Tag: Stress

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Duty of Care Employment Law Health Conditions HR Stress

Guest Blog | How HR can take a trauma-informed approach to support employees

Platfform Wellbeing's HR support services

All businesses have a duty of care to their employees and safeguarding their mental health is a fundamental part of this. April is National Stress Awareness Month and a time to reflect on the negative impact of stress in the workplace.

We all know that stress is one of the most common causes of long-term work absence in the UK but how much do HR professionals understand about the impact that trauma can have as a contributory factor to stress and work burnout?

It’s important to understand what psychological trauma is and how it can have a significant impact on an individual’s mental and physical health. Trauma-informed care is an approach that recognises the impact of trauma on individuals and seeks to create a safe and supportive environment for healing.

So how can HR take a trauma-informed approach to supporting employees through work stress and burnout?

Create a safe and supportive environment

Creating a safe and supportive environment is an essential part of a trauma-informed approach. This includes:

  • Establishing trust: Building trust with employees is essential. This can be achieved through open communication, active listening, and a non-judgmental approach.

  • Fostering a sense of safety: Employees need to feel physically and emotionally safe in the workplace. HR can ensure that the workplace is free from harassment, discrimination, and other forms of violence.

  • Providing choice and control: Employees need to feel that they have choices and control over their work environment. HR can provide employees with opportunities to give feedback, participate in decision-making, and have a sense of autonomy.

  • Empowering employees: Empowering employees to take control of their work environment and manage their stress can help them feel more confident and reduce the risk of burnout.

Offer resources and support

HR can offer resources and support to help employees manage their work stress and prevent burnout. This may include:


  • Counselling services: Counselling services can help employees manage their stress and cope with trauma.

  • Training and education: Providing employees with training and education on stress management and mental health can help them understand the impact of stress and develop coping strategies.

  • Flexible work arrangements: Offering flexible work arrangements such as hybrid or flexible hours can help employees manage their workload and reduce stress.

  • Peer support: Providing employees with peer support networks can help them feel connected and supported in the workplace.

In summary, taking a trauma-informed approach to supporting employees through work stress and burnout is essential for promoting employee wellbeing and preventing burnout.

HR can create a safe and supportive environment, offer resources and support, and empower employees to take control of their work environment. By doing so, HR can help employees manage stress and prevent burnout, leading to a more productive and healthier workforce.

If you would like to learn more about becoming a trauma-informed organisation, you can find further information on the Platfform Wellbeing website.

Platfform Wellbeing
Platfform Wellbeing is a commercial training, workplace wellbeing and counselling service aimed at organisations across the private, public and third sector. It offers kind, compassionate responses at times of distress and supporting organisations with creating cultures and teams than enable people to thrive. We are part of Platfform, a mental health and social change charity.

 

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Absence Anna Denton-Jones Burnout Duty of Care Employment Law HR Mental Health Stress

Burnout and the risks for employers

View of the City of London at sunset

Last year the World Health Organisation recognised “burnout” for the first time in its classification of diseases. It defines “burnout” as “mental or physical exhaustion caused by excessive or prolonged stress and a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. It highlights the three characteristics:

  1. Feeling of energy depletion or exhaustion.
  2. An increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativity or cynicism relating to one’s job.
  3. Reduced professional efficacy.

For many people who were reading that definition they would be saying yes or would be ticking off the criterion, due to the pandemic, with the stresses and strains of the last year or so only adding to the problem.

Stress is normally a short lived thing or tied to a specific goal so is not harmful. If the stress feels never ending and comes with feelings of emptiness, apathy and hopelessness, it may be indicative of burnout.

A recent case involving a firm of solicitors that has been litigated through the Courts highlights the risk of employers not taking this issue seriously. In this particular case, the employee concerned was a high flyer – for a period of around 5 years he had been one of the most high billing or income generating fee earners at the law practice, being in a leadership position, in charge of one of the firm’s offices. Criticisms levelled at the employer included, failing to reduce his working hours or ensuring that he was taking his annual leave. He had been dedicating 15 hours a day to work and the employer faced criticism for not having picked up on that and done something about it.

It seems that when the condition began to manifest including the employee acting out a character and making an inappropriate joke which was then used as a disciplinary matter, the firm failed to put in place a structured plan for offering support. In particular, when the employee had 7 weeks’ ill-health, they didn’t take any steps to find out about the extent of his condition. If they had done so, they may have been more aware of his fragility and the problem that they were dealing with.

In particular, at the point at which he has tipped over into “burnout”, the firm had a duty to put their minds to how they could prevent the risk to his health that his job was causing. The problem is that the firm took the perhaps “usual” reaction of getting him to relinquish his management position. Indeed it was found that one witness had said that he should “drop back into midfield” and leave the captaincy to somebody else. The Judge in the case found that that was grossly insensitive. Of course the firm might have had genuine concerns over the impact on colleagues but there wasn’t really any meaningful communication around the issue or understanding of the workload issues or what was necessary.

These sorts of cases are going to be particularly relevant given all the evidence about people working from home, working greater hours, juggling all the other stresses that come with a pandemic and inadequacies in many cases of employers to be prepared to deal with these sorts of issues.

So what things can an employer be doing to prevent “burnout”?

  1. Actively encourage employees to take holiday, including those in senior leadership positions and create an environment where people are allowed to genuinely switch off, which will require senior leaders to lead by example in this regard.
  2. Reconfigure email so they send only during set hours.
  3. Encourage all managers to check in with the members of their team as regards workload. It is a culturally normally thing to happen for work to be juggled around between different people to alleviate the pressure points?
  4. Encourage employees to speak up if they are starting to feel overwhelmed, explaining that support will be available if they do, including the possibility of devoting extra resource to take on workload.
  5. Train managers to spot the signs when somebody is beginning to become overwhelmed and not cope and to not be afraid to intervene when they see that happening.
  6. Refer the employee to occupational health immediately for guidance on other measures that can be taken.
  7. Have an employee led position about what they think needs to happen – they know themselves best.
  8. At this stage, emphasise that any changes to job description or duties are temporary whilst you are supporting them to recover.
  9. Simple things can apply, such as permitting the employee to say no to new tasks.
  10. In any return to work/management plan, it will be useful to schedule regular breaks including identifying what activities the employee is going to be doing to help them reduce the feelings of burnout in terms of self-care and exercise etc.

If the medical condition the employee is suffering from becomes a long term thing then it could become a disability which is protected by the Equality Act, in which case the duty to make reasonable adjustments is going to apply. Where an employer has not tackled the issue early enough, if the employee goes through periods of absence and return to work with little changing, you can see how a pattern could be established that leads into disability territory.

In the particular case involved, the employer was potentially liable for the employees losses that resulted from his employment relationship coming to an end and not tackling the issue effectively.

Anna Denton-Jones
Refreshing Law