| The legal
position relating to an employer's
duty and responsibility for
stress in the workplace is clear
and straightforward.
It is an employer's duty in
law to make sure that employees
(and others) are not made ill
by their work. The duty is imposed
or implied in both civil and
criminal law. In the former
the employer has a duty of care
to protect employees from risks
of foreseeable injury, disease
or death at work. This principle
was identified in Wilson's &
Clyde Coal Co. Ltd v English
(1938) House of Lords.
But the threat of prosecution
itself is only the tip of the
iceberg. Costs and time associated
with defending a case, damage
to the organisation's reputation,
etc. produces a cost ratio of
around 1:3. That is, the cost
of the compensation is around
one third of the real cost to
the business.
This of course doesn't take
into account the human cost
- employee morale, motivation,
recruitment and retention, etc.
The HSE has served improvement
notices on:
- Coventry City Council
- Coventry Airport Handling
Ltd
- West Dorset General Hospitals
NHS Trust - not because people
were suffering from stress
but because they did not have
a stress at work policy and
had not conducted a stress
audit!
|
