Protect your business and employees
Managing Work Organisation Hazards
It’s good business practice to keep track of stress at work, otherwise your business may face increases in absenteeism or even employees leaving your organisation. Intense workloads can be major stressors for your employees, which can lead to productivity drops and absenteeism.
Stress is the number one cause of occupational ill health, accounting for 44% of new and long-standing work-related illnesses. It should be a key component of your health and safety strategy. With suitable stress management for business advice and health and safety business services, you can handle busy professionals with effective strategies to support your business goals.
Helping you with
Stress management for business protects your people and productivity
Helping you with
Stress management for business protects your people and productivity
Helping you with
Stress management for business protects your people and productivity
Workplace stress can have a significant impact on employees’ health, morale, work rate, attendance and working relationships. In turn, this can create a long list of problems for employers: excessive employee absences, long-term sickness, high turnover, difficulties recruiting and retaining staff, and even litigation by those affected by workplace stress.
At WorkNest, we can help you with expert employment law and work related stress support services. This includes an assessment for risk factors to meet duty of care responsibilities under the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
Assess how well you’re managing all workplace hazards, including adherence to the HSE’s stress management standards, through an on-site health and safety audit (General Risk Assessment)
Equip managers and employees with stress management techniques through stress awareness training and business eLearning
Document your arrangements with expert-created risk assessment templates, plus a robust business Health & Safety policy containing a specific section on stress
Get unlimited business support from a dedicated Health & Safety Consultant, who will work with you to ensure safety and compliance in all risk areas
Uncover and improve employees’ attitudes and perceptions in key health and safety areas
The importance of mental health support for businesses
The importance of mental health support for businesses
The importance of mental health support for businesses
As an employer, you may overlook work organisation hazards such as stress, focusing instead on controlling physical safety hazards. However, given the business implications of failing to manage employee wellbeing, it’s important you recognise signs of stress in staff and take proactive steps to remove or reduce the causes.
This could be anything from unrealistic or last-minute deadlines to a lack of training or job insecurity. In many cases, stress can be attributed to a lack of support.
If this is a concern within your organisation, or you are keen to take positive action before problems arise, at WorkNest we can help you to meet your obligations under health and safety law and create engaged, high-performing teams.
As an employer, you may overlook work organisation hazards such as stress, focusing instead on controlling physical safety hazards. However, given the business implications of failing to manage employee wellbeing, it’s important you recognise signs of stress in staff and take proactive steps to remove or reduce the causes.
This could be anything from unrealistic or last-minute deadlines to a lack of training or job insecurity. In many cases, stress can be attributed to a lack of support.
If this is a concern within your organisation, or you are keen to take positive action before problems arise, at WorkNest we can help you to meet your obligations under health and safety law and create engaged, high-performing teams.
Protect your people and your business with a free consultation from one of our experienced health and safety specialists.
Explore our fixed-fee Employment Law support
Advice Line
Fast, pragmatic, commercial. Our Employment Law & HR advice line gives you and your managers access to truly unlimited advice on all of your people-related challenges, from the seemingly straightforward to the most complex.
HR matters come with the territory when you run a business or manage an organisation and we’re here to help you through it all. Whether you’re battling absenteeism, struggling to manage an underperforming employee or need help navigating a complicated exercise like redundancy, we can walk you through the steps required to handle the situation appropriately.
Yes. All of our advisers are qualified legal professionals or on the road to formal qualification, which means a full range of employee issues can be dealt with within your dedicated three-person team. In the event that you’re presented with an Employment Tribunal claim, we will conduct a full handover to our Litigation Team so that they are well equipped to defend you.
Contracts and Handbooks
Whether you have nothing in place or just need an expert review, our Employment Law specialists can carefully craft your employment contracts and employee handbooks to guarantee compliance and provide the flexibility you need as an employer.
Failing to provide an employee with a contract could lead to additional compensation being awarded to an employee who successfully makes another sort of claim against their employer. In addition, a number of practical problems could be caused by having incorrect contracts, such as paying too little (or too much) notice, getting holiday entitlement wrong and failing to protect legitimate business interests in the face of an employee leaving for a competitor.
Whenever there are changes to UK employment legislation, such as the recent changes to bereavement leave or the Good Work Plan, it’s important to make sure your contracts, handbooks and policies are updated accordingly. We can take the pressure off by alerting you to any such changes and helping you to implement them in your documentation and practices.
Drafting Letters and Documents
From the most straightforward warning for poor attendance to complex grievance outcome letters and everything in between, our Employment Law solicitors can draft all your employment documents to save you valuable time and stress.
Just about anything and everything you might need during the employment relationship. All of our advisers are qualified legal professionals or on the road to formal qualification, which means we can support you with a full spectrum of advice and documentation, from first written warnings to new contractual clauses, to a policy you might not have in your handbook, plus more complex legal documents like settlement agreements and redundancy outcome letters.
Yes, our fixed-fee Employment Law and HR support includes full access to our Knowledge Hub, available through myWorkNest, which contains most of the templates we work from. If you have an internal HR team, you may prefer to access these and tailor them yourselves. However, for more complex cases, we would always suggest engaging with our legal advisers as it can be all too easy to word something in a way that leaves you exposed.
eLearning
Tired of classroom training, or unable to take time out? Raise awareness of best-practice around workplace issues and prevent HR headaches with our flexible, cost-effective eLearning courses.
Our ever-growing library of eLearning courses currently covers over 100 topics, including HR courses such as Equality & Diversity, Sexual Harassment and Social Media Use; soft skills courses such as Communication, Leadership and Change Management; and compliance courses such GDPR, Anti-Money Laundering and the Bribery Act. We also offer an extensive range of Health & Safety courses, including Accident Reporting, Risk Assessment and First Aid. Download the full course catalogue.
All of our eLearning courses are free for the first year when you purchase our Employment Law & HR or Health & Safety managed service. This means you’re not paying per head or per course, which not only keeps down but gives you complete cost certainty over your training expenses. This is particularly handy if your workforce is growing, as you won’t need to purchase extra licenses, giving you exceptional value for money.
Legal Expenses Insurance
An optional component of our Employment Law and HR support, by underpinning our advice with Legal Expenses Insurance (LEI), you have maximum reassurance that your business is protected against unfair dismissal and other costly employee claims.
For the same reason you take out any insurance policy – to guard against the high cost of defending an Employment Tribunal claim. The premium cost is very low compared to the potential payout, especially as it covers the cost of representation as well as any potential compensation. You don’t have to have LEI, but it could significantly impact your bottom line if something goes wrong, given that the cost of even the most basic unfair dismissal claim could be £20-25,000 when legal costs are factored in. Unfortunately, the latest Tribunal statistics suggest that employers now are more vulnerable than ever.
Should you receive a claim, your dedicated Employment Law adviser, who will have dealt with the matter up until that point, will conduct a full handover to our Litigation Team. They will explain the case history, share all the relevant documentation and offer their views on the prospects of the claim. Our Litigation Team will then take over all the prep work, including drafting a defence, producing bundles, dealing with Acas and the other side, and briefing counsel. Rest assured this is a smooth process, with everything kept inside WorkNest, and you will be in safe hands throughout.
Management Information
Discipline, performance, absenteeism. We’ll show you exactly where your dedicated Employment Law advisers are spending their time so that you can target key problem areas for more productive, high-performing teams. Recommended for large organisations with high case volumes.
The report will highlight what sorts of issues we are advising on and who/where in your business those questions are coming from. That way, we can easily spot problem areas, bring them to your attention and recommend steps to address the issues.
We will provide practical and pragmatic recommendations to address whatever common problems are arising. The exact nature will depend on the sort of issues but could include training of managers in certain areas or the production of additional guidance and documentation to guide them through tricky subjects.
myWorkNest
From document templates to HR Software, myWorkNest gives you all the tools you need to manage even the trickiest employee issues, improve efficiencies and get the answers you need, fast.
We have hundreds of guidance notes and accompanying templates covering a full spectrum of employment-related issues, including Maternity, Pay, Flexible Working, Holidays, Performance and Redundancy. All of these resources are created by our experts, and if you require further support or have any questions, you can contact your dedicated team of advisers for practical advice and guidance.
There can be a great deal of administration involved in managing employees, and the burden only increases as your business grows. If filing cabinets of employee information is no longer cutting it, our HR Software will help to automate your processes, save valuable time and manage HR tasks at the touch of a button. Use it to store and organise employee data and essential documents; manage and report on holidays, absence, timesheets and rostering; stay on top of employee reviews; maintain a comprehensive employee directory, and keep a record of training and development.
Why choose us?
Experts in business stress and anxiety support
Why choose us?
Experts in business stress and anxiety support
Why choose us?
Experts in business stress and anxiety support
If you’re not confident in your current practices, or don’t have professional support in place, our network of qualified Health & Safety Consultants can help you to build a safe and compliant working environment through expert support tailored to your organisation.
Approved by a Primary Authority
Dedicated specialists with recognised qualifications
Genuine hands-on experience of managing risk
Unlimited 24/7 advice, award-winning software and policy support
The confidence to act as one of your competent persons
Gain crucial employment law and compliance certification
Our Team
Cross-industry expertise, ready to support you
Practical support, made personal
Trusted by employers across the UK
We support over 40,000 UK employers, from small businesses with fewer than 50 employees to well-known household names with large, multi-site workforces.
Joanne Beaver
Operations Director, Beaverfit
Nick Fryer
Paymentsense - Europe largest merchant service provider, CTO
Chief Executive
Waverley Care
IT Manager
Leeds United Football Club
FAQs
If you’re not confident in your current practices, or don’t have professional support in place, our network of qualified Health & Safety Consultants can help you to build a safe and compliant working environment through expert support tailored tIt’s the psychological and physical strain of workplace demands upon an employee. Once a professional’s ability to cope is exceeded, it may have serious consequences for them. This can include illness, absenteeism, and (in some cases) leaving their role with an organisation.o your organisation.
All organisations should have an assessment for workplace stress and have measures in place to mitigate it. Stress is often not reported or recognised until staff start to suffer symptoms, so having systems in place to identify and deal with this early is important.
Pressure is a challenge and/or a demand that comes naturally with a role and can be a positive part of working life (an incentive to complete tasks). Stress is when an employee is overloaded by tasks and begins to lose productivity as a result.
Yes, there is an increased risk of harmful effects from stress and anxiety for those working at home due to the pandemic. Your assessment should consider both physical hazards, such as those associated with work equipment, work station set-up and working alone, and mental health and wellbeing hazards, such as stress, isolation and fatigue.
There is no one law specifically covering stress. Instead, protection comes from a range of sources. Common law dictates that employers are responsible for the general safety of their employees while at work. Statutory law such as the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 states that employers must take reasonable steps to make sure workplaces are safe and healthy and control identified risks.
In addition, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to carry out a “suitable and sufficient” assessment of the risks to the health and safety of their employees. As an employer, you are required to put proper controls in place to avoid these risks, wherever possible. Where it is not possible to avoid risk, steps must be taken to reduce them so far as is “reasonably practicable”.
Yes, a stress risk assessment legal requirement is mandatory under UK law. The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 it’s a legal requirement for you, the employer, to conduct a risk assessment at work. It’s your duty of care as an employer to protect the physical and mental well-being of all your employees. Refer to our guide to handling stress in the workplace to fully understand your legal obligations and prevention tactics.
