ABSTRACT
In 2000 The Health and Safety Commission (HSC), the body responsible for health and safety matters in Great Britain (GB), set targets for the overall reduction in the burden of occupational health including that of the contribution from work-related stress. As a result, a 10-year priority programme was devised to meet these targets. A key part of the intervention programme was the development of the concept of a series of “Management Standards” that would allow organizations to both gauge their performance and to facilitate continuous improvement. The Management Standards (MS) themselves each consist of both a desirable “state to be achieved” for individual stressors and a process by which organizations can assess and manage their exposure to such stressors. This work is described earlier in Mackay et al. (2004) and Cousins et al. (2004).
