Manual handling training is commonplace in many organisations, so why is it that stress and its effects are often met with the stone-age fear that tackling it proactively will create a problem? Jean Brading discusses how to address the issue.
We all buy into the idea of being careful about how we lift heavy things and move equipment around, and we train our staff accordingly. After all, we don’t want to injure ourselves, and we don’t want our people to be off work.
But do we pay as much attention to the idea of enabling ourselves and our colleagues to avoid unnecessary stress? What is unnecessary stress? And what can we do to help line managers to help themselves and their teams?
As we all know by now, stress is the single largest cause of occupational ill health in the UK, accounting for around half of all sick days, at a cost of about £6 million, according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
It has a major impact on individuals and on business. Sources of stress in the HR world itself are plentiful – even the back-office people can suffer. It can affect anyone, from work experience students to top management. Employers have a legal duty to ensure not only physical but also psychological welfare at work. And beware litigation; compensation in stress cases can be unlimited.
Defining stress
So what is stress, really? The HSE defines stress as “the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed on them. It arises when they perceive they are unable to cope with those demands”.
So it’s not an illness, although it can lead to this. It’s all about perception – it will vary from person to person, and employers have a duty to take as much preventative action as possible.
Approaching the subject from a health and safety perspective can be a way of merging the two concepts of stress management and manual handling. It is really all about risk assessment. We can see the parallel by looking at the pages on manual handling on the HSE website. These include the manual handling regulations of 1992, which established a clear hierarchy of measures for dealing with risks from manual handling:
- Avoid hazardous manual handling operations so far as is reasonably practicable
- Assess any hazardous manual handling operations that cannot be avoided
- Reduce the risk of injury so far as is reasonably practicable.
This is not a million miles away from the three-fold mantra and approach to workplace stress management: prevent, measure, reduce.
As the HSE says, the detailed assessment of every manual handling operation could be a major undertaking and might involve wasted effort. Many handling operations, for example the occasional lifting of a small lightweight object, will involve negligible handling risk.
Perhaps this is where we can begin to see the two concepts diverging. There is a difference between manual handling risk assessments and stress assessments: the former is much more quantifiable and measurable than the latter. Stress is about feelings, after all – and therefore isn’t it totally subjective?
We know that sources of stress include the following:
- Job demands – such as workload, work patterns, and the environment
- Control – how much say the person has in the way they do their work
- Support – encouragement and also the resources provided by the organisation and management
- Relationships – eg conflict, bullying
- Role – whether people understand this and there are no conflicting demands
- Change – how organisational change is managed and communicated in the workplace.
This list is a useful basis for investigating the amount of stress prevalent in your company or place of work. What’s more, many of these sources of stress are measurable and quantifiable. So we can use the lessons learned from manual handling, remove the emotive side of the ‘s’ word by calling it something else, for instance ‘well-being’ or ‘health promotion’, and view stress management as just another complex but non-scary thing to do.
Of course there are a lot of people (including some academics) who claim that we have pathologised stress – that there is no such thing really. What we are experiencing when we feel stressed is just a normal reaction that helps us deal with a feeling of pressure.
It’s a bit like bereavement – of course we are going to feel sad when someone has died – but it’s just part of life and given enough time, we can get over it without the need for specialist help.
Thinking ahead
But is this being too cavalier? Would they say also that we have over-medicalised the process of manual handling – of moving desks and chairs and heavy files? Maybe these should be seen as part and parcel of everyday life and not given too much attention. Well, maybe, but the wise employer thinks ahead and tries to maximise the productivity of his or her staff through optimising workplace health.
External help is sometimes needed. Commissioning an outside organisation to carry out a stress audit can help identify hot spots and allow you to address them, for example, is there a particular manager whose style could be improved?
Similarly, training line managers in how to recognise signs of stress (behavioural, physical, mental and emotional), and giving them the information, skills and confidence to deal with it, can work wonders. Of course they need to understand their legal duties, but they should also be encouraged to follow best practice in the proactive management of stress-inducers, and the development of a healthy work culture.
As employers you have a responsibility for the health and safety of staff, including their mental health. Manual handling training is usual in many organisations, so why don’t we try and see stress education in the same way? It doesn’t have to be the scary Pandora’s box that some people think. Being stress-wise can increase attendance rates, foster loyalty, improve the organisation’s reputation, please the customers and avoid costly litigation. What’s stopping you?
Jean Brading is employment services director at Health & Case Management Ltd. For more information, visit www.hcml.co.uk or email jean.brading@hcml.co.uk
