Posted By William If an employee flags up a stressful workplace, and requests not to go back as they find it "bleak and depressing", but are placed back in the workplace and then they end up sick with depression, and on medication, they say the workplace is directly responsible for causing the illness. Would this amount to failing in your duty of care towards the employee?

Posted By Ron Hunter A "request" of one's employer "not to go back" ? Unless you're in the Armed Forces, the choice remains with the individual. No one forces you to work anywhere. Aye, 'bleak and depressing'. I remember it well -and that was just the commute!

Posted By Kieran J Duignan William The 'duty of care' in relation to stress is not really different in character from other responsibilities of an employer to safeguard employees from hazards to their safety and health. Just as with musculo-skeletal disorders, it's the assessment of risks that's tricky. For two classses of reasons: symptoms are partly subjective and assessing the nature and degree of hazards is often clouded as well as complicated. Bias can affect the judgment of an employee just as much as that of an employer; for example, I've been asked to assess an employee who asserted that his employer was failing in his duty of care in relation to stress because, in the opinion of the employee alone, he was more qualified to do his job than his manager and experienced stress when being instructed to share information with other employees during daily meetings. Both the employer and employee have continued to tolerate this 'stressful' situation for 9 months now. The other extreme sometimes emerges in court hearings, such as an instance when I was an expert witnees in a case about occuaptional streas when a manager on the ninth of ten days of a hearing admitted that he wanted to get an employee out (after she claimed a condition of alopecia arising from harassment by him). In this instance, regrettably the manager was very, very ill-advised by the inhouse HR and safety advisers who, as agreed by the court, confused a grievance procedure with a risk assessment. The point is that if you are unable to conduct a risk assessment of stress, consult a chartered occupational psychologist, preferably one who's qualified in both safety and counselling. He or she can provide you (and the employee) with a report that can later be used as court evidence shoudl the need arise.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan William An employer can 'get rid of' any employee at any time, provided they are willing to pay for the consequences. By contrast, the challenge of enabling the employee and his/her line manager and colleagues to manage the situation as well as possible can be a very constructive opportunity to practise what is sometimes called 'behavioural' safety.

Posted By Decimomal This is a big subject and relies on more information that you have provided. It is basically a duty of care issue as has been mentioned already and includes a number of things such as foreseeability, workloads, bullying and harassment, physical conditions, working hours and so on. Ultimately it is all down to the good old Risk Assessment to ensure that issues have been identified and control measures implemented. Do a search on: Walker V Northumberland County Council 1995 Lancaster v Birmingham City Council 1999 Sutherland V Hatton 2002 Barbour V Somerset County Council 2004