ABSTRACT
Mental ill health in the workplace is estimated to cost UK employers £6.2 billion each year in lost working days. This is of concern to employers and employees alike, recently highlighted by the HEBS needs assessment study of workplace health promotion, which identified stress as a major issue.
A Health and Safety Executive review (1993) of the stress literature proposed the incorporation of stress within the framework of the assessment and control cycle already introduced to minimise physical health and safety risks. This was supported by the HERS study that identified health and safety as the predominant health-related culture within Scottish workplaces. It is therefore appropriate to include stress control with other health and safety issues.
The Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) had already developed a risk assessment approach entitled the Organisational Stress Health Audit (OSHA) and the feasibility of this was tested in the pilot study commissioned by HEBS.
The OSHA is a three tiered approach. Stage One identifies the presence or absence of work-related stressors and opportunities for risk reduction. Stage Two focuses on investigating areas of particular concern identified in Stage One. Stage Three involves assessing the extent to which recommendations in Stage One and Two have been implemented and their effectiveness.
A database of known causes of work-related stress was compiled from the scientific literature and this formed the background to the OSHA. The OSHA is centred on semi-structured interviews with representatives of all levels and functions within the organisation. The line of questioning follows those known causes of work-related stress in the database.
156This paper presents the background to this organisational approach, its feasibility in controlling stress across different types of organisations and future plans for development of the approach.
The views presented are those of the researchers and not the commissioning body.
