What Are Your Legal Rights When Dealing with Workplace Stress?

April is Stress Awareness Month and whether working from home or amongst colleagues in the workplace, stress is a difficult, ever-present reality in today’s society, impacting us all in one way or another.

However, despite this financial impact on businesses, many employers do not understand their responsibilities of this significant issue that may be affecting their employees.  The result could be a workforce that feels ignored, underappreciated, and most concerning, unwell.

Every employer in the UK has a duty of care to try and alleviate stressful situations in the workplace and employees can seek legal recourse if they feel marginalised, harassed or develop stress-related illnesses at work.

Commenting on Stress Awareness Week, Sarah Garner, Solicitor at DAS Law, takes a look at what the law says your employer needs to do about stress.

Your employer’s responsibilities

Your employer has a ‘duty of care’ towards you (and all employees), which means that they must do their best to prevent you from coming to harm in the workplace. As well as more obvious health and safety issues, they should also take measures to prevent employees suffering from excessive stress in their jobs. They will be expected to do this as part of the risk assessment which employers (with more than five employees) are expected to carry out to ensure that any health risks are mitigated.

This means they need to have looked at the possibility of stress-related illnesses amongst their workforce and put steps in place to ensure this is dealt with. This might include providing employees with information about how to reduce stress and what to do if they are struggling, supplying counselling services which employees can make use of, implementing processes in ways which will not lead to excessive stress among the workforce, and so on.

The exact details will depend on the kind of work that their employees are undertaking, but employers must be able to show that they have thought about the issue(s) and considered appropriate solutions.

Given that more people are now working from home, what responsibilities do employers have to alleviate workplace stress in their new working environment?

Employers have a legal duty under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 to ensure that their workforce are protected from stress at work, whether this be working from their place of work or those working from their home. 

The Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) definition of stress is: “The reaction people have to excessive demands or pressures, arising when people try to cope with tasks, responsibilities or other types of pressure connected with their job, but find difficulty, strain or worry in doing so.”

Employers should conduct a risk assessment for all their workforce to ensure that their working environment is safe and hazard free, this includes assessing the risk of stress being a potential hazard.  By carrying out a risk assessment, concerns can be identified and measures implemented to reduce the risk of stress to employees.

What you can do

While employers are expected to take the initiative on tackling stress in the workplace, you would still be expected to let your employer know if you believe you are suffering from stress related issues. You should also inform your employer if you think someone else is at risk from excessive levels of stress.

If you are bringing the issue of workplace stress to your employer, it is best to suggest for how they might be able to improve the situation as it’s often easier for the people doing the work to identify better ways for any issue to be resolved. 

Another benefit of letting your employer know if you are suffering from stress is that it will ensure that they cannot claim they didn’t know about the situation if your stress worsens and you need to bring a claim against them in the future.

If you develop a long-term mental health condition as a result of stress in the workplace, that condition may amount to a disability under the Equality Act, which provides you with additional protection from discrimination.

Can you sue for stress caused by a poor work environment?

If the stress has caused you to suffer a mental health illness and you can establish that your employer allowed or created a poor work environment, and that it was foreseeable that you would suffer in this way, you may be able to pursue a claim. However, we would strongly recommend seeking legal advice prior to making any claim of this sort.

Can you sue a company for stress caused by workplace discrimination?

If you have suffered discrimination in the workplace (which can be related to a number of protected characteristics) one of the categories that an employment tribunal can award compensation for is your ‘injury to feelings’. The stress and upset that the discrimination caused can, therefore, be considered as part of any compensation awarded to the employee. If the stress that you have experienced has caused you to develop a mental health condition, the employer can also be ordered to compensate you for that personal injury as part of any discrimination claim as well.

Disclaimer: This information is for general guidance regarding rights and responsibilities and is not formal legal advice as no lawyer-client relationship has been created.