Align Management News Digest
August 2005
Stress becoming main cause of employee ill-health
WORKPLACE stress is expected to be the greatest cause of ill-health
for employees within 15 years, outpacing accidents, cancers or muscle
injury, according to Health
and Safety Authority specialists.
Launching its latest Work Positive - Prioritising Organisational
Stress initiative, aimed at tackling stress within the workplace,
the HSA's senior psychologist Patricia Murray maintained that stress-related
illness needed to be addressed in Irish organisations.
Increased management pressures with demands for higher profits,
faster production schedules, out-sourcing services, cost-cutting
initiatives and constant performance reviews have turned some workplaces
into centres of potential long-term health risks.
Ms Murray noted that the World Health Organisation is predicting
that by 2020, stress will be the major cause of workplace ill-health.
Stress is associated with coronary artery conditions and recent
Scandinavian research found a positive link between workplace stress
and heart disease.
Symptoms of stress include disturbed sleep, fatigue, increased alcohol
consumption, headaches, loss of concentration and short temper.
Often lack of consultation over work patterns and adoption of a
'long-hours culture' increases stress levels with some managers
keen to keep their workers 'on their toes' and insecure about their
job security. This may make employees more manageable and pliable
to undertake any task they are told to do irrespective of their
skills or knowledge levels but could also lead to legal action for
constructive dismissal or stress-related illness.
The latest version of Work Positive is a management tool that incorporates
a risk assessment template covering the known causes of workplace
stress. It provides a step-by-step guide to assessing risks of stress,
outlining the aims of each step and helping managers eliminate these
risk factors in their organisation.
Minister for Labour Affairs, Tony Killeen said at the HSA launch
that workplaces in the normal course can be stressful but it is
when it becomes an issue which has negative effects on the individual,
it may become serious. There are risks in all workplaces and it
is important that where stress on workers exists it is identified
as such, assessed, and a strategy put in place to have it dealt
with.
The Health and Safety Authority will begin rolling out the anti-stress
programme with a cross-border initiative involving the Health Service
Executive Northern Ireland (HSENI). This will involve six workplaces
- three on either side of the border.
HSA organisational psychologist Ms Murray said that the stress programme
had been developed with Health Scotland over the last number of
years. It was originally launched over two years ago and the latest
version is described as a substantial improvement.
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