How to deal with stress

Why tackling stress in your business is important

The costs of neglecting stress in your business can be high. Stress is sometimes overlooked as a health and safety problem by small businesses, but reducing stress need not cost a lot of money and the benefits can be significant.

Stress can cause many workplace problems, including:

• a fall in your productivity and that of your employees
• poor decision-making
• an increase in mistakes which may in turn lead to more customer complaints
• increased sickness absence
• high staff turnover
• poor workplace relations

Stress often has a cumulative effect. If one member of staff becomes ill through stress, it places added pressure on those covering for them.

A stressed manager may find it difficult to create a positive working environment and monitor stress levels in others.

It's also important to tackle any stress you face as an owner-manager or self-employed person. This is often caused by working excessively long hours or from a feeling of isolation.

Your legal duty on stress

Employers have a legal duty to ensure employees aren't made ill by their work. This includes taking steps to prevent physical and mental illness brought about by stress.

You must assess the risks of stress caused, or made worse, by work as part of your overall health and safety risk assessment. 

One of the best ways of assessing stress levels in your business is to carry out a stress audit. See the page in this guide on how to assess whether stress is a problem for your business.

Failure to take action could leave you open to a compensation claim from workers who fall ill due to work-related stress.

You can read about work-related stress on the HSE website.

Subjects covered in this guide

• Introduction
• Why tackling stress in your business is important
• Common causes of stress at work
• Assess whether stress is a problem for your business
• Identify signs of stress in employees
• Tackle the causes of workplace stress
• External causes of stress
• Stress-management training and counselling
• Dealing with your own stress
• Here's how we tackle stress to create a healthier working environment

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