society about 3.7 billion a year. In 2001-02, over half a million individuals in Britain experienced work-related stress at levels that made them ill.
