RR693 - Organisational responses to the HSE management standards for work-related stress

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is responsible for health and safety regulation in Great Britain. Their mission is to ensure that risks to people's health and safety from work activities are properly controlled. Working to reduce the causes of work-related stress is a key area for the HSE, due to the high proportion of sickness absence which is attributable to stress-related conditions. As part of their programme of work in this area, the HSE has developed tools and frameworks to assist employers in conceptualising and directly tackling work-related stress. This research was designed to evaluate a particular aspect of this work, the Management Standards for work-related stress, Sector Implementation Plan Phase 1 (or SIP1). SIP1 ran from May 2005 to March 2007 and was designed to implement the HSE's Management Standards for work-related stress in 100 volunteer organisations in the public and finance sectors. It involved HSE and Acas staff offering support to organisations who, in turn, signed up to fully implement the HSE Management Standards approach.

This report provides an overview of the progress of SIP1 and draws together a range of qualitative data, including the experiences of organisations participating in SIP1, from the perspective of managers and staff working in those organisations, and the experiences of HSE and Acas staff supporting participating organisations. The HSE commissioned the Institute for Employment Studies to carry out this work, which took place between September 2007 and June 2008.

This report and the work it describes were funded by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy.

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