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Guidance on how to manage work-related stress.
Introduction
This guide supports the implementation of the Managing Stress at Work Policy. It provides a step-by-step guide, ideas, and resources so that you can identify and manage your own experience of stress.
Pressures that can cause stress:
The stress response occurs when the actual or perceived pressures on an individual are greater than their ability to cope. It is important to recognise the types of pressures that might contribute to feelings of stress in yourself and the signs that all may not be well.
Pressures might come from:
Personal life
- Mental and/or physical ill health
- Relationships
- Family problems
- Home environment
- Neighbour disputes
- Financial difficulties
Work life
- lack of control over the way work is done
- too much or insufficient work
- role conflict or lack of role definition
- underused skills
- unsatisfactory relationships
- lack of support from colleagues
- lack of feedback
- lack of clarity about expectations
- lack of information
- lack of rest, e.g. not taking annual leave
Signs that you may be experiencing stress:
Symptoms
- Constant tiredness
- Poor concentration
- Loss of confidence
- Irritability
- Tearfulness
- Poor sleep
- Frequent headaches or other aches and pains
Behaviours
- Indecisiveness
- Poor time keeping
- Poor performance
- Unusual absence
- Poor judgement
- Inappropriate humour
- Withdrawal
- Increase / decrease eating
- Increased use of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine
Watch ‘recognising the signs of stress here’
Watch ‘supporting team members with work-related stress’
What you can expect from your manager
- To understand UCL’s policy and their specific role in managing work-related stress
- To understand the work-related demands on you, your personal needs, and circumstances
- To support you to manage work related stress
- To complete a Stress Risk Assessment with you
- To identify areas of support and available resources
- To ensure the impact of stress is being reasonably managed and mitigated
Your manager can only support you if you share information about what you are experiencing with them. If they don’t not know this, there is little they can do to support you. If you feel unable to speak to your manager, you can contact an HR colleague, or, you can contact the Employee Assistant Programme to discuss concerns.
What you can do to manage stress
- Take a proactive role in managing your wellbeing
- Make sure you are using your annual leave allowance and tracking remaining leave using MyHR. Taking appropriate rest from work is critical to manage your wellbeing
- Record any sickness absence on MyHR to help you identify any patterns you may feel you need to raise with your manager when asking for support. It also allows departmental issue to show up in central absence reporting, so that any issues can be addressed.
- Seek appropriate advice and support at an early stage if difficulties arise.
- Visit the Being Well at UCL pages to access wellbeing resources
- Consider a self-referral or ask your manager to complete a management referral to Workplace Health
- Utilise UCL’s Employee Assistance Programme to support your wellbeing
- Speak to your manager or HR colleague if you need guidance
- Ask your manager to have a confidential conversation about how you feel
- Complete a stress self-assessment to help you identify areas of stress
Steps you should take to manage and reduce stress
Step 1: Ask your manager for an informal conversation to discuss concerns
Purpose:
- To let your manager know you are experiencing levels of stress
- To find out what resources are available if you don’t already know about them
- To book a date to complete a stress risk assessment together
Step 2: Complete a Stress Self-Assessment
Purpose
- To explore your perceived cause of stress.
- Clarify your thoughts and feelings
- To think about what support you may need prior to completing a stress risk assessment
Step 3: Meet with your manager to complete a stress risk assessment together
Purpose
- To discuss sources of stress and complete a stress risk assessment together.
- Share your findings and ideas from the stress self-assessment you completed
- Discuss actions and ideas to reduce stressors.
- Agree on actions and ideas
- Set a date to review the impact of the actions implemented to support you.
Whilst the meeting with your manager is informal, you can be accompanied by an HR colleague or Union representative, in which case, you should notify your manager in advance
Step 4: Follow up
Purpose:
- Follow up on agreed actions and any outstanding actions that needed further research before they can be implemented
- Share your thoughts and ideas with the member of staff where alternative measures may be needed, if for example ideas of initial solutions are not possible
- Opportunity for member of staff to agree or disagree with these
- Agree further actions and implementation of changes needed
- Agree any necessary timeframes
Can be done by phone/face to face or email – method to be agreed in initial stress risk assessment
Step 5: Meet with your manager to review the impact of actions implemented
Purpose:
- Review risk assessment from step 3
- Review any changes
- Review the impact of agreed support, training, or adjustments
- Assess whether further action is needed
Stress risk assessment:
- Your stress risk assessment will be created by your manager on RiskNET
- You must be present when the stress risk assessment is being completed
- Your manager will send you a completed copy of the stress risk assessment, you must approve this and confirm whether you agree with what has been recorded
- You will be able to download this and keep it for your own records
- Your stress risk assessment will be marked confidential, this means that no one else, other than your manager can access it