Posted By Daniel James My big task for 2005 is to conduct a risk assessment for stress across our 400 strong workforce. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of how best to do this, and have done quite a bit of research. I’ve been following discussions on this board closely, as well as another professional communities board. And I’ve recently been approached by an outside agency that appears to have a rather neat solution to this. They say that they will distribute “Survey Cards” to our 400 staff. On the card is an 0800 number, and staff are invited to call the number to respond to 30 statements covering the Six Management Standards for Stress. Apparently, the call lasts for about 3 minutes, and staff are asked to respond by pressing keys on the telephone keypad (they don’t even speak with a human operator). By doing this, the firm says it will have conducted a survey across the workforce, and identified the “main stressors”, based upon the responses our staff give. I haven’t yet seen the type of report they produce, so I don’t actually know what I’ll get. I have two questions really. First of all, has anyone done a risk assessment in-house without using an outside agency, and if so, how time consuming was this? Secondly, has anyone heard of conducting a risk-assessment for stress in this way? (Their details are www.stress-test.org.uk, in case you have used them). Actually, a third question is, if you have used them, what sort of report did you get? Daniel James

Posted By Robert S Woods Daniel I have posted the audit and literature I wrote for Euro Week when I worked for the H&S charity Worksafe. If anyone wants a copy get in touch. I also wrote the TUC's stress MOT but I don't have a copy it might still be on their website.

Posted By Daniel James Thank you for those comments and supporting emails you have sent. I actually called their "stress barometer" and responded to the statements. I got back an email which gave a measure of the stressors which references the Six Management Standards. As you have said, running a survey like this is just a start at identifying the "Hazards" associated with work related stress. It probably is good to use an agency to run the initial survey, which we'd use as the first stage of our assessment. Once we've got the results of the survey, we'd use the information to drill down into the specific areas of work related stress that may require attention. Thanks again for your feedback. If anyone has one of their full reports let me know if you would be willing to share the info. If anyone wants a copy of the email they sent me, which does have some useful information, then let me know, and I'll be happy to forward it on to you. Dan

Posted By Daniel James Thanks Brian I had a long chat about the benfits of doing this in-house or using an outside agency with my boss, hence my posting. He thinks that staff will respond better to the initial survey if we use an outside agency, as he feels they will be more open and honest, etc. when completing the survey. The other thing is we have 400 staff, and printing out questionnaires, sending them to staff, collating the results, keying in the results, and producing a report would, in fact, take me quite a bit of time, which is fairly limited at the moment. The agency will charge us £1.40 to survey each member of staff, which is about £560 for the whole staff survey, excluding the report. I guess that since we give out their survey cards to each employee, and staff key in their responses, that they can collect the data quickly and cheaply (?!). I quite like the idea of an independent report to kick off the exercise. In a previous post, John said that they use an outside agency for the survey, and then use the results of the survey to do the rest in-house, which I kind of feel is the right way to go. I haven't quite made my final decision yet, but will review all the material this week. Thanks for your post. Regards Dan

Posted By Daniel James Thanks for that David. We have now decided to use them to conduct the initial survey. They gave us an 0800 number to dial to take part in their "stress barometer", and we tested it with 8 of our "office" managers. Great feedback ... I'll let you know how we get on. I think by December I may just have cracked it ... Dan