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Stress prevention policies

The EC goes on to lay down the following principles for designing a stress prevention strategy at the workplace.

EU Principles of stress prevention

Just as there are many causes, so there is no unique cure for stress. Several principles are important, however in designing a stress prevention strategy at the workplace:

Prevention through improved design

Action must start at the design stage. Facilities, equipment, machinery and tools have to be planned having in mind the potential health impact. Company buying policies need to consider their future impact on employees' wellbeing.

Participation of end users

Technocratic approaches should be avoided. Joint initiatives of managers workers and professionals are the key to success, and top-down management strategies should be replaced by an involvement approach.

Better work organisation

This means greater control and autonomy by workers over their tasks, less monotonous and repetitive jobs with greater social interaction and workgroup support.

A holistic approach to the environment

Both the physical and the social environments should be integrated, while both the working and living environments should also be considered as one in terms of their effects on occupational stress.

An enabling organisational culture

A healthy company should be measured by the quality of working life for its workforce and not only by economic values. The benefits from such an approach should be gauged in the medium and long term, not in the short term.

Attention to workers with special needs

Such as shift workers, migrant workers, older and young workers. The gender dimension also needs to be taken into account.

Economic feasibility

Economic feasibility of the prevention strategy will provide support for the policies and will increase the chance of success and commitment by the organisation (Hygeia 1992).

FIET recommendations on limitation of work-related stress and pressure affecting salaried employees

The International Federation of Commercial, Clerical, Professional, and Technical Employees (FIET) made the following points in 1992 on formulating a policy on occupational stress:

Preventive health protection starts with the way work is organised. Trade union representatives must be involved in a comprehensive and timely fashion in deciding how work is organised and carried out. This involvement also includes staffing requirements (personnel planning), as well as the introduction or modification of personnel information and performance evaluation systems. Work schedules which cause great strain (eg night and shift work) are to be eliminated or reduced. Work is to be organised in such a way that the individual worker can have independence and responsibility. Measures to prevent, alleviate or compensate work-related pressures must not be subordinate to purely economic considerations. Initial and further training opportunities must be offered which take the current and future qualification requirements of employees into consideration. This also includes a role for the trade unions in determining the contents of training courses in order to ensure that preventive health protection is included. Individuals' rights to more self and co- determination at and about work must be revised. Legislators are called upon to take into account the increase of stress related illnesses by further developing social legislation( recognition of stress related illnesses as occupational illnesses). As an accompaniment to the above-named measures, environmental measures at the workplace must be further developed in collective and company agreements.

To FIET's recommendations we would add the following points:

Monotonous, repetitive and isolated work should be reduced to a minimum. Pay should not be linked to individual productivity. Stress prevention should be included in the planning of workplace design, facilities, equipment and machinery. Employers should take account of the combined effect of home and work pressures and provide facilities which relieve those pressures (such as childcare facilities).

With stress becoming increasingly recognised at a priority health and safety issue for trade unions, as well as producing guidance for members (see Part 4, Contact and resources), several UK trade unions have passed conference motions on tackling stress at work. Examples of motions from a civil service union and a teachers' union are given in the box below.

"Conference believes that prevention of work-related stress is a priority. We note that the Health and Safety Executive are committed to issuing Guidance to Employers on the issue which whilst welcomed is not enough. Conference instructs the National Executive Committee to:

Seek from the Civil Service Occupational Health Service a definitive list of stress related illnesses.

Examine work processes amongst CPSA grades with a view to recommending ways of reducing stress.

Publish guidance to employees on how to avoid stress.

Seek work-related stress cases from branches with a view to taking legal action against the Government where such cases are considered strong." (Civil and Public Services Association 1994).

"Conference congratulates those local authorities which have recognised the detrimental effects of the increasing incidence of stress-related illness amongst teachers, and have attempted to tackle the issue positively.

However, Conference notes with alarm the increasing levels of occupational stress in teaching and recognises that major contributory factors include:

Workload pressures

The impact of incessant Government education initiatives

Dictatorial and unsympathetic management styles

Lack of consultation and poor internal communications in schools

Worsening physical conditions of school buildings.

Conference calls upon all LEAs, governing bodies and school managements to accept their responsibility for the health, safety and welfare of their workforce and demands the adoption of management styles which promote a healthy and stress-free working environment.

Conference pledges full support to sick members and calls upon local and negotiating secretaries and health and safety co-ordinators to continue discussions with the relevant bodies with a view to the creation and adoption of stress at work policy statements which start by addressing the causes of stress in teaching before suggesting measures intended merely to ameliorate the condition." (NASUWT 1994).

Selected recommendations of APA/NIOSH panel on work design and stress 1992

Workers should be given the opportunity to control various aspects of their work and workplace. A way of accomplishing such control is through participative decision making. Systems should have optimal response times or optimal response ranges.

Employees should have information in as timely and complete a form as possible. Work assignments should be clear and unambiguous. Organisations should make clear policy statements and apply those policies in a consistent manner. Employees should have easy access to information sources.

Participative decision making should be used to reduce conflict. Job descriptions and task assignments should be clear and stable. Mechanisms should be introduced for the management of conflict. There should be open discussion of potential and real conflicts in organisational settings. Supervisors should adopt supportive styles to reduce conflict. Demands should not exceed resources.

A variety of knowledge, skills and abilities should be required by a job. Workers should receive feedback about performance. Organisations should not pay people to endure boring work. Service work should not be patterned after the assembly line. Feedback should be provided to service workers. Information based jobs should be enlarged rather than reduced in scope.

Amendments to Swedish Working Environment Act 1991

(To include psycho-social hazards in work organisation)

Working conditions are to be adapted to people's physical and psychological conditions. Employees are to be given opportunities of participating in the arrangement of their own work situation, its transformation and development. Technology, the organisation of work and job contents are to be designed so that the employee is not exposed to physical or mental loads that may lead to ill health or accidents. Forms of remuneration and work schedules that involve an appreciable risk of ill health or accidents are not to be used. Strictly controlled or tied work is to be avoided or restricted. Work should afford opportunities for variety, social contacts, co-operation and a connection between individual tasks. Working conditions should provide opportunities for personal and occupational development, as well as for self-determination and professional responsibility.