Posted By Ron Hunter Does your Organisation have a problem with stress? Can this be ascertained via sickness absence monitoring? Can "hotspots" be identified for a targeted response? What control measures does your Organisation actually have in place to combat stress? e.g.Management interventions,management training,management "style", stress Policy and guidance, consultation processes, back to work interviews,counselling services, job profiling and recruitment tools, etc. etc. My personal view is that an immediate jump to a blanket questionnaire approach can be to go looking (and encourage?) problems that don't actually exist. Do the "generic" first in my opinion, then look for any hotspots that need to be dealt with. IMHO, the outcomes usually require only better management, with no input required by the H&S professional.

Posted By Kieran J Duignan Trevor As you are probably aware, there are probably more 'schools of thought' about stress at work than there are about the appropriate rate of interest or whether West Ham should be in the Premier Division of the Football League in 2007/2008. The approaches outlined have their value. Where the methods under way in Somerset C.C. shine is how well they enable each employee to exercise personal responsibility for controlling root causes of stress at work. Where dwelling on personal responsibility is not simply a cop-out by an employer, it has the great advantage of dealing with the reality that stress, of its very nature, has to be managed personally. Here, arguably nothing has yet really challenged the power of the psychology of personal constructs, invented in 1955 to assist professionals to guide others to manage how they engage with stressors; the chapter I've written in the 'Handbook of Coaching Psychology' (eds. Palmer and Whybrow) to be published by Brunner Routledge next December may be useful in this respect. 'Stress at Work', edited by S Svebak and Michael Apter and published about 2000, presents research about applications of a similar powerful way of enabling individuals to manage stress (known as 'Reversal Theory)

Posted By Kieran J Duignan John While I respect your opinion about the relative simplicity of managing stress, it is important to realise that it is an opinion (as is mine). You operate in a relatively simple industry in terms of technology and systems of control. The stressors are different to other sectors in which technology and systems of control are different. Hazards of stress are a function of the level of dogmatism with which claims are made about how easy they are to manage: too often, as a counsellor I have observed managers - line and staff - simply deny the stressors employees brought to their attention and justified claims about simplicity through denial. Ultimately, only a person can manage his/her own level of stress; nobody, but nobody, suggests that you need to 'be a psychologist' to manage stress. In fact, every person can become her/his own specialist in the pschology of stressors of her/his environment.