Work-related stress can have major impacts on health and safety.
Workers experience stress when they perceive the demands of their work exceed their ability or resources to cope. This can occur when deadlines are constant and immoveable or when a worker receives limited support from co-workers or managers.
A worker can experience physical, mental and emotional reactions to their work environment. Their response to stressors at work may be positive or negative for their wellbeing.
Usually, people adjust to changes in their work demands and continue to perform their normal work duties. In some circumstances though, a worker will feel stress because of these changes. Individual workers will have different experiences of the same circumstances.
Stress itself it not an injury, but if it becomes excessive and long-lasting it can lead to mental and physical ill-health.
Work-related stress can lead to illness, injury and decreases in business performance. Stress can come from many sources, both work and non-work.
You have a legal obligation to minimise your workers’ exposure to work-related factors that can increase the risk of stress. This obligation is the same for self-employed people and contractors.
You need to eliminate or minimise your workers’ risk of harm from potential stress at work.
Environmental factors such as the physical, chemical or biological demands of a job, will affect a worker’s comfort and performance at work.
Noise (physical) and dust (biological) might be factors in your workplace. Or your workers might use toxic chemicals. These factors can cause stress by themselves. But often, they combine to increase a person’s response to other stress factors in the workplace.
You could give more stressful work to more resilient workers. But you still need to minimise their exposure to risk factors for stress. Someone who appears to be resilient still has limits. Your obligation is to reduce all workers exposure to work-related stress factors.
You also need to ensure the workplace does not exacerbate an existing illness.
Information on the outcomes of work-related stress.
Information on how you can manage work-related stress in your workplace.