Work-related stress is often discussed in terms of the person experiencing it. Are they coping? Do they need support? Would time away from work help?
Those questions can matter, but they do not tell us whether something about the work itself is contributing to the problem.
The Health and Safety Executive, or HSE, developed the Management Standards approach to help employers look at work-related stress as an organisational risk. The framework focuses on six areas of work design that can affect stress levels and gives employers a way to identify problems, talk with employees and consider practical changes.
Mentally Healthy Workplace Training introduces these six areas. Understanding what sits behind each one makes the framework more useful in everyday management.
What are the HSE Management Standards?
The Management Standards describe six areas that HSE identifies as the primary sources of work-related stress: Demands, Control, Support, Relationships, Role and Change.
They are not six symptoms and they are not a way of deciding whether a particular employee is stressed. They are areas of working life that an organisation can examine when assessing potential causes of work-related stress.
HSE says employers have a legal duty to protect workers from stress at work by carrying out a risk assessment and acting on it. The Management Standards provide a structured approach to that process, helping organisations focus on underlying causes and prevention.
The full HSE guidance is available through the Management Standards section of the HSE website.
The six areas of work design
Each Standard looks at a different part of working life. In practice, the areas often overlap.
Demands
Demands include workload, working patterns and the working environment. This is not simply a question of whether people are busy. It includes whether expectations are achievable within the time available, whether people's skills and abilities are matched to the work, and whether concerns about the working environment are addressed. Persistent overload is an obvious issue, but demands can also become difficult when priorities are unclear, staffing or resources do not match the work, or employees are regularly expected to absorb additional pressure without anything else changing.
Control
Control is about how much say a person has in the way they do their work. Depending on the job, this might include influence over pace, work patterns, how tasks are approached, when breaks are taken or opportunities to use skills and initiative. Not every role can offer the same degree of flexibility. The useful question is whether people have reasonable influence where it is possible, rather than whether every part of the job can be individually chosen.
Support
Support includes the encouragement, information and resources people receive from the organisation, managers and colleagues. It can involve access to the tools and information needed to do the job, regular constructive feedback, knowing where to go with a concern and having managers who are able and willing to provide appropriate support. A workplace can have formal wellbeing policies and still perform poorly in this area if employees do not know about the support, cannot access it easily or do not experience support in day-to-day management.
Relationships
Relationships covers positive working, conflict and unacceptable behaviour. This includes whether people are treated fairly, whether conflict is handled appropriately, whether bullying or harassment is addressed and whether employees have a realistic route for raising concerns. Healthy workplace relationships do not mean that disagreement never happens. They mean that problems can be dealt with without unacceptable behaviour becoming normal or being left unchallenged.
Role
Role is about whether people understand their responsibilities and whether the expectations placed on them are compatible. Stress can increase when an employee is unclear about what they are responsible for, receives conflicting instructions, is expected to meet incompatible priorities or cannot get clarity about where their role begins and ends. Clear roles do not remove every difficult decision, but they reduce avoidable uncertainty about what somebody is there to do and what is expected of them.
Change
Change covers how organisational change, large or small, is managed and communicated. People are more likely to understand change when they receive timely information about why it is happening, what it may mean for their work, when it is expected to happen and where they can raise questions or concerns. Consultation matters too. Employees may not be able to determine every organisational decision, but being informed, involved where possible and supported through change is different from simply being told what has already happened.
The six areas do not operate in isolation
A problem at work rarely fits neatly into one box.
A team going through significant change might also experience higher demands, less control over how work is organised and uncertainty about roles. If communication is poor at the same time, employees may also feel that support has reduced.
HSE therefore advises organisations to consider the job as a whole rather than treating each Standard as a separate problem to be solved in isolation.
This is one reason employee involvement matters. Data such as absence figures or survey results can indicate that something may need attention, but they do not automatically explain why. Talking with the people doing the work can help identify what is actually happening and what changes are likely to be useful.
The Standards are about prevention
The Management Standards shift attention from asking only how an individual employee can cope with pressure to asking whether aspects of the work can be changed, reduced, clarified or better managed.
Individual support may still be important. It does not replace the need to look at workplace causes where they exist.
How the Management Standards approach is used
HSE sets out preparation followed by a five-stage risk assessment process.
1Prepare the organisation
Before beginning, organisations should make sure there is sufficient commitment, resource and involvement to carry the work through. HSE emphasises participation from managers, employees and their representatives rather than treating stress assessment as an isolated HR exercise.
Identify the risk factors
Use the six Management Standards to understand the main areas of work design that need to be considered.
Decide who can be harmed and how
Gather information that can help show where work-related stress risks may exist. Relevant information may come from several sources rather than one survey or measure alone.
4Evaluate the risks
Explore what the information means with employees and develop possible solutions. HSE specifically highlights the value of discussion because the people closest to the work can often explain what sits behind the data.
Record your findings and take action
Document the significant issues identified, decide what action is needed and put agreed measures into practice.
Monitor and review
Workplaces change, and so can stress risks. Review whether the actions taken are working and whether new issues have emerged.
Understanding the Standards is not the same as completing a risk assessment
The six headings are useful for managers because they provide a common language for thinking about work-related stress. But knowing the headings, or discussing them in training, is not the same as completing a suitable organisational stress risk assessment.
A proper process needs to examine the organisation's own working conditions, involve employees appropriately, identify risks, decide what action is needed and review whether that action has worked.
For an individual manager, the Standards can still be valuable in everyday practice. They offer a way to look beyond the question of whether somebody seems to be coping and consider whether workload, autonomy, support, relationships, role clarity or the way change is being handled may be part of what is happening.
That does not mean every difficulty at work is caused by the workplace. It does mean that when work is contributing to stress, managers and organisations should be willing to look at the work itself.
