Posted By James Perry All We have a chap who is now signed off for 3 weeks with "work related stress". Could anyone confirm if this qualifies as an O3D RIDDOR? Thanks Jim Perry

Posted By MichaelM Stress is not RIDDOR Reportable. I have previously raised this issue in another forum as I was thinking along the same lines. Strange but true. I would have thought that if it was a proven case of work related stress then it should be recorded. It seems that there is no official way of recording Work Related Stress absences.

Posted By J Knight No; not an injury, no; not a prescribed disease; I agree with the other responses. Interested in Mark's point though. West Dorset Hospitals NHS Trust has had an improvement notice in respect of stress, I know all about this because I met their HR director to get the inside story. There have certainly also been civil suits with mixed results. So I do agree that prosecution under s2 is possible, however, does anybody know of an actual prosecution or is it still a twinkle in HSE's eye? John

Posted By Eric Burt HSE define stress as "an adverse reaction" so they would have to make the reporting of "adverse reactions" reportable under RIDDOR !! Because stress is not an illness in itself, but can lead to other problems - stomach disorders, musculoskeletal etc etc it makes you wonder where HSE get their figures from when quoting levels of work-related stress. How many organisations ask their employees if their bad back was caused by work-related stress? Not many I would guess. How many organisations ask their employees if their sickness absence was work-related or not. Once again, not many I would say. So where do these figures come from? Certainly not from RIDDOR, not from industry (unless someone can tell me differently) and not from GPs. (How does the GP know if your bad back is caused by work-related stress). Whilst I accept that stress is a serious issue for all types of organisations, I do wonder sometimes when HSE and others quote figures about the scale of the problem, because there simply isn't a clear recording procedure. Maybe the stress management standards will help to quantify the issue a bit better. At least we will be using a national measure. However, I think a lot more work needs to be done on the standards by way of a weighting score. e.g. I consider that the DEMANDS of the job is more important than issues relating to the employees ROLE. And therein lies another debate (or another thread). Eric

Posted By Gary L As posted earlier, stress is not reportable. However, I was advised by the HSE that Post Traumatic Stress was reportable if it could be attributed to a specific incident - in our case the employee had time off work when he realised how close he had come to being killed. Gary

Posted By jackw. Hi as has been said it is not reportable. One issue is actually defining if the stress is work or personal issue related or a combination of both. If not work related then it can never be considered as reportable. GPs tend not to differentiate on the absence certificate and I doubt if they even try or have the skills to separate the work and non-work elements of stress. Other than the worker saying "oh it's my boss or the work I have to do" etc. etc. I would be interested in the "inside story" re dorset NHS trust as, according to a senior HSE inspector I talked to, it was because the trust continued to ignore staff, tu hse etc. concerns and warnings about the level of stress related absence. Cheers.

Posted By jackw. So when did EHO's give advice on H&S.. controversial.. me.. never !!!