A hospital in the West Midlands has launched a programme des-igned to tackle
employee stress.
The scheme led by the Good Hope Hospital’s OH department will see an
"occupational stress audit" being carried out in each department over
the next year.
Managers and staff will be asked to fill in an anonymous confidential
questionnaire aimed at finding out the areas where they feel most under
pressure.
The results will be analysed, discussed with staff and managers and then
worked in action plans.
Managers will have full-day training courses with half-day sessions for
other staff.
Occupational health manager Lynn Holland said, "A lot of stress in the
workplace comes down to very basic things like how staff communicate with each
other and body language, but the difficulty comes in recognising this.
"If we can train managers to recognise their own pressures and those of
their staff, we can teach them to deal with it."
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The initiative will also work to help people who have been forced to take
time off work because of work pressure regain their confidence.
Earlier this year the trust identified the need to manage workplace
pressures as being oneof its key priorities by conducting its first-ever staff
attitudes survey.
