Posted By Taff2
Old chestnut - but I can't find the definitive answer, if a GP states that a colleague (H&S Manager)is absent with work related depression / stress, is this reportable?

He's been off for 3.5 months, only been informed by GP that it is work-related

Posted By Taff2
Many thanks - I did a search on the forum & ahve now seen the consensus.

SORTED

Posted By David G C
i believe that stress is known as a condition not a disease so not reportable.....though i stand to be corrected

Regards

David

Posted By Chris Jerman
I've been there too. It's nuts. Look, the idea of RIDDOR is that it's a way of keeping employers honest by saying "If you damage someone, we need to know so that we can investigate and spot trends across your sector - it's called turning lagging data into a pro-active campaign"

So when we said in our 2508, "Sorry we've been a bit careless and someone's ended up a bit sad and doesn't want to come to work anymore" the HSE said 'that's not what RIDDOR is for - sorry no you can't report that. OK, stress is generic term (bit like RSI) for mental injury like shock, anxiety, depression etc. But what are they trying to say - we don't recognise stress as an injury? So why all the fuss about management standards the? I asked the HSE where they got their figures from for stress absence, because sitting around the table with a dozen major employers we weren't seeing that many genuine cases - they asked what we meant by 'genuine'. We all responded that stress has become the new 'bad back'. "Can I have next week off?" response "No". Next thing; sick note for stress. It transpired that the HSE's figures were based purely on accepting the number of tickets that GPs had written out for WORK related stress. No follow up as to how many turned out to be genuine (or even caused by work) had been made. So, all the more surprising that they won't accept a RIDDOR for stress. They actually told us that we could put it in a letter if we wanted to notify us.

I need a lie down.