You may experience stress when the demands you face at work exceed the resources available to you. Stress is the body’s way of mobilising energy to cope with pressure. A stress response is not in itself negative or dangerous. However, prolonged stress can lead to ill health.
Are you stressed and finding it difficult to balance everything in your life? To feel well, it is important to try to maintain a balance between work, leisure and rest.
If you are experiencing severe and prolonged stress because of your work, you should talk to your manager. You may be able to reduce the pressure quite easily by reviewing your tasks together.
Your manager is responsible for recognising signs of ill health among employees, regularly examining working conditions and assessing risks to employees’ health.
If you identify risks in the work environment, you have a responsibility to raise them. Talk to your manager in the first instance. You can also contact your work environment representative (health and safety representative) or ask your local union branch for help, if there is one at your workplace. Alternatively, you can contact Unionen for support and advice.
There are many different conditions in the work environment that can cause work-related stress. A lack of clarity combined with a heavy workload is one common example. But harmful stress can also arise from social interactions in the workplace or from the way work is organised and managed. Stress can also result from an imbalance between effort and reward at work.
The employer is responsible for preventing factors in the work environment, known as “stressors”, that can give rise to work-related stress.
It is also important to be aware that stress can sometimes have causes outside work, such as intimate partner violence, which can affect a person’s situation at work.
Stress and other organisational and social work environment issues should be addressed as part of systematic work environment management (SAM). Risks must be identified, addressed and followed up.
The methods used may differ somewhat from those used in traditional physical workplace safety inspections. Tools such as surveys, brochures and checklists are available from organisations such as Prevent and have been specifically developed for the organisational and social work environment.
This content has been automatically translated by AI to expand language accessibility. Minor grammatical or stylistic inaccuracies may occur.
Opening hours for advice and help regarding your work situation or questions about your membership
Mon - Fri 09:00-17.00
Get in touch with us through a web-form.
