Employers Must Tackle Workplace Stress, Says IOSH
The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) has warned Britain’s employers to relieve stress on their employees, if they wish to avoid a stress epidemic.
Nattasha Freeman, the President of IOSH said that work-related stress has increased manifold due to the current economic problems. She says that employers have become more and more demanding, while at the same time laying off several people and implementing salary cuts. This has had a bad impact on the employees. She believes that for the well-being of workers, employers must ensure that the workload is kept reasonable despite the recession.
A survey carried out by You Gov reported that in Britain, 44% of employees felt greater pressure in their jobs due to the current economic environment, with two-thirds stating job insecurity as the main reason for increased stress levels. A similar survey reported that nearly 13% of employees find their jobs to be tremendously stressful. The key to good people management is having a sound stress management system in place, which imparts training to managers in necessary skills in this regard; The Certificate in Personnel Practice (CPP) is the country’s most popular HR qualification - contact the experts at Workplace Law Training to find out about their range of accredited CIPD courses.
Ms. Freeman further states that people are forced to remain out of work for a long time due to stress-related health problems, and this creates even bigger problems for them. To prevent this from happening, employers must play an active role in helping their employees deal with stress, and the overall pressure on workers must be relaxed. Stressed individuals must also be encouraged to use appropriate health and medical services to regain health.
Statistics show that almost 442,000 people in Britain believe that their illnesses are caused by work-related stress. Work-related depression and stress were the cause of the loss of 13.5 million working days last year, which shows that the problem has gained immense proportions and urgent action is needed to tackle it.
