The HSE is promoting its revised online stress-management tools
throughout March, with human-resources managers and directors the focus
of an awareness campaign.
The regulator says it will soon be writing to the chief executive of
every large company in the UK and their HR managers to help them combat
stress in their workplace. An online advertising campaign will also be
launched to warn companies about the costs of work-related stress, and
how it can be tackled.
The public sector is a particular
concern, as work-related stress, depression, or anxiety accounts for 60
per cent of sickness absence here, compared with an all-industry
average of 39 per cent. The sector lost 1.8 million days during 2006/07
as a result of this type of mental ill health.
Continuing a
similar format to the last two years, the HSE’s work programme for
2009/10 will see inspectors concentrate on follow-up inspections of
organisations where initial contact has already been made. The
reasoning for this approach is to allow the Executive to collect data
on how effective the implementation of stress-management systems has
been in helping organisations deal with the issue.
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
