Personnel Today
  • OHW+
  • Resources
    • Clinical governance
    • Disability
    • Ergonomics
    • Health surveillance
    • OH employment law
    • OH service delivery
    • Research
    • Return to work and rehabilitation
    • Sickness absence management
    • Wellbeing and health promotion
  • Conditions
    • Mental health
    • Musculoskeletal disorders
    • Blood pressure
    • Cancer
    • Cardiac
    • Dementia
    • Diabetes
    • Respiratory
    • Stroke
  • CPD
  • Webinars
  • Jobs
  • Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • OHW+
  • Resources
    • Clinical governance
    • Disability
    • Ergonomics
    • Health surveillance
    • OH employment law
    • OH service delivery
    • Research
    • Return to work and rehabilitation
    • Sickness absence management
    • Wellbeing and health promotion
  • Conditions
    • Mental health
    • Musculoskeletal disorders
    • Blood pressure
    • Cancer
    • Cardiac
    • Dementia
    • Diabetes
    • Respiratory
    • Stroke
  • CPD
  • Webinars
  • Jobs
  • Personnel Today

StressMental health conditionsLatest NewsWellbeing and health promotion

Offering yoga and meditation alone will not prevent stress

by Robert McGreal 21 Aug 2018
by Robert McGreal 21 Aug 2018

Despite many employers turning to yoga and mindfulness classes to help relieve stress among their workforce, HSE’s Robert McGreal believes employers would see more success by following his organisation’s Management Standards.

It seems that for many, stress has become part of the job. In fact, the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) latest statistics show over half a million workers across the UK have suffered work-related stress, depression or anxiety in 2016/17. What’s more, it is one of the two most commonly reported causes of sickness absence.

Workplace stress

How to prevent workplace stress

How HR can help stressed employees cope

Add to this the estimated loss of 12.5 million working days a year, and you can see why employers are looking for ways to manage work-related stress. For instance, some organisations are offering yoga and in-house meditation classes to help their workforce de-stress, or resilience and mindfulness training to help staff cope with pressure at work. But are these alone actually effective in preventing or managing work-related stress?

Defining ‘stress’

At some point, we have all said “I’m feeling a bit stressed” or “I’m stressed out”, but what do we really mean?

Stress can be defined in a number of ways but at the HSE, we define it as: “the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them”.

Our definition distinguishes between stress and pressure as it is generally accepted the latter can be considered good for us and can act as a motivational force helping us achieve our goals. But it is when this pressure becomes excessive over a prolonged period, with no recovery time, that it can lead to stress, anxiety and depression and physical health conditions including heart problems, stroke, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, and obesity.

Choosing the best approach

It is no surprise that an industry has built up to create solutions to work-related stress. Its focus tends to be on wellbeing; promoting mindfulness and personal resilience; helping people already experiencing problems.

As a result, some organisations are now drawing up wellbeing strategies and encouraging their employees to take up yoga or meditation and to just eat better and exercise as a means to de-stress.

These solutions do not remove the cause of the work-related stress, meaning they cannot solve the wider issues in the workplace. If you teach someone coping techniques but put them back in the same toxic job, the problem will continue to build and continue to produce an adverse reaction. If you remove the cause, you reduce the individual’s stress and can also protect others doing the same work.

The HSE last year launched a health and work programme, the Go Home Healthy campaign, which aims to encourage employers to take health risks as seriously as safety ones.

Addressing work-related stress is one of the campaign’s three priorities and we are proactively targeting employers to raise awareness of their legal duty to assess the risk from work-related stress.

We’re encouraging employers to tackle any risks and also highlight the practical measures they can take to prevent and manage stress in their organisations.

Managing workplace stress

It’s important to engage with staff to find out what and where the issues causing them to feel stressed are and come up with solutions.

To help organisations manage work-related stress, HSE developed its Management Standards approach. These standards cover six key areas of work:

Demands: workload, work patterns and the work environment.

This involves:

  • talking about workload with your team and develop work plans;
  • making plans for avoiding pressure at expected busy times and holiday periods; renegotiating targets if there’s too much work;
  • ensuring everyone understands their role and has the necessary skills and equipment to do it.

Control: how much say the person has in the way they do their work.

This involves:

  • talking about levels of control;
  • allowing staff a level of control over what they do and how. For example, the pace of the work;
  • involving staff in decision making where it affects their role.

Support: the encouragement and resources provided by the organisation, line management, and colleagues.

This involves:

  • providing constructive and supportive feedback;
  • taking into account people’s home situation; being flexible where people need time for hospital appointments and allowing phased return from long-term sickness absence;
  • holding regular team meetings and discussing issues that may be causing problems.

If you teach someone coping techniques but put them back in the same toxic job, the problem will continue to build and continue to produce the ‘adverse reaction’”

Relationships: promoting positive working to avoid conflict and dealing with unacceptable behaviour.

This involves:

  • having a policy for what behaviour is expected which clearly identifies unacceptable behaviour;
  • having a process for reporting such behaviours;
  • being aware of staff that may need additional support, for example lone workers.

Role: whether people understand their role within the organisation.

This involves:

  • providing clear job descriptions and keeping these updated;
  • explaining how each role fits into the organisation and contributes to its goals;
  • avoiding conflicting or competing demands or targets.

Change: how organisational change is managed and communicated.

This involves:

  • consulting with staff at an early stage and keep talking throughout;
  • talking to individuals directly if they will be affected by a decision, getting their views and ideas and explaining timescales;
  • letting staff know the purpose of the change and what it will achieve.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

This approach helps employers focus on the underlying causes of stress and how to prevent them. The key to tackling work-related stress is engaging with the workforce, getting to the root of the issue, identifying the key stressors, and working to agree practical solutions.

Stress can affect anyone at any level in an organisation, so if employees are feeling stressed they should be encouraged to speak to someone – whether that’s a friend, their manager, GP or occupational health team.

Robert McGreal

Robert McGreal is lead work-related stress policy advisor at the Health and Safety Executive.

previous post
Low-income families’ earnings do not cover basic needs
next post
Ministry of Justice pay deal on rocks as unions reject ‘conditions’

2 comments

Andrew Harris 22 Aug 2018 - 9:20 am

The HSE’s tool is strictly a work related tool which completely fails to identify any stress/pressure stemming from home/social/community. Fully appreciate why the HSE don’t include these areas. I do worry for businesses who only adopt this approach they are missing a trick. An employee can be fully in control of their work demands, get on great with their colleagues and respond well to change but they may be experiencing financial difficulties, going through a divorce or be recently bereaved, all of which are likely to cause stress/pressure be missed by this tool. A more holistic tool is required.

Phil Johnson 22 Sep 2018 - 9:21 am

Unfortunately the HSE tool, whilst undoubtedly well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed in that it is designed using “regulatory vision”. That is to say there is a premise that everything can be reduced to simple component factors and that someone is to blame.

No account is taken, for example, of individual vulnerability; scores are attributed as they appear within the tool with no understanding that personal circumstances (bereavement, relationship, children, medical conditions) might have an impact.

The tool is therefore two-dimensional is design and has no meaningful application other than in a situation where the sample size is sufficient to correct for such “noise”.

The point that “yoga and fruit bowls do not wellness make” (probably said by Yoda!) is a fair one, but there must be an appreciation that individuals require individual solutions and that workplaces are not the same.

What is required may be a focus upon interpersonal interactions, which are at the centre of most workplace issues. The issue is that this is far more complicated a problem for a regulatory intervention, thus the problem has been “simplified “ in order to manage it.

Comments are closed.

You may also like

Employers ‘worryingly’ ignorant about stress risk assessments

20 May 2025

Awareness weeks fuel spike in demand for mental...

19 May 2025

Four ways employers can reduce the risk of...

14 May 2025

Healthcare workers prioritise mental health support in new...

12 May 2025

Two-thirds of school leaders suffering mental ill health

6 May 2025

‘Healthy work’ about much more than access to...

28 Apr 2025

Call for better mental health support for NHS...

17 Apr 2025

Computer says no: IT woes giving employees sleepless...

15 Apr 2025

Nearly half did not take even one full...

14 Apr 2025

Quarter feel their employer is ineffective at managing...

11 Apr 2025

  • 2025 Employee Communications Report PROMOTED | HR and leadership...Read more
  • The Majority of Employees Have Their Eyes on Their Next Move PROMOTED | A staggering 65%...Read more
  • Prioritising performance management: Strategies for success (webinar) WEBINAR | In today’s fast-paced...Read more
  • Self-Leadership: The Key to Successful Organisations PROMOTED | Eletive is helping businesses...Read more
  • Retaining Female Talent: Four Ways to Reduce Workplace Drop Out PROMOTED | International Women’s Day...Read more

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • OHW+
  • Resources
    • Clinical governance
    • Disability
    • Ergonomics
    • Health surveillance
    • OH employment law
    • OH service delivery
    • Research
    • Return to work and rehabilitation
    • Sickness absence management
    • Wellbeing and health promotion
  • Conditions
    • Mental health
    • Musculoskeletal disorders
    • Blood pressure
    • Cancer
    • Cardiac
    • Dementia
    • Diabetes
    • Respiratory
    • Stroke
  • CPD
  • Webinars
  • Jobs
  • Personnel Today