A workplace Stress risk assessment is an important and detailed process which will require adequate time and resources, including having access to the right people in your business. The time required will be approximately 5 days depending on the size of your company and breaks down as follows:
1) Scoping meeting leading to survey and pre-report information gathering
This meeting will need to involve 2 or 3 representatives of your business. These people can be decided by yourselves but it is essential that they fully understand the business and how it and the people within it work together.
We will be seeking the following information at this meeting:
- Establish expectations of this Workplace Stress Risk Assessment
- Decide on whether or not the survey element will be anonymous – we suggest that names should be optional but the department/ role information is essential as this will assist with evaluating the data we receive from the staff survey.
- Obtain ALL staff email addresses or alternative methods of contacting those without company email addresses.
- Agree timescale for the staff survey – we suggest a 2 week window. Please be aware of any holidays that may impact this.
- Decide on snapshot in time or general perceptions (see below)
- Agree a response rate to make the survey viable (e.g. 75%). We will check in with you mid-way through the survey window to let you know how many responses we have received.
- What are you expecting to see? We will compare this with the responses and include this in the report
- Are there any staff with protected characteristics under the Equality Act we need to be aware of? What reasonable adjustments are in place for these individuals?
- Sickness/absence data
- Agree who the Risk Assessment team will be following the staff survey
- What existing controls are in place for Workplace Stress? (e.g. Employee Assistance Programmes / flexible working/ Mental Health First Aiders)
- Any open or previous grievances for harassment/ bullying or similar
- Any pending litigation for workplace stress or related issues
We suggest we split the meeting with a break at this point before we move on to discussing your perceptions of how the company performs against the HSE’s management standards:
- Demands
- Control
- Role
- Support
- Relationships
- Change
When we analyse the data from the staff survey we will be able to report on how this compares to your perceptions.
2) Staff Survey
We will email out the staff survey to all the email addresses you have provided.
We can frame this in 2 ways – asking staff how they are feeling at the moment of completion (a “snapshot in time”) or ask them to give their responses based on their experiences over the past 6 months/year (general perceptions)
We will contact you midway through the survey window to let you know your response rate and discuss any action necessary to obtain more responses
Once the survey window has closed we will collate and analyse the data received to give you an accurate picture of your staff experiences of workplace stress. This will be in the form of a report showing a “heatmap” of stress levels across the 6 management standards and across different roles/departments. This data will provide the hazard element of your risk assessment.
3) Risk Assessment production
The production of the your workplace stress risk assessment will be a workshop session involving ourselves and 2 or 3 members of your staff – these can be the same people involved with the scoping meeting or others if you prefer.
Your risk assessment will be produced mainly within the meeting and will cover the hazards identified in your staff survey, existing control measures and additional measures that are required to reduce your risk.
4) Final Presentation
Once we have fully completed the risk assessment document we will present this to you in person and agree any further assistance required / allocation of tasks / time scales to follow up.
We advise that you re-visit the staff survey once your additional control measures have been implemented and embedded, to show progress and improvement.
Please call us on 023 80 894695 to talk this through so we can give you an accurate quote.
