Work Positive - Prioritising Organisational Stress: A Stress Management Resource Pack for SMEs

Abstract

This paper reports on the findings of a project to develop a resource pack to assist organisations manage workplace stress, commissioned by the Health Education Board for Scotland and the Health and Safety Authority (RoI). The resource pack Work Positive - Prioritising Organisational Stress provides a prescriptive risk assessment method within a health and safety framework. Learning from previous work in this area, emphasis is placed on establishing a structured framework of communication and consultation within which to identify, reduce and manage the risks to health and safety of employees that arise from exposure to organisational stressors. The resource has been developed as a selfadministered process and assumes no previous understanding of risk assessment or stress management. It was thought to be of particular importance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which do not necessarily have such expertise in-house. This project took place in two phases: Phase One - development and piloting of assessment tools and Phase Two - development and piloting of the resource pack. The findings of Phase One were presented fully in this journal in September 2001 (Lancaster, 2001), but are summarised here, followed by the detailed findings of Phase Two.