The new guide provides seven broad categories of management that could influence a person’s sense of well being. These are:
• culture,
• demands,
• control,
• interpersonal relationships,
• change,
• role clarity, and
• individual factors such as training/skills/previous episodes.
Evidence from:
HSG 218.
Comments
While it may be that stress itself is the adverse outcome HSE seeks to address, stress is not in fact an injury. In short, standards for prevention of stress may have only a tenuous link with prevention of injury and as such would arguably be of little relevance to liability assessment.
The experience of stress cannot be objectively measured, nor can it be precisely related to injury outcomes.
The Radar report identifies several opportunities for defence should these guidance notes be used in evidence in claims.
The Radar report is available to subscribers:
HSE expects to produce the first in a series of management standards in 2003.
Our view of the assumptions that will have to be made if the HSE are to produce SMSs. SK 1#10 12
Evidence from:
COM(2000) 466 final/2
This EC guidance focusses on stress and pregnancy. The Radar report reproduces the guidance verbatim and provides extensive critical review of its common law, statutory and ethical issues. SK 1#12 10
Evidence from:
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Publication: Stress at Work
The guidance includes the following: