The professional services sector is recognised as being a high stress environment, with employees making fast paced critical decisions and performing at their best for their clients. However, the pursuit for excellence can come at a cost if not correctly managed. In this article, Rebecca Forster and Joanne Cracknell explore the moral legal and financial reasons for managing stress and mental health at work by addressing why it makes good business sense, the impact of not taking action and how organisations can prevent harm and promote employee wellbeing.
First, we need to acknowledge that we all have mental health. Chronic or sustained stress can be harmful to both mental and physical health and can contribute to physical and mental illness including musculoskeletal issues, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, anxiety disorders and depression.
Needless to say, we live in a society where it is morally unacceptable for people to be made unwell by their work, yet we may be exposing our employees to working environments and designing jobs that are hazardous to health. Considering also the suicide statistics, 2023 showed deaths by suicide were at the highest levels seen since 1999[1]. Simply preventing harm and promoting worker wellbeing is the right thing to do.
From a financial perspective, consider some of the risk and challenges your business faces:
Now consider that during the initial stress response, oxygen is diverted away from our brains to our muscles to prepare us to ‘fight or flee.’ The stress response exists to keep us safe and prepare us to face danger and has physical and psychological symptoms, for example finding it difficult to focus, concentrate, motivate ourselves and be amiable to our colleagues and clients. Have you ever considered how stress and poor mental health could be contributory factors to these and other performance management issues in your business?
Then there are the regulatory and legislative obligations upon organisations. Employers have a duty to take reasonably practicable steps to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of their employees under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974[2] . This includes psychological, as well as physical health and safety. Doing what is reasonably practicable involves balancing the level of a particular workplace risk – whether physical or psychological – against the sacrifice involved in implementing measures necessary for averting the risk, whether in terms of money, time, or trouble.
The Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999[3] (the Regulations) impose a requirement to risk assess. To identify hazards to health, assess the risks and put in place preventive and protective measures to control those risks. A documented organisational risk assessment is required for all organisations with five or more employees.
The Regulations also require organisations to provide information, training, and instruction to employees around matters pertaining to their health and safety.
There are also considerations under the Equality Act 2010[4] . A mental health condition can be considered a disability if it has a long-term effect on a person’s normal day-to-day activity. If a condition lasts or is likely to last for 12 months, it is considered ‘long term’ meaning reasonable adjustments may need to be considered.
Some of the key actions needed to prevent harm and promote worker wellbeing include:
Ask anyone working in the legal, financial, and professional services sector ‘what impacts you negatively at work?’
It’s likely the answer will lie within six different areas, the same areas the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identify as causing work related stress if not well managed (the HSE Management Standards)[5] :
We are all unique and are challenged by different things due to our genetics, life experiences, environments and unique job roles and industries. That means in order to understand employee views in each of these areas (identify the hazards) we need to involve our employees; through employee listening exercises, surveys, such as the HSE stress indicator tool and conversations with line managers and HR personnel who are appropriately trained. While our managers, supervisors and HR teams are not diagnosticians, counsellors, or therapists, they do need to be able to have conversations about mental health, recognise distress and take action to support individuals in an empathic way. Additionally existing sources of information like absence data, Private Medical Insurance (PMI) claims, Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP) usage and turnover / exit interview information should all be used to inform assessment.
Once the risks have been identified and assessed for who might be harmed and the likelihood of harm it’s time to eliminate, control or manage those risks. For example:
Best practice is to provide training at all levels of an organisation. This should include:
While EAPs, mental health support through private medical insurance and occupational health provisions each have an essential role play in supporting worker wellbeing they must be used effectively and their effectiveness monitored and measured. Key questions to ask include:
The legal duties mentioned at the start of this article require organisations within the professional services sector to do everything reasonably practicable to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of their employees. This means balancing the risk of harm with allocating necessary resources, including the investment of time and money needed to manage stress and mental health within the workplace.
WTW collaborate with our clients to help them understand the impact of stress and poor mental health on their people and their organisations. We offer consultancy, training, and ad hoc support to assist organisations in protecting their business and their people.
